Now, a distinction has to be made. Illness, disease and suffering are one thing, death is totally different.  In the Western mind, illness, disease, suffering and death are all together — packed in one package. From there problems arise.

Death is beautiful; illness is not, suffering is not, disease is not. Death is beautiful.  Death is not a sword that cuts your life, it is like a flower — an ultimate flower — that blooms at the last moment_ It is the peak. Death is the flower on the tree of life. It is not the end of life but the crescendo. It is the ultimate orgasm. There is nothing wrong in death; it is beautiful — but one needs to know how to live and how to die. There is an art of living and there is an art of dying, and the second art is of more value than the first art. But the second can be known only when you have known the first. Only those who know how to live rightly know how to die rightly. And then death is a door to the divine.

So, the first thing: please keep death apart. Only think of illness, disease and suffering.  You need not fight against death. That is creating trouble in the Western mind, in the Western hospitals, in Western medicine. People are fighting against death. People are almost vegetating in the hospitals, just alive on drugs. They are forced to live unnecessarily when they would have died naturally. Through medical support their death is being postponed. They are of no use, life is of no use to them; the game is over, they are finished.  Now to keep them alive is just to make them suffer more. Sometimes they may be in a coma, and a person can be in a coma for months and years. But because there is an antagonism towards death it has become a great problem in the Western mind: what to do when a person is in a coma and will never recover, but can be kept alive for years? He will be a corpse, just a breathing corpse, that’s all.  He will simply vegetate, there will be no life. What is the point? Why not allow him to die?  There is the fear of death. Death is the enemy — how to surrender to the enemy, to death?

So there is great controversy in the Western medical mind. What to do? Should a person be allowed to die? Should a person be allowed to decide whether he wants to die? Should the family be allowed to decide whether they would like him to die? —because sometimes the person may be unconscious and cannot decide. But is it right to help somebody to die? Great fear arises in the Western mind. To die? That means you are murdering the person! The whole of science exists to keep him alive. Now this is stupid! Life in itself has no value unless there is joy, unless there is dance, unless there is some creativity, unless there is love — life in itself is meaningless. Just to live is meaningless. A point comes when one has lived, a point comes when it is natural to die, when it is beautiful to die. Just as when you have been doing work the whole day, a point comes when you fall asleep; death is a kind of sleep — a deeper sleep. You will be born again in a newer body with a newer mechanism, with new facilities, with new opportunities, new challenges. This body is old and one has to leave it; it is just a dwelling….

In the East we have a different outlook: death is not the enemy but the friend. Death gives you rest. You have become tired, you have lived your life, you have known all the joys that can be known in life, you have burned your candle totally. Now go into darkness, rest for a while and then you can be born again. Death will revive you again in a fresher way.

So the first thing: Death is not the enemy.

The second thing: Death is the greatest experience in life if you can die consciously.  And you can die consciously only if you are not afraid of it. If you are against it you become very panicky, very afraid. When you are so afraid that you cannot tolerate that fear, there is a natural mechanism in the body which releases drugs into the body and you become unconscious. There is a point beyond which endurance will not be possible; you become unconscious. So millions of people die unconsciously and miss a great moment, the greatest of all. It is samadhi, it is satori, it is meditation happening to you. It is a natural gift.

If you can be alert and you can see that you are not the body… You will have to see, because the body will disappear. Soon you will be able to see that you are not the body, you are separate. Then you will see you are separating from the mind too; then the mind will disappear. And then you will be just a flame of awareness, and that is the greatest benediction there is. So don’t think of death as illness, disease and human suffering.