DON’T accumulate anything whatever: power, money, prestige, virtue, knowledge, even
the so-called spiritual experiences. Don’t accumulate. If you don’t accumulate you are
ready to die any moment, because you have nothing to lose. The fear of death is not
really fear of death; the fear of death comes out of the accumulations of life. Then you
have too much to lose so you cling to it. That is the meaning of Jesus’ saying: Blessed are
the poor in spirit.
I don’t mean become a beggar, and I don’t mean renounce the world. I mean be in the
world but don’t be of the world. Don’t accumulate inside, be poor in spirit. Never possess
anything — and then you are ready to die. Possessiveness is the problem, not life itself.
The more you possess, the more you are afraid to lose. If you don’t possess anything, if
your purity, if your spirit is uncontaminated by anything, if you are simply there alone,
you can disappear any moment; whenever death knocks on the door it will find you
ready. You are not losing anything. By going with death you are not a loser. You may be
moving into a new experience.
And when I say don’t accumulate, I mean it as an absolute imperative. I’m not saying
don’t accumulate things of this world but go on accumulating virtue, knowledge, and socalled
spiritual experiences, visions — no. I am talking in absolute terms: don’t
accumulate. There are people, particularly in the East, who teach renunciation. They say,
‘Don’t accumulate anything in this world because it will be taken away from you when
death comes.’ These people seem to be basically more greedy than the ordinary worldly
people. Their logic is: don’t accumulate in this world because death will take it away, so
accumulate something that death cannot take away from you — accumulate virtue,
PUNYA; accumulate character, morality, knowledge; accumulate experiences, spiritual
experiences, experiences of kundalini, meditation, this and that; accumulate something
that death cannot take away from you.
But if you accumulate, with that accumulation comes fear. Each accumulation brings fear
in the same proportion…then you are afraid. Don’t accumulate and fear disappears. I don’t
teach you renunciation in the old sense; my sannyas is an absolutely new concept. It
teaches you to be in the world and yet to be not of it. Then you are always ready.
– OSHO
The Art of Dying, Chapter #2