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him. When he is in his senses he will understand. How can a straw help him? But he consoles himself. People are clinging to straws and life is slipping out of their hands, they are drowning.
Every moment you are going deeper and deeper into the water and soon death will take over. Before death takes over, the most important thing is to experience your aloneness, because the person who knows his aloneness becomes immortal, death cannot destroy him. Knowing his aloneness he has already lived his death -- now what can death do to him? He has experienced it.
Meditation is the experiences the conscious, deliberate experience of death. And the person who can experience death consciously suddenly becomes aware that death has happened but his consciousness is still there; he is absolutely alone, the whole world has disappeared, but he is still there.
And when one knows this crystal clear consciousness there is a self-evident certainty that even death will not be able to touch it. The body will be taken, the mind will be taken, the heart will be taken, everything will disappear but your innermost core, your real essence will survive -- and that's what you are. Hence the fear of death disappears. But only a meditator can go beyond the fear, can go beyond death.
So to experience meditation these three qualities are needed. One has to be courageous -- it is facing death. Courage can be defined as encountering death deliberately, knowingly risking.
Secondly, a certain fearlessness is needed. The fearful people always cling to things, to money, to power, to people, to family, tradition, church -- anything will do but they cling. And they go on inventing new ways to cling. Sometimes there are very stupid kinds of things to cling to, but the function is the same. Somebody goes on collecting postal stamps and he clings to them; that is his treasure. Now, it seems to be so foolish but it keeps his mind occupied. As if life is not enough, people invent the Rotary Club, the Lions Club, and a thousand and one clubs, and they rush from one club to another club, from one restaurant to another restaurant and they go on inventing games, playing cards and
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