| The death of yesterday is the death all that one has accumulated psychologically, to die to everything inwardly. After all, when death comes, when the organism comes to an end, through usage, disease or accident, when that comes, that is what’s going to happen. You are going to leave your family, all that you possess, your values, your memories, the nation, the guru, your leaders, the books that you have learned from, the books that you wanted to write and have not written, the paintings, the remembrances both pleasurable and the painful – all that. All that is ‘yesterday.’ Wanting to do in the future what you have not done in the past is still the past. Die to all that so that your mind is completely new, fresh, innocent. You may say it’s impossible. When you say it’s impossible, you then begin to invent theories: life after death, a resurrection, reincarnation. Because you say it’s impossible to die to everything in health, in beauty, in life, you are afraid of death. Therefore, fearing, you must have hope. So you believe in reincarnation, that you will be reborn next life better. But the ‘better’ has a sting behind it. To be better next life, I must be the best now – I must behave completely righteously, with great beauty. I mustn’t hate anybody. There must be no anxiety. I mustn’t hurt another. But you don’t live that way. On the contrary, those who believe are very violent. So their belief is as worthless as the dead yesterdays. From Talk to Young People 3, University of California Santa Cruz, 19 February 1969 Read more | 