The Great Path - Oshorajneesh.com

CHAPTER 8. THE FOURTH STATE
In the hour of death you will also realize that all your hurrying and scurrying ultimately turns out to
be useless. The boat that you thought would take you is actually coming in to shore. But then it will
be too late and nothing can be done about it. Now you still have time. Something can be done.
For him who awakens before death claims him, there is no death; but for him who sleeps until the
time of death, there is no life. His life is one long dream finally broken by death. He who awakens
during his lifetime sees and experiences his inner nature and knows that it is immortal.
Life continues while you remain unconscious. You go about as if you are drunk, you do not know
where you are going. Why you are going is also unclear.
Two beggars at the roadside were having a conversation. I happened to be passing by and
overheard them. One said, ”I wonder what is the purpose of life.”
”Life is only to live. What else can you do?” replied the other.
You are of the second beggar’s opinion: you feel what else is there to do in life apart from living?
And even that is out of your control; it depends on an infinite number of factors. Everything is in
your unconscious mind. Why sex desire arose in you, why you raised a family, how greed and anger
entered you, why you were dishonest, why you accumulated wealth, why you made enemies – you
have no idea! You are just like a puppet, whose strings are being pulled by someone else. You
imagine you are dancing, but in fact it is someone else who is making you dance.
Look closely at your life and you will find that you are nothing more than a puppet. How can anything
real happen in the life of a man who is not his own master, but merely a puppet?
One evening Mulla Nasruddin hurried to the station with two of his friends to catch a train. All three
were dead drunk. The Mulla tripped and fell and missed the train, but the other two managed to get
aboard. The station master helped the Mulla to his feet and sympathized with him for missing the
train. The Mulla said, ”Don’t feel sorry for me. I can always catch the next train. I’m worried about
what will happen to those other two. They only came to see me off.”
In the world to board the train is success, to miss it is failure; but in reality the one who succeeds
and the one who fails, the victor and the vanquished, all are the same, for they are all equally
unconscious. Rich and poor, winner and loser, each has his slate wiped clean by death.
Only one sort of person escapes this treatment: he who has realized the fourth state that is hidden
with the first three. For him there is no death. He alone wins. Everyone else, be he Alexander or
Napoleon, is a total failure. Once in a while a Buddha comes out victorious.
Here the meaning of success is only one: that you have come to know that him for whom there is
no death. What perishes with death you should consider as defeat. Make this a definition of failure.
Have you anything that death cannot snatch away? Ponder constantly over this: ”Have I a single
thing that death cannot take from me?” If you find that you don’t, then hurry. You cannot afford to
waste any more time. Time time has come to awake!
Your days and your nights, the time you spend awake, the time you spend asleep and the time you
dream, death will snatch them all away from you. You have no connection with these three states;
The Great Path 143 Osho