If mirrors disappear, and nobody talks about how old you are, and there
is no calendar and no way to measure time, you will remain young, says OSHO.
If you look within, can you feel the age? How old are you? If you close your eyes and look within, the emptiness within seems to be ageless, without age. Are you a child? Are you young? Are you old? The inner space seems to be nontemporal. It is. That’s why you become old through other’s eyes. You become old because of the mirror. If mirrors disappear and nobody talks about your age, and there is no calendar and no way to measure time, you will remain young longer. In the ancient times, people stayed younger for a longer period of time. It is said that they lived for hundreds of years; sometimes even three, four, five hundred years. Now these things look like stories, myths, and fictions. They are not fictions.
They must have lived, but they had nothing to measure time; no mirrors; nobody talked about age; nobody knew when he was born and nobody knew his birthday. They couldn’t count beyond the ten fingers. And nobody ever asked: How old are you? People simply lived not knowing how old they were. And they lived for long. It has happened many times. Just a few days ago, I was reading about a Dutch man. A few years back, he reached 165 years. And he was working at that age, doing everything normally. He lived in a distant village. Then some newspaper got the news; his name was published, his picture, and then people started coming to see him. Then doctors became concerned and they also came to study him. They killed him within two years, because with everybody coming and asking him how old he was, suddenly for the first time, that poor old man became aware that he was 165, which was unbelievable. He had never bothered. He had simply lived, not conscious of time. When you are conscious of time, you are in the grip of death. When you are not conscious of time, death simply cannot enter. It enters through time — death is time. And life is eternal, timeless. You are life, not death. What did the doctors do to that poor old man? They suggested to him: Now you don’t work, you rest, because if you rest, you can live even longer; you may live two centuries, and that will be a phenomenon for medical science! So they helped him to rest. They put him on a bed and they started giving him injections and vitamins. He was dead within two years — he had become so conscious and worried. If you are too concerned with the body, you become the body. If you go on looking in the mirror, you become the body. That’s why women age faster than men. And the miracle is, they live longer than men, but they age faster. On an average, all over the world, they live four years longer than men. However, they lose their beauty and their youth quickly.
The mirror kills them, continuously meditating on the body. Meditate on the inner being, not on the body. Find a mirror that reflects you, not the body. That mirror which reflects you is meditation. The more you meditate, the more ageless you become. Never in the history of man, has he been as helpless before death as he is now; that too with so much progress in medical science. Why such a helplessness? Because you are not in contact with the eternal; your roots are not in the eternal. You have lived a temporal life, and death is the end of time. Not you. If you have lived in time, with time, only with temporal goals, then death is a problem. But if you have lived deeper within yourself, in the remoter mountains where Kakua moved, inside where nobody can visit you, totally alone — then death is not a problem. Because, you know the deathless — it is hidden there. On the surface is time, at the centre is eternity. Remember, eternity is not a long, long time — no. Eternity is no time at all. Eternity means ‘no time’. In the past, only a few people had to wait for death, those who were sentenced to die. They had to wait in the prisons for a few days, just waiting — it was terrible agony. But now, everybody.... even those who are retired, are sentenced to death. They have nothing else to do, just wait. Any moment death will come. Medical science has only increased the agony by prolonging you. They go on giving you injections and vitamins. For what? To wait a little longer? They go on pushing you back in the queue, but you are in the queue. What difference does it make when one has lost everything? And just waiting to die. Never before! That’s why I say that man is so helpless before death. In the east, when death started approaching, people became very happy. Death was a door, it was not the end. Death was a meeting with the Unknown.
If you look within, can you feel the age? How old are you? If you close your eyes and look within, the emptiness within seems to be ageless, without age. Are you a child? Are you young? Are you old? The inner space seems to be nontemporal. It is. That’s why you become old through other’s eyes. You become old because of the mirror. If mirrors disappear and nobody talks about your age, and there is no calendar and no way to measure time, you will remain young longer. In the ancient times, people stayed younger for a longer period of time. It is said that they lived for hundreds of years; sometimes even three, four, five hundred years. Now these things look like stories, myths, and fictions. They are not fictions.
They must have lived, but they had nothing to measure time; no mirrors; nobody talked about age; nobody knew when he was born and nobody knew his birthday. They couldn’t count beyond the ten fingers. And nobody ever asked: How old are you? People simply lived not knowing how old they were. And they lived for long. It has happened many times. Just a few days ago, I was reading about a Dutch man. A few years back, he reached 165 years. And he was working at that age, doing everything normally. He lived in a distant village. Then some newspaper got the news; his name was published, his picture, and then people started coming to see him. Then doctors became concerned and they also came to study him. They killed him within two years, because with everybody coming and asking him how old he was, suddenly for the first time, that poor old man became aware that he was 165, which was unbelievable. He had never bothered. He had simply lived, not conscious of time. When you are conscious of time, you are in the grip of death. When you are not conscious of time, death simply cannot enter. It enters through time — death is time. And life is eternal, timeless. You are life, not death. What did the doctors do to that poor old man? They suggested to him: Now you don’t work, you rest, because if you rest, you can live even longer; you may live two centuries, and that will be a phenomenon for medical science! So they helped him to rest. They put him on a bed and they started giving him injections and vitamins. He was dead within two years — he had become so conscious and worried. If you are too concerned with the body, you become the body. If you go on looking in the mirror, you become the body. That’s why women age faster than men. And the miracle is, they live longer than men, but they age faster. On an average, all over the world, they live four years longer than men. However, they lose their beauty and their youth quickly.
The mirror kills them, continuously meditating on the body. Meditate on the inner being, not on the body. Find a mirror that reflects you, not the body. That mirror which reflects you is meditation. The more you meditate, the more ageless you become. Never in the history of man, has he been as helpless before death as he is now; that too with so much progress in medical science. Why such a helplessness? Because you are not in contact with the eternal; your roots are not in the eternal. You have lived a temporal life, and death is the end of time. Not you. If you have lived in time, with time, only with temporal goals, then death is a problem. But if you have lived deeper within yourself, in the remoter mountains where Kakua moved, inside where nobody can visit you, totally alone — then death is not a problem. Because, you know the deathless — it is hidden there. On the surface is time, at the centre is eternity. Remember, eternity is not a long, long time — no. Eternity is no time at all. Eternity means ‘no time’. In the past, only a few people had to wait for death, those who were sentenced to die. They had to wait in the prisons for a few days, just waiting — it was terrible agony. But now, everybody.... even those who are retired, are sentenced to death. They have nothing else to do, just wait. Any moment death will come. Medical science has only increased the agony by prolonging you. They go on giving you injections and vitamins. For what? To wait a little longer? They go on pushing you back in the queue, but you are in the queue. What difference does it make when one has lost everything? And just waiting to die. Never before! That’s why I say that man is so helpless before death. In the east, when death started approaching, people became very happy. Death was a door, it was not the end. Death was a meeting with the Unknown.
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