This whole universe is conceived of in the East
as a teaching period.
The trees are learning to be trees,
the birds are learning to be birds.
This whole universe is exactly
a great university,
an opportunity
to learn one form
and also to learn
that behind the form is hidden your formless being.
Thousands of times you have lived
in different forms,
experiencing different ways. Certainly to be a tree
is a totally different experience
than to be a bird or to be a lion.
But the essential life
is one.
Out of this experience of essential life,
the theory of reincarnation arose.
And if you go deeper into your
interiority,
you can move so deeply
that you will start touching not only your birth,
your nine months in the womb,
but also the death of the previous form.
It is a tremendous experience to know that you have been here before,
because that gives another dimension
to your
consciousness; if you have been here in the past,
you will be here in the future.
The past and future both are in balance.
The present moment is just the balancing moment.
And if you can dig deep into the present moment,
you can experience not only your past lives;
there is a possibility
If your effort is really total, that you may start having glimpses of your future possibilities.
Gautam Buddha is reported to have said
that we never begin our journey
It is eternal.
You cannot reach to the point, exploring within yourself,
where you started the journey.
That bus stop you cannot find.
You have always been moving, traveling.
So the beginning cannot be found,
It is not there.
But the end can be found.
You will be surprised
to think about it,
that the ordinary death is not a death
because the consciousness moves into another form.
A bird becomes
a tree.
A tree becomes
an animal
an animal becomes a human being
but if
your experience of all your past lives
suddenly flashes you
to the idea that you are eternal,
that very moment you are disidentified
with the body-mind structure.
And this
disidentification
is the real death.
Now you will not take another form,
you will enter into the formless.
It is called the great death.
But to have a great death
you need to have a great life.
Ordinary living is so lukewarm
that ordinary death cannot change much;
It can only change the outer garb,
the paper bag in which you have been living.
To burst forth out of all forms
a tremendous awareness
intensity, totality
that you pull all of yourself to a single point
and suddenly, all forms disappear
Just like a breeze invisible,
you enter into the formless