Reflections on Life and Death

On the Brink of Death would have been totally transformed. Whenever anyone stands near death, the dazzling delights of the world, which he was so taken up with that he had no time for anything else, appear to him as even more unreal than a heap of ashes. Behind him is a world that he has lost and has left forever, while in front of him is a world for which he has made no preparations at all. There is absolutely no use remembering death only when it is about to overtake you. The time for remembering death is well before this, when you are capable of doing evil and seeking to legitimize it as good. But people are not willing to think about death then. At that time, they will do everything to satisfy their egos. But when they lose all their strength and when they realize that they are in the grips of the unrelenting Angel of Death, they finally remember their mistakes. But the time for such remembering is not then. Rather, it was when they were making those mistakes and when they were not ready to listen to anyone’s counsel.

On the Brink of Death O n the 3rd of June 1979, I was in Meerut, a town in northern India. It was evening, and I was walking on the main market road with a companion. Suddenly, a portion of a building just in front of us exploded and collapsed. Mounds of bricks and stones littered