If We Die Tomorrow

 

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If We Die Tomorrow

The whole work of a seeker is to attain a divine indifference to the non-essential. We are all caught up in the non-essential, in the mundane, the trivial. For the moment it looks so important, and the next moment it appears as if it had not happened at all.

When one looks back, one is always surprised: the same things that had looked so important, look utterly futile… and one was ready to die for those things! Just some abusive word from somebody, and the mind becomes focussed on it out of all proportion and is ready to kill or to be killed. After a few minutes, when things have cooled down, it looks so stupid. Even to talk about it, even to say – ‘I got so disturbed by it’ looks silly. But almost ninety-nine percent of our whole life consists of such things, hence it is a wastage.

One has to be very alert and aware. One has to save oneself for God. If we lose our energy in just collecting stones on the beach, by the time we come on the treasure we will not have any energy. We remain beggars when there is no treasure, and we will remain beggars when there is every possibility to become an emperor.

One has to be very conscious of what one is doing with one’s energy, of where one is putting it, because once gone it is gone forever. And the time that is passing will not come back; nothing can be recaptured. Once this awareness settles in, a great difference arises.

Just think: if we are going to die tomorrow, then how many things will be important and how many things will be unimportant? It will change our whole outlook. Just a moment before we were thinking of a new house, to start a new relationship, to have one more child, to do this and that. There were a thousand and one plans in the mind, all running around.

The moment we become aware that we are going to die tomorrow, all those thoughts simply disappear; they become irrelevant. Something else, that we were not thinking of at all, becomes relevant: ‘What is death? Am I ready to face it? Have I done anything to go into it silently, lovingly, in a kind of welcome? Am I ready to face my creator?’ Something new becomes important, something that was not at all in the consciousness surfaces and becomes central. All that was in the consciousness and all those desires that were clamouring for our attention are no more relevant – that is just the market noise.

And this is how it is. Tomorrow is not certain: tomorrow may be, may not be. Death is always waiting tomorrow. We can be certain about only one thing, and that is death; all else is uncertain. To become a sadhak means to put things in their right perspective, to bring a balance, to put priorities right.