However your day has been, pleasant or unpleasant, sleep provides you deep rest. Sleep takes you in its arms. It comforts you and makes you fresh to worry again the next day! Sleep heals you, comforts you, and enriches your waking state of consciousness. If you do not sleep, your wakefulness will be dull.
Sleep and wakefulness appear to be contradictory, or on opposite poles. However, they complement each other. Good sleep makes you more awake and alert. Isn't it? If you observe your sleep you will know a lot about your death. We sleep every night, but we have never met our sleep. Have you noticed the last thought in your mind just before falling asleep is the same as the first thought you have as soon as you wake up? The same happens. Death is a long sleep. You drop one body and get into another body.
Death is a friend of life. This does not mean you should commit suicide! So many people commit suicide thinking they will get rid of the anguish, agitation, and agony, but they will be born with the same thing next time. Suicide is not death. Deep desire to live makes you commit suicide. When life is just a game and you have lived life, then you embrace death naturally when it comes. It is the fear of death that dampens life, and there is fear because we do not know what it is.
Sleep, meditation and love are synonymous to death. You see Christ on the cross; this indicates that love, death, and pain are together.
What does Death mean? Dropping the past. Die every moment, and you are born every moment. As in sleep, even in meditation, there is deep comfort. And you realize that everything in this Universe is changing; Everything is dying. Tell me one thing that is not dying - plants, animals, and human beings. Everything dies and everything is renewed. Millions have walked on this planet, stood up perpendicular on this planet, sat down perpendicular, and then became horizontal underneath! Just wake up and see, what is the fear? You know, some people are afraid to go to bed. The fear is that you think you may not wake up. Lack of understanding of life causes fear. People are afraid of love, people are afraid of meditation, people are afraid of death, people are afraid of themselves. Ignorance and lack of awareness is the cause of fear. Just a glimpse of the Being, of the Self that you are - that you are beyond death - roots out the fear totally. This happens to people who clinically die for a few moments. When they are revived they know death is nothing to be afraid of. You simply know you are much more than your body. The Self is beyond death.
As I was saying, the last thought in the mind before falling asleep will be the first thought when we wake. In the same way the last impression in our mind will come to us in the next life as the first impression. There is a saying in India that it doesn't matter how your life has been but the last thought is very important.
In one house, in one family, children are born with the same genes but they are very different. Even twins are different. Though they have a lot of physical, mental and emotional similarities there is something different between each child that comes from the previous impressions.
The first law of thermodynamics says that 'energy can neither be created nor destroyed'. Our mind is energy and energy cannot be destroyed. What happens to this mind when it leaves the body? It capsules itself in the impressions like an invisible balloon and remains for a time until it again gets another body to come back.
Knowledge of death makes you immortal. It is wrong to even say that it makes you immortal. It makes you aware that you are immortal anyway. Do you see the difference? You are already immortal. Something in you never dies. You might notice that when you turn around and look at people you think, "oh, they're all grown up" and you feel you have not aged. We fail to notice that something in us is not changing or aging. Just stand by the beach all by yourself and ask yourself: 'Have I aged? Have I changed? Is there something in me that is the same from my beginning?'
Sleep and wakefulness appear to be contradictory, or on opposite poles. However, they complement each other. Good sleep makes you more awake and alert. Isn't it? If you observe your sleep you will know a lot about your death. We sleep every night, but we have never met our sleep. Have you noticed the last thought in your mind just before falling asleep is the same as the first thought you have as soon as you wake up? The same happens. Death is a long sleep. You drop one body and get into another body.
Death is a friend of life. This does not mean you should commit suicide! So many people commit suicide thinking they will get rid of the anguish, agitation, and agony, but they will be born with the same thing next time. Suicide is not death. Deep desire to live makes you commit suicide. When life is just a game and you have lived life, then you embrace death naturally when it comes. It is the fear of death that dampens life, and there is fear because we do not know what it is.
Sleep, meditation and love are synonymous to death. You see Christ on the cross; this indicates that love, death, and pain are together.
What does Death mean? Dropping the past. Die every moment, and you are born every moment. As in sleep, even in meditation, there is deep comfort. And you realize that everything in this Universe is changing; Everything is dying. Tell me one thing that is not dying - plants, animals, and human beings. Everything dies and everything is renewed. Millions have walked on this planet, stood up perpendicular on this planet, sat down perpendicular, and then became horizontal underneath! Just wake up and see, what is the fear? You know, some people are afraid to go to bed. The fear is that you think you may not wake up. Lack of understanding of life causes fear. People are afraid of love, people are afraid of meditation, people are afraid of death, people are afraid of themselves. Ignorance and lack of awareness is the cause of fear. Just a glimpse of the Being, of the Self that you are - that you are beyond death - roots out the fear totally. This happens to people who clinically die for a few moments. When they are revived they know death is nothing to be afraid of. You simply know you are much more than your body. The Self is beyond death.
As I was saying, the last thought in the mind before falling asleep will be the first thought when we wake. In the same way the last impression in our mind will come to us in the next life as the first impression. There is a saying in India that it doesn't matter how your life has been but the last thought is very important.
In one house, in one family, children are born with the same genes but they are very different. Even twins are different. Though they have a lot of physical, mental and emotional similarities there is something different between each child that comes from the previous impressions.
The first law of thermodynamics says that 'energy can neither be created nor destroyed'. Our mind is energy and energy cannot be destroyed. What happens to this mind when it leaves the body? It capsules itself in the impressions like an invisible balloon and remains for a time until it again gets another body to come back.
Knowledge of death makes you immortal. It is wrong to even say that it makes you immortal. It makes you aware that you are immortal anyway. Do you see the difference? You are already immortal. Something in you never dies. You might notice that when you turn around and look at people you think, "oh, they're all grown up" and you feel you have not aged. We fail to notice that something in us is not changing or aging. Just stand by the beach all by yourself and ask yourself: 'Have I aged? Have I changed? Is there something in me that is the same from my beginning?'
