Opinion: How some people die before dying

Once, I dreamt about some people I used to know who had died. They were wearing the same clothes they had been wearing when they died, and they were surrounded by the same thoughts, and had the same prejudices in their minds as when they died. Everything in life had changed, but they had not changed at all.

I said this to them, but they laughed and said, 'Dead people never change. We are always constant in our thoughts. In the world of the dead, there is nothing like change; our doctrines are forever. The disease of change exists only in life.'

I said, 'But in life too there are people who never change. Their doctrines are forever and they too have their eyes closed toward change, so that they are not affected by the disease of change. So, in the same way, aren't there some people here too who might be changing?'


All the dead people said in unison, 'No, no, no. How can that happen here? Here, we are all dead, no one is living. But, yes, this can happen in life too, because some people die before dying.'

Excerpt from Random Thoughts, courtesy: Osho International Foundation, www.osho.com