Learn to Die

The body has its own ways of accumulating anger. When you feel angry you gnash your teeth, you clench your fists. Why?

Your repressed anger, sexuality, greed and all kinds of poisons accumulate in the body, in the muscles. By deep massage those poisons can be released. Deep massage of the body can make you aware that your body is carrying many things. Your body drives you into things which you may not have gone into if the body was not driving you there.

Learn to be dead

Buddha says master the body. How? The first thing is to learn relaxation. You lie down on the ground as if you are dead. Let the body slowly, slowly die. Start from the feet. In fact, communicate with your body; say to the feet, “Die, please die.” And then go on upwards. Buddha does not say to go to sleep. He says, “Feel dead. Let the body die for the moment, as if you are just a corpse.” You cannot do anything. An ant starts crawling on you; you can’t do anything.

And it is really a great experience, to feel like a corpse, and the ant crawling on your face or a mosquito biting—but you can’t do anything, you are simply a watcher. It is a rare experience to go through it. Slowly, slowly, you become a master by relaxing your body. The more tense your body is, the more it is a master of you.

Distance the body and mind

If you can watch the body, the mind and all the functioning, you will become so separate from them that you can master them. You can master something only when you have a distance from it. If you are identified with it you cannot master it. And Buddha says one who is master of his own self is the master of the whole existence; he has entered into a different plane of life. You are slaves, he is a master. You are machines, he is a real man. You function unconsciously, he functions consciously. And to function consciously is to go beyond all sorrow, beyond all misery, beyond all anguish; it is to go into the beyond. Other religions call that beyond god; Buddha calls it simply the beyond. Prepare for the beyond… Become masters of your own beings.

Stop being a robot

Watch what you do, what you say, what you think and you will be surprised; without taking any alcoholic beverages, without taking any drugs, you are in a mess. Just look at what you have been doing to yourself, to your life. What have you made of yourself? What have you gained? What meaning have you attained? What significance have you experienced? People don’t ask such embarrassing questions because then they feel very depressed. But these questions have to be asked. Unless you ask these questions you are not going to change.

Man goes on living like a robot, functioning well, efficiently. In fact, the more like a robot you are, the better you function, the better the society feels with you–because it is a society of robots. To be awakened, alert, and conscious is dangerous. It is a society of blind people; to have eyes is to invite danger. If you become alert to at least one thing–that you are not alert–that’s a great beginning. To be aware that “I am ignorant” creates the possibility of seeking, searching in your own interiority for the truth–for your truth. Once your illusions are dropped, your dreams shattered, a great awakening is waiting for you.

Is Rebirth Fact or Fiction?

A well-known professor in an Indian university who is conducting research on rebirth came to meet me. At the very start of his conversation, he asserted that he was going to prove the theory of rebirth scientifically. It was apparent that his mind was already made up in favour of rebirth and he was looking for scientific evidence to support it. But it was utterly unscientific to accept something before fully investigating it from all sides. If someone wants to be scientific, he should say that he wants to enquire whether the theory of reincarnation is true or not.

Impotence of Logic

If you want to prove the theory of rebirth, you can find any number of arguments in its favour. Philosophy has been debating this question for 5,000 years and nothing has been solved yet. There are people who believe in rebirth and there are equal numbers who don’t believe in it. And no side has been able to convince the other side of the validity of its standpoint.

It is ironical that you can convince only one who is already convinced; you cannot convince the unconvinced. This is impotence of logic, which it fails to see. You can easily convince a Hindu of the truth of rebirth, because it is part of his belief system. But you will know how impotent logic is when you try to convince a Muslim of the truth of this theory.

Logic is a skill which works well for those who use it to prove something which they believe to be true. Therefore, it is not a right question to ask if rebirth can be proved philosophically.

The right question is, “Is there a way to approach the question of rebirth scientifically?” Science is pure enquiry; it is objective and impartial. While philosophy and logic have their standpoints for or against a belief, a proposition, science has none. A scientific mind means that it is open and impartial; it wants to find the truth, it is open to both the alternatives, both sides of a thing; it is not closed. Science does not depend on belief. It wants to investigate into the truth or otherwise of a hypothesis.

Objective Enquiry

Science is the only discipline prepared to re-examine its own findings and conclusions. Science is prepared for any possibility that an objective enquiry and investigation can lead to. Science has only recently begun to take interest in matters like reincarnation.

It is only 50 years since psychic societies came into being in America and Europe, and they have done some good work in this direction. A handful of intelligent people with a scientific bent, like Oliver Lodge, Broad, and Rhine have explored new frontiers of the human mind. They are all men of scientific persuasion; they don’t have any beliefs and prejudices of their own. They have done some real work on life-after-death and incarnation. Their findings are authentic and they go a long way in support of reincarnation. Now there are scientific techniques to contact bodiless souls, and they have been contacted, and every care has been taken to eliminate the chances of deception and fraud in the use of these techniques.

In the past, there have been many cases of fraudulent séances to communicate with the dead. But if even a single case of authentic necromancy succeeds, it is enough. And many such experiments to contact bodiless spirits have been successful in establishing that souls change their bodies; that they are born again and again.

Contacting Spirits

A number of people, who had devoted their lives to necromancy before leaving their bodies, had promised to their psychic societies that they would communicate with them after death, in a specific manner. And some of them did succeed in their efforts. They communicated some very valuable information regarding the life-after-death phenomenon to their societies, and this information goes a long way in the support of rebirth.