Jiddu Krishnamurti : Death & Reincarnation -- Rare Talks

" So what is it that dies? And what is it I am frightened of, one is frightened of? You follow? What is it one is frightened of in death? Losing the known? Losing my wife? Losing my house? Losing all the things I have acquired? Losing this content of consciousness? You follow? So, can the content of consciousness be totally emptied? "

" You see one of the factors in death is the mind is so frightened. We are so frightened of that very word and nobody talks about it. I mean it isn't a daily conversation. It is something to be avoided, something that is inevitable, for god's sake keep it as far away as possible.

We even paint corpses to make them look as if they are not dead.

That's the most absurd thing. Now what we are discussing, sir, is, isn't it, the understanding of death, its relation to living and this thing called love. One cannot possibly understand the immensity, and it is immense, this thing called death, unless there is a real freedom from fear. That's why we talked sometime ago about the problem of fear. Without really freeing the mind, unless the mind frees itself from fear there is no possibility of understanding the extraordinary beauty, strength and the vitality of death..."

" The ancient Egyptians, the pharaohs and all the first dynasty till the eighteenth and so on, they prepared for death. They said we will cross that river with all our goods, with all our chariots, with all our belongings, with all our property; and therefore their caves, their tombs were filled with all the things of their daily life, corn, you know all that. So living was only a means to an ending, dying. That's one way of looking at it.

The other is reincarnation, which is the Indian, Asiatic outlook. And there is this whole idea of resurrection, of the Christians. Reborn, carried, by the Gabriel Angel, and all that, to heaven and you will be rewarded.

Now, what is the fact? These are all theories, suppositions, beliefs and non-facts. I mean, supposed to be born Jesus comes out of the grave, resurrected physically.

That is just a belief. There were no cameras there, there were no ten people to say, yes I saw it. It is only somebody imagined. We will go into that a little bit a little later.

So there is this living and preparing for death as the ancient Egyptians did. Then there is the reincarnation. Then there is resurrection. Now, if one isn't frightened - you follow, sir - deeply, then what is death? What is it that dies, apart from the organism? The organism may continue if you look after it very carefully for eighty or ninety, or one hundred years. If you have no disease, if you have no accidents, if there is a way of living sanely, healthily, perhaps you will last one hundred years or 110 years. And then what? You follow, sir? You will live one hundred years, for what! For this kind of life? - fighting, quarrelling, bickering, bitterness, anger, jealousy, futility, a meaningless existence. It is a meaningless existence as we are living now..."