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The Rare Occasion
135
We begin to have the experience that something in us does not believe in death. If we truly believed in death, we would not get up in the morning. When we hear of somebody who has died, we feel a little sad, we inform someone else, and then we go on our way. Even though we hear of someone else's death, we do not think about our own death.
Why do we not think, “Death is coming. I had better take precaution"? When we sense danger coming, we take the necessary precaution. Is not death the biggest danger? And yet we enjoy life. Think for a while. Does it mean that we don't believe in death? Are we skeptics? Do we think it is only an illusion? If it were real to us, we would be serious about it, and yet we are not serious. That shows that we see, yet we don't believe in our seeing. We don't trust our eyes. Like a mirage, it is seen, but we know it is not water. Knowing that it is not water, we don't run after that mirage.
In the same way, we see death, and yet we are not afraid. There is a real meaning to this. The secret is this: the Inside Dweller knows that he has no death, because he has no birth. The Inside Dweller is unborn. Inside life is authentic. We realize, “What dies is the body, not me. The senses will die. I am not the senses, I am beyond them. I am using the senses as windows and taking care to keep them clean while I live in this house, the body." The Indweller does not identify with the house or with the windows. They are separate from the seer.
If the windows and the one who sees are one, then there will be no seeing, no seen, no process of seeing. So here we realize that when a person becomes old and closes the eyes, still he can see inside. The Indweller experiences what he or she has seen at another time.
When you experience this kind of knowledge, you don't say, “I am the possessor of knowledge.” Instead,
