Death and the Integrity of Life
Edited extract from a talk at his home in Highgate, London, 2 September 1981
When you are pursuing a way to the truth, everything is false - every thought, every formulation, every way out there in the world is false. There is only one way and that is towards the inner, towards the ‘kingdom of heaven’, which is within you, which is nothing. If anything I tell you, teach, say or suggest, does not take you towards the inner then don’t believe it.
I am here to get you to the truth within you. That is what death does. Have you noticed how it goes into you when someone around you dies or you lose something - the house burns down? The tragedy of this life, the pain of it, is the good endeavouring to drive us within.
The integrity of life is that if you can balance the outward-going with the inward-going, the good with the bad, you can have equilibrium - poise. Then, when the time of death comes, it will not shock you quite so much.
What’s good and what’s bad? In this world the good is expansive, outward-going - when we think life is wonderful. The bad is what drives that out of us. Good is winning. Bad is losing. Man is happy winning, unhappy losing. That is how superficial man’s life is.
But when are you really happy? You are truly happy when you are giving yourself. Have you noticed? You must put this to the test for yourself.
When you give yourself, you are dying to 'winning’ - giving your time at the expense of something that would normally be winning for you. If you’re giving yourself to someone, especially without their knowing or without the possibility of reward or recognition, then you discover something extraordinary: 'My God, I wish I could give more.’ You want to give more and more until you reach the stage where you just want to give and give and give. The integrity, the virtue, that pours into you is so great that you are fulfilled.
When we give of ourselves, and give our time to others, we push the world away and drive ourselves deeper within. Usually people only do things for themselves, but every time you do something for someone without hope of reward, but just because you understand from what I have said that it is a necessity to give of yourself, it takes away your worldly values. It takes you deeper within.
Giving yourself is dying before you die. To die is to give yourself to life but to give your life you don’t have to die physically. In physical dying of course your life is being taken from you; you are not giving it. You give it in this process of withdrawing from the world, back into the depths of yourself - in giving and serving and loving.
Loving is giving - giving of yourself, not the handy substitute of giving gifts. Man will give money, or something bought with it, or flowers picked from the face of the earth. But what have you got to give that was not taken from something else? What have you got to give me of yourself? That’s what I want and that’s what I am going to get, because I, death, will take it from you if you do not give it.
You must give to discover what it is to receive. What have you got to give? That’s the question for you.
It all adds up to this: 'I can love more. I can find my immortality. I can be released from my personality. I have nothing more to prove and no-one to impress.’ The release of all the pressure of having something to prove and someone to impress leads to liberation. And liberation just means to be released, to be freed from the pressure of living. Another word for it is death.
Pure Life