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18 Twelve Facets of Reality only the temporary, they will reject them. Why? Because they are not ready to go deep. They want what they can get immediately.
We are talking of something permanent, of long-term things in which some people have no interest. Those whose quest for the permanent has not yet awakened think, “Who knows what will happen later, after fifty years? Let me enjoy now!"
So the twelve reflections are given to the initiates, to people who are sincerely interested in life and the life to come; or, let us say, in the flow of life. Those who have given us these bhavanas saw the continuity of life, the eternal flow. They didn't start with birth or end with death. For them birth is a wave and death is another wave. If you ask, “Where is the first wave?” the wise ones answer, “It exists in the second wave. Show me the first wave and see the second wave. The first wave has created the second wave.”
If you want to know the existence of the first wave, then you have to know the second wave. If the first wave has not subsided, then the second wave will not come. The coming of another wave itself indicates that the previous wave has already merged. Something merges and something emerges. This is the whole process-merge and emerge. So birth is nothing but somewhere else a death. One wave merges in death, and another wave emerges in birth.
These two waves are connected deeply with one another. When we start experiencing this deep truth, this deep instinct, not only in words or phrases but in our real experience, we are then able to live in this world in the state of fearlessness. We can use all the techniques to overcome fear, but as long as we remain on a level of quotations without experience, the fear remains. Why do people have fear? Because they see everything decaying,