"Of course, it is a very gradual death – and you are so unaware that you never know it, you never become aware of it. From birth to death, it is a long progression of death. It is very rare to come across an alive person. A Buddha, a Jesus, a Kabir – they are alive. And this is the miracle: that those who are alive never ask the question, 'Is there life after death?' They know it. They know what life is, and in that knowing, death has disappeared. Once you know what life is, death exists not. Death exists only because you don't know what life is, because you are as yet unaware of life, its deathlessness. You have not touched life, hence the fear of death exists. Once you have known what life is, in that very moment death has become nonexistential.

"Bring light into the dark room, and the darkness disappears; know life, and death disappears. A person who is really alive simply laughs at the very possibility of death. Death is impossible; death cannot exist in the very nature of things: that which is will remain, has remained always. That which is cannot disappear. But not theoretically; you have to come to this experience existentially.

"Ordinarily this question remains in the mind, whether you ask it or not, the question, 'What happens after death?' Because nothing has happened before death, that's why the question. Because life has not happened even after birth, how can you believe and trust that life is going to happen even after death? It has not happened after birth, how can it happen after death? And one who knows life knows that death is another birth and nothing else. Death is another birth; a new door opens. Death is the other side of the same door you call birth: from one side the door is known as death, from the other side the door is known as birth. Death brings another birth, another beginning, another journey.

"But this will be just speculation to you. It will not mean much unless you know what life is. That's why I say, ask the right question. A wrong question cannot be answered, or it can be answered only in a wrong way."