Christians go on saying the same thing to people: "Unless you are a Christian you cannot be saved. Only Jesus will save you. The day of judgment is coming closer, and on the day of judgment, those who are with Jesus, he will recognize them, he will sort them out. And the others, millions and millions, will be simply thrown into hell for eternity. Remember, there is no escape; for eternity they will be thrown into hell."
And the same is the attitude of other religions. But out of fear people start clinging to something, whatsoever is available in the close vicinity. If you are accidentally born in a Hindu home or a Jaina or a Jewish home, you become a Jew or a Jaina or a Hindu, as the case may be. Whatsoever is available close by, the child starts clinging to it.
My approach is totally different. I don't say be afraid — that is the strategy of the priest, that is his trade secret. I say there is nothing to fear, because God is in you. There is nothing to fear. Live life fearlessly, live each moment as intensely as possible. Intensity has to be remembered. And if you don't live any moment intensely, then what happens? Your mind hankers for repetition.
You love a woman, your mind hankers for repetition. Why? Why do you hanker for the same experience again and again? You eat certain food, you enjoy it, now you hanker for the same food again and again. Why?
The reason is that whatsoever you do, you never do it totally. Hence something remains discontented in you. If you do it totally, there will be no hankering for repetition and you will be searching for the new, exploring the unknown. You will not move in a vicious circle, your life will become a growth. Ordinarily people only go on moving in circles. They appear to move, but they only appear to.
Growth means you are not moving in a circle, that something new is happening every day, every moment really. And when does that become possible? Whenever you start living intensely.
I would like to teach you how to eat intensely and totally, how to love intensely and totally, how to do small things with such utter ecstasy that nothing is left behind. If you laugh, let the laughter shake your very foundations. If you cry, become tears; let your heart be poured out through tears. If you hug somebody, then become the hug. If you kiss somebody, then be just the lips, then be just the kiss. And you will be surprised how much you have been missing, how much you have missed, how you have lived up to now in a lukewarm way.
I can teach you the art of living; that implies the art of dying, you need not learn it separately. The man who knows how to live, knows how to die. The man who knows how to fall in love, knows when the moment has come to fall out of it. He falls out of it gracefully, with a goodbye, with gratitude — but only the man who knows how to love.
People don't know how to love, and then they don't know how to say goodbye when the time has come to say it.
If you love you will know that everything begins and everything ends, and there is a time for beginning and there is a time for ending, and there is no wound in it. One is not wounded, one simply knows the season is over. One is not in despair, one simply understands, and one thanks the other, "You gave me so many beautiful gifts. You gave me new visions of life, you opened a few windows I might never have opened on my own. Now the time has come that we separate and our ways part." Not in anger, not in rage, not with a grudge, not with any complaint, but with tremendous gratitude, with great love, with thankfulness in the heart.
If you know how to love, you will know how to separate. Your separation will also have a beauty and a grace. And the same is the case with life; if you know how to live, you will know how to die. Your death will be tremendously beautiful.
OSHO
