Death is part of life.
We have broken up life into various segments, various divisions
– look at it for yourself –
as fear, as sorrow, as pity, as business, as politics,
as commercialism, as man, woman, sex, pain, grief,
anxiety, uncertainty.
We have broken up life into fragments,
and we look at death as a fragment.
And we never take life as a whole,
without any divisions, without being broken up.
Life is a movement.
And, if we divide life, as we do,
then death becomes a terrible thing, a meaningless ending.
Please observe this for yourself.
One’s own life is broken up that way.
'Me' and 'you', 'we' and 'they',
this belief against that belief, this nation against that nation,
this race against that race,
each one trying to succeed, fulfil,
pain, anxiety and so on.
We have broken life, the living on this earth, so separately.
Where there is separation, there must be conflict.
Where there is division, there must be the inevitable conflict.
And our life, from the moment we are born
till we die, is endless conflict.
Out of that conflict, every form of neurosis arises.
Then all the problems of that, which the psychologists meet.
So we continue this way, from the moment we are born till we die.
And this we call life, this we call living.
And to this we cling,
this existence that has become of very little meaning,
this life that has very, very little significance – as we live it.
What significance has conflict? Progress?
Progress towards what? More conflict?
Towards a better society?
That society is a symbol, it's not actuality.
The better, that society
is created by our relationship with each other.
If our relationship is right,
if our relationship with each other is without conflict
then we shall have a society, a government,
in which there'll be no conflict. It will be us.
If we behave properly, why need we have governments?
And because we are so corrupt,
we have governments which are becoming more and more corrupt.
So this is our life, from the moment we are born till we die.
And to this we cling, desperately,
because we think, with death, all this...
and perhaps we are entering into something unknown.
This we know, we are familiar with this
– with the conflict, with the fulfilment of desire, pleasure.
We all know this.
But we don’t know what happens after death.