So like this, one day I’m in the vegetable market in Bangalore city. Then I see a man sitting there selling vegetables, who is shining. I just look at him, my god, what the hell is he doing in the vegetable market? He just looks at me. Our eyes lock up with each other. Then he bursts out laughing, and I also laugh. Then I walk up to him and say, what the hell are you doing here? And he said, come, come.
He opened up his little vegetable shop, and asked me to sit down. So both of us sat in the shop. Then he’s telling me his story. He was doing his normal life, wife and two, three children and whatever. One day he fell ill. So ill that they admitted him into a government hospital, a general ward. They put him there. Every day they thought he will die, but he did not die. Every day they thought he will die, he did not die. Two, three months went on. Then there was no space so they put him in the corridor outside, because this guy doesn’t live, doesn’t die. So after about three months his wife stopped coming, she lost her patience. How long to come and sit with him? This fellow doesn’t live or die. Four months, or little more than four months, he was lying down there in the hospital corridor. Somebody was throwing some scraps at him and he did not know. Every day he thought he will die today, but he would recover the next day morning. Again he thinks he will die, it went on like this. After four months, slowly, he recovered.
But in the meantime something fantastic happened to him. Everything just blew. Every day he thought, today is the last day and then he opened up. Shining, blissful human being. Again back to vegetable selling. Wife gone, children gone, everything gone. Above all, he is gone. Just staying in contact with mortality for four months did this to him. This is important.
You must stay in touch with the mortal nature of who you are
You must stay in touch with the mortal nature of who you are. This looks like a bizarre thing – oh, why is he talking about death, we want to live. What you don’t understand is, I can say right now that you’re living. Or I can also say you’re dying, you’re actually dying. One day the process will be complete. Yes or no? Hello? They’re just two words for the same thing, isn’t it? Right now we are dying slowly. One day it will be complete. Today it’s on. Is it on or no? Today the death is on or no? It is on. So what you call as life, and what you call as death are not two separate things. It is one thing happening. If you become conscious of this, all the tremendous possibilities of being alive will become yours.
