The art of dying

It is just like when a flower opens and the fragrance spreads. The flower remains attached to the tree, but not the fragrance. The fragrance is like a cloud moving with the wind in all the directions. The flower may die, but the fragrance will go on and on spreading to the very end of existence. A person who has attained to love may die—his love continues. Great souls die but their love continues. I will be dead, my love will continue. And those who will be sympathetic, those who will be receptive, will be able to receive it any moment, anywhere. I may be gone, but I am creating a certain ripple that will remain. You may be gone, but you loved somebody and that love created a ripple that will remain and remain and remain. It can never disappear, it will have its own repercussions…it will go on vibrating. You throw a small pebble in the lake and ripples arise. The pebble settles very soon at the bottom, but the ripples continue. They go on moving towards the shore—and there is no shore to this existence. I am talking to you…. In this moment something is transpiring between me and you. I will be gone, you will be gone, but that which is transpiring will abide. So these words will go on echoing, re-echoing. The speaker will not be there, the listener will not be there, but what is transpiring between the two in this moment has become part of eternity. And there is no shore, so these ripples will go on and on and on. So remember, when I am gone, you are not going to lose anything. Perhaps you may gain something of which you are absolutely unaware. Right now I am available to you only embodied, imprisoned in a certain shape and form. When I am gone, where can I go? I will be here in the winds, in the ocean; and if you have loved me, if you have trusted me, you will feel me in a thousand and one ways. In your silent moments you will suddenly feel my presence. Once I am unembodied, my consciousness is universal. Right now you have to come to me. Then, you will not need to seek and search for me. Wherever you are…your thirst, your love…and you will find me in your very heart, in your very heartbeat. Those who have loved me, those who have received my love, I am committed to them. I will do everything to remain in the body, and I will do everything—even if I have to leave the body—to be continuously around you. You will not be able to see me, but I will be able to see you. If you are here with me through the heart, then it is a totally different relationship. Then it is going to be eternal. Then I can die, you can die, but the relationship cannot die. Once I am dead, then this world cannot prevent me; no law, no parliament, no country can make barriers for me; then I will be all over the place, tickling people to wake up. Even now I am not doing anything nasty to anybody, just tickling. How then do you want to be remembered? I don’t want to be remembered. But you will be—you can’t do anything about that. That is other people’s problem. What do you want set on your tombstone? No. Nothing. Nothing? No name? No. Nothing. Once I am gone, I am gone. Then whatsoever my people want to do, they can do. If you were to die tomorrow, what would you like the world to remember you most for? What would you like your obituary to be? Just a simple man, an innocent man, who was always misunderstood. But who has always loved you..