One day Mulla Nasruddin was sitting in a coffee house, talking to his friends.
He said, “There are certain things in life that simply cannot be believed. They are impossible.”
His friends asked, “For example?”
Mulla said, “For example, yesterday I was walking down the road. It was dark. Near a doorway, two men were standing and talking. I heard them saying, ‘We have heard that Mulla Nasruddin has died.’
“I heard it too,” Mulla said, “but I could not believe it. How could I believe it?”
You may be surprised to know that people who die quietly, without pain, often take many hours even after death to believe that they are dead.
That is why we have arranged things this way: the moment someone dies, the whole house begins to cry loudly. People beat their chests, scream, and wail. Preparations for the funeral begin immediately. Drums are beaten. Without delay, the body is taken to the cremation ground and burned.
There is a reason behind this.
The reason is this: so that consciousness may understand that its connection with the body has been broken, and that which it believed to be “I” until now has died.
Death is not the end.
The body ends.
But consciousness needs a shock to awaken from its long identification.
~ Translated from Nirvan Upanishad by Osho ( Hindi Discourse), Discourse 3
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