The sheep started believing in his hypnosis. Every day he would butcher a few sheep, but the others would think, “We are not sheep. He is butchering only sheep. We are lions, we are tigers, we are wolves, we are this and that”…even that they were men. Some were even told that they were magicians – and they believed it. It was always some sheep that was to be butchered. They remained aloof, distant. They were not worried. And by and by they were all butchered.

“This is the situation,” Gurdjieff used to say. When somebody dies, has the question occurred to you that it is your death? No, the mind goes on playing the game. The mind says it is always the other that dies, it is never you.

Sometimes an old man comes to me, very old, and he is always worried about my death. He asks, “Osho, if you die, what will happen to me?” He is near about seventy-five. I am always surprised when he says, “If you die what is going to happen to me?” Osho is going to die and he is not going to die! There is every possibility he will die before me, but about that he never asks. Whenever he comes this is his question, “Don’t leave me. If you die, what will happen to me?”

This is how the mind goes on functioning. It is always somebody else who dies. Have you not seen people in their cars rushing with mad speed? Why? There is a deep idea in the mind that accidents happen to others. It is written even on boards how many accidents are happening every day, how many people died yesterday, yet people go on rushing by. Who bothers – these things happen to others. “These accidents, yes, they happen, but they never happen to me.” That idea persists. Gurdjieff’s parable is not just a parable.

All that is wrong happens to somebody else; even death. You cannot conceive of your own death. And if you cannot conceive of your own death, you cannot become religious. Even to think about it seems impossible: “How can I die? How?”

You go on keeping yourself separate from all, you go on believing that you are the exception. Watch out! Whenever you feel that you are the exception, remember, the mind is going to deceive you. The magician of the mind is tricking you, and it has tricked everybody. This is the metaphysical sleep. “Death is not going to happen to me, and I am already that which I want to be. And everything is good, and I am awake. And I already know, so what is there to seek and search for?”

These false notions, these absurd ideas have been repeated for so long that you have been hypnotized by them. You have auto-hypnotized yourself. The magician is not somewhere outside, it is your own mind. It takes all significance away from you. Significance is only in awareness. Significance is in awareness. Significance is awareness, it is a kind of radiance. When you become aflame with awareness everything becomes aflame with significance.