And I am not saying that by being still you will be ready to know – no. Just by being still you will know. Being still and knowing are the same phenomenon, because when you are still like a mirror, a still lake, no ripples, then the whole firmament, the whole sky, is reflected in the lake. The stars come down, and the moon, and the clouds – all are reflected in tremendous beauty in the lake. When your consciousness becomes a still mirror, a still lake, a silent reservoir of energy,the universe is reflected in it.

You will not attain to knowledge, remember. You will become wise, you will become a buddha. You will not become a great scholar, a great pundit, a great theologian or a philosopher. You will be a buddha. You will have an innocent kind of knowing: you will know how to live, you will know how to die, you will know how to love – you will know the real art of life. And the real art of life consists only of three things: how to live, how to love, how to die. And these things you will not know from scriptures; these things you will know from your innermost core.

I call this education. “Be still and know, seek the strength of no-desire.” It is desire that is making you weak, it is no-desire that will make you strong. It is desire that is creating continuous storms in you, it is no-desire that will bring stillness – and a stillness that comes on its own is authentic; it is not a kind of hypnosis. It is not through mantra, it is not through any device, it is not through any trick. You are not trying to pretend to be still: you are simply still. This will give you a new birth, you will be reborn.

Jesus says: “Unless you are born again, you shall not enter into my kingdom of God.” I say the same to you – but the rebirth is a state of no-desire, a state of no-mind, a state of total stillness.

The third question:

Osho,
I always think of committing suicide, and wonder what you would say about my death?

I am reminded of a beautiful anecdote:

The minister, who got himself a little mixed up now and again, was standing over the open casket of the dearly departed, Joe Hall.

“Our friend Joe Hall is not dead,” he orated. “Only the shell is here to be buried; the nut has departed.”

Why should you think of suicide? Are you a nut or something? If you have become a sannyasin you have already committed suicide. Sannyas is a suicide – the real one. It is not destroying the body, because destroying the body is not going to help; you will be immediately born again somewhere in some other womb. It will only be renewing the body; it is not real suicide.