"The capacity to live, the capacity to live at the maximum, comes only when you are ready to die, and ready to die at the maximum. It is always proportionate. If you live in a lukewarm way you will die in a lukewarm way. If you live intensely, totally, dangerously, you will also die in a deep orgasm.

"Death is the crescendo. Life comes to its peak in death. The orgasm that you know through love is nothing compared to the orgasm that death makes available. All the joys of life simply are pale compared to the joy that death brings.

"What exactly is death? Death is the disappearance of a false entity in you: the ego. Death also happens in love, on a smaller scale, in a partial way; hence, the beauty of love. For a moment you die, for a moment you disappear, for a moment you are no more, and the whole possesses you. You disappear as a part; you become rhythmic with the whole. You don't exist as a ripple in the ocean; you exist as the ocean itself.

"That's why all orgasmic experiences are oceanic experiences. The same happens in deep sleep; the ego disappears, the mind functions no more, you relapse into the original, the joy. But these are nothing compared to death. These are partial things. Sleep is a very tiny death, each morning you will be awake again. Still, if you have slept deeply, the joy lingers on the whole day, a certain quality of tranquility continues deep in your heart. You live differently that day when you have slept well. If you have not been able to sleep well, the day is disturbed. You feel annoyed, irritated, for no reason at all. Small things become great disturbances. You are angry, not at anybody in particular, you are simply angry. Your energy is not at home, it is distracted. You feel uprooted.

"Death is a great sleep. The whole turmoil of life – seventy, eighty or ninety years' turmoil – and all the miseries of life and all the excitements and the distractions and the anxieties, simply disappear, are no longer relevant. You fall back into the original unity of existence."