I Teach Death
31 October 1969 pm iion Camp at Dwarka, Gujarat, India
Question 1
A FRIEND HAS ASKED: ARE YOU TEAG PEOPLE HOW TO DIE? ARE YOU TEAG DEATH? YOU SHOULD TEACH LIFE INSTEAD.
He is right, I am ieag people how to die.
I am teag the art of dying, because one who learns the art of dying bees an expert i of living as well.
One who agrees to die bees worthy of living the supreme life.
Only those who have known how to erase themselves also e to know how to be.
These may seem like opposite things because we have taken life ah to be opposing each other, tradictory, but they are not.
We have created a false tradi betweewo, and that has produced fatal results.
Perhaps nothing has caused so much harm to the human race as this tradi.
Subsequently, this tradi has had ramifications on many levels.
If we divide things which are essentially oo separate parts -- not only separate but tradictory parts -- the ultimate result be nothing but the creation of a schizophrenisane man.
Lets assume there is a place where mad people live.
Great difficulty and trouble would arise if these people were to believe that cold and hot were not only separate but tradictory things -- for the simple reason that cold and hot are not tradictory, they are different degrees of qualifying the same thing.
Our experience of cold and hot is not absolute, it is very relative.
A little experiment will make this clear.
We always find things which are hot and things which are cold.
We also see that something which is hot is hot, and something which is cold is cold -- we ot believe the same thing be hot and cold at the same time.
Now, when you go bae do a little experiment.
Take a pot taining hot water, a pot taining cold water, and a pot taining water at room temperature.
Put one hand i water and another hand in cold water.
Now take both hands out and place them ier at room temperature.
One hand will feel the water is cold and the other will feel the same water is hot.
Is that water hot or cold? One hand will say it is hot, the other will say it is cold.
Then what is the nature of the water really? If, simultaneously, one hand feels it is hot and the other feels the same water is cold, then we will have to realize the water is her hot nor cold -- its feeling hot or cold is relative to our hands.
Hot and cold are degrees of the same thing -- they are not two different things.
The distin between them is of quantity, not of quality.
Have you ever thought about the distin between childhood and old age? Ordinarily we think they are opposite to each other -- childhood on the one hand, old age oher.
But what is the distin between childhood and old age really? The difference is only of years, the difference is only of days; the difference is not qualitative, it is only quantitative.
For example, there is a child aged five.
We call him "an old man of five" -- whats wrong with that? It is simply linguistic usage that we say "a child five years of age.
" If we want to we call him -- as is done in English -- "five years old," which also mean "an old man of five.
" One is just an old man of seventy, while there is someone who is five years old.
What is the difference? If we want, we call a seventy -- year-old man a seventy-year-old child -- after all, a child grows into an old man