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Why did you frighten my servant needlessly? If there was any message to be delivered, you should have brought it to me."
"I did not mean to frighten him," said Death; "it was a surprise to me when my hand reached out on its own and placed itself on his shoulder. I wondered how he came to be strolling around here, when my appointment with him this evening is in Samarra, which is far away. It was my own surprise that placed my hand on his shoulder."
The master laughed again. "But why do you laugh?" asked Death.
"When he asked me for my horse this morning, then too I laughed," replied the master, "and I felt sorry for him. I also felt that he must reach Samarra before nightfall, and walking all the way would wear him out, so I gave him my horse thinking that if he is going to Samarra his death is predestined there."
Run anywhere you like, but even if your horse is the fastest -- there is no escape. All the alchemists passed away. Many claimed to have discovered nectar, but none of them is alive; only their stories live on. Now scientists are repeating the same folly. What we know as chemistry also derives from alchemy, and it was the search for nectar that led eventually to the discovery of oxygen, hydrogen and so on in chemistry. Now, once again, science is proclaiming that something has to be done so that man can be saved from death; and scientists claim that something can be done. This belief that man can overcome death has prevailed since the beginning of time.
And certainly something can be done, but that has nothing to do with a laboratory; it is something that happens in the inner layers of one's being. As long as my own will remains, as long as I am there, death will surely be there. Only on the day when I am not will death cease to be, because the whole never dies; the vast existence never perishes. Waves come and go, but the ocean remains. As long as I am a wave I am going to die; once I am the ocean there is no way to die.
In this sutra, Rama symbolizes this vast ocean. It has no relation with the Hindu or the Christian or the Mohammedan. For Hindus, Rama is a very sweet word indicative of the universal reality.
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