Nothing is ever born and nothing ever dies. Things only move between manifestation and unmanifestation. They become visible, they become invisible. To become invisible is a resting place. Just as after each day you need deep sleep in the night to rejuvenate you,to make you again young and fresh, in the same way after each life you need death. Death is a deeper sleep and nothing else. After each life your body is so tired, you need a new body, a new manifestation. The old wave disappears, but the water in that wave remains in the ocean; it will come again in a new wave. The old is continuously becoming new–allow it. Simply allow life and go with it in deep trust.

The awareness of death makes you live life totally, as joyously as possible. Death is not your enemy. In fact, it is an invitation for you to live intensely, totally to squeeze every drop of juice from every moment. Death is tremendous challenge and invitation.

Death gives you the ultimate in orgasmic joy: the body is left behind forever and your being becomes one with the whole. It is immeasurable. To become one with a single person gives you so much joy, just think: how much joy will happen in becoming one with the infinite! But it does not happen to everybody who dies, because the people who have not lived rightly cannot die rightly either. The people who have lived in deep unconsciousness will die in deep unconsciousness. Death will give you only that which you have lived all your life; it is the essence of your whole life.

If your life was of meditativeness, awareness, witnessing, then you will be able to witness death too. If your whole life you remained cool, centered in different situations, death will give you the ultimate challenge, the ultimate test. And if you can remain centered, calm and cool and watching, then you will not die an unconscious death, your death will bring you to the ultimate peak of consciousness. And then, certainly, it has to be celebrated.

Yes, my sannyasins celebrate death because they celebrate life.