"All his bones were broken, his skull was broken, his brain had come out of the skull – but on his face there was great peace. She was puzzled. After such a horrible death, how one's face can be peaceful?

"But there is a secret in it worth understanding. When one dies on a deathbed after a prolonged disease, continuously thinking and worrying about death, the face cannot be calm and quiet; the worry, the tension, the clinging to life will be there. But when one dies suddenly, when death comes like a surprise, suddenly the mind stops.

"I have been in many accidents myself and the people who have been with me in those accidents have all experienced that in the moment when the accident is actually happening the mind disappears, because the mind cannot think about it. There is nothing to think about it, there is no way to think about it. The mind stops because the mind can only move in the vicious circle of the known, and the unknown has entered so suddenly that the mind is absolutely incapable of figuring it out, what is happening. In a deep shock the mind stops; for a moment there is a glimpse of the no-mind.

"Sanjay Gandhi died in a better death than millions of people who die in their beds after a long, long disease, because they cannot use the opportunity of death. He may not have experienced meditation while he was alive, but he must have tasted just a drop of the nectar of meditation while he was dying. Death came with such immediacy, giving no time for the mind to think about it. Such a death is a beautiful death.

"Many questions have been asked to me for the past week, since he died. I had not answered them for the simple reason because people who have not meditated, people who have not been here, who have not been my sannyasins will not be able to understand what I am saying.

"Vinoba Bhave said on Sanjay Gandhi's death that he died an immature death. That is absolutely wrong. He was far more mature than Morarji Desai. Chronologically he was very young, only thirty-three, but chronological age is not the real age."