Love - The Real Death

Dying totally

A very significant secret:
Between the doors of birth and death,
stands yet another door...
that door is what we call love...

"Have you watched? Between birth and death there is nothing else to happen but love. If you miss love between birth and death, you have missed the whole opportunity of life. You may gather knowledge and you may gather valuable stones, and you may gather money and prestige and power, but if you have missed love, then you have missed the real door.


The first door, the door of birth, is simply an opportunity to move through the second door, the door of love. Between birth and death is love. In fact, life exists only to give an opportunity to love and be loved. If that is missed, all is missed. If that is not missed, then even if you have missed all, nothing is missed.

And this door of love is real death. The other death that will come in the end is not real, because you will survive it. You will be reborn again. As death follows birth, so birth follows death. They are two aspects of the same coin. But if you move into the door of love, then you die, and you die so totally that then there is no birth for you, and of course, no death. Love is the real death because the ego disappears completely.

The ordinary death: disappearance of the body


In ordinary death the body disappears, ego remains, and that carries you into new lives. That is the whole thread of rebirth. Once that thread is broken and the root is cut, you disappear from the world of matter, from the world of the visible into the world of the invisible, the beyond, the other shore.



BETWEEN THE DOORS 
OF BIRTH AND DEATH,
 STANDS YET ANOTHER DOOR,
 WHOLLY INEXPLICABLE. 
HE WHO IS ABLE 
TO BE BORN 
AT THE DOOR OF DEATH,
 IS DEVOTED ETERNALLY...



That is what’s called the real door of death.

 Die before dying, die living. If you can die before dying, that is, if you can pass through the door of love, then there is no death for you. Then you have become deathless, then you are immortal, then you are godliness. Then you are no more part of the material world where bodies are formed and where bodies are de-formed. Then you are no more into the world of forms, of creation, destruction; you are beyond. That beyond is already in you.
 The man is here. It is right now, in this moment, here. But you will have to pass through the alchemy of love, otherwise you will never know it.


Osho, excerpted from The Beloved, Vol 2 #5




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In this Osho quote on love and death it is described how similar loving to dying is. Love is the real death. If you like to learn how to die - love!