Death - Some Thoughts

Some months ago, a dear friend of mine got afflicted by a rather deadly disease. When the disease was discovered, the friend suffered a huge shock. But, she has been quick to recover. She is resilient and, in her own words, always looks forward even in the worst of circumstances. Of course, she has turned contemplative.

Recently, she shared, “At this juncture in life when it may be the beginning of the end, I need to cleanse my mind totally so that there are no shades of grey in the path ahead. I wish to walk on a path full of sunshine, green grass and calm streams and peacefully walk beyond the horizon leaving joy for everybody behind.”

I was extremely touched by the above words and the feelings behind them. I found her intention to accept the present and to "cleanse" her mind totally "so that there are no shades of grey in the path ahead" not just laudable but also insightful.

Ordinary mortals, who have not done any contemplation, fear death as "untoward". The awakened ones, however, know that life and death are two sides of the same coin and that death is happening all the time within the body and the mind - old cells are dying and new cells are being born; old ideas are being shed and new ones are being embraced. In this way, death is integral to life.

Meditation is death. We begin with a body and mind, identified with certain roles etc. As we go within, we start losing our limited identities of who we think we are. In the state of inner absorption, we are devoid of all identities. To put it bluntly, in the state of meditation, when the mind has been stilled, in a practical sense we are no more – we are just dead.

Yet, it is our experience that in reality there is no death. We always come out of meditation back to the waking state and regain all the identities that we had kept aside. This process can be likened to our clothese. We put them aside, when we go to have a bath. Afterwards, we again put them on.

Death, which happens in meditation, holds the secret of eternal life. The more we are soaked in the experience of inner absorption the more we begin to understand ourselves as points of awareness travelling through space and time, taking on myriad identities through millions of life forms, yet not being any of those identities.

Gradually, a person can strengthen his practice of awareness to an extent that he is established in pure unattached awareness all the time. Then he has no death. Of course, the physical form will wither away one day. The body will fall when the time comes. But, such a person enters death with full awareness and wherever he goes he remembers where he has come from.

Generally, we do not remember where we have come from. Hence, we think of this body as our true and only abode. If we knew, there would be little attachment to the body. And, when the time to bid good bye to this life comes, we can easily transit from this body into the unknown spheres of life.

Bhagwad Gita, the Lord says, "When it is night, the Yogi is awake." This mystical statement points to the fact that when the world sleeps, the Yogi (though apparently resting on his bed) is awake and aware of the Self. Living in the awareness of the Self is living in eternal life. No wonder, Jesus, the Saint of saints, who put himself on the crucifix for the love of man, had promised to his followers that he had come to give them eternal life (a life of awareness).

A great seer, Mr Soli Tavaria, once explained to me that to test his disciples depth of awareness, Jesus took to them to a mountain one night and asked them to keep "watch". As his followers were keeping “watch”, Jesus kept returning to the mountain again and again. He found that they were asleep (with no awareness). It was then that he expressed his disappointment and proclaimed that soon one person would betray Him. From this point He engineered His own crucifixion. Christianity appears to have lost sight of this great message of Jesus about eternal life - a life of awareness of the Self.

In Kathopanishad there is this beautiful incident. Nachiketa, the young seeker, goes to Yamaraj (the Lord of death) to seek the key to eternal life. Who else can be a better teacher than Yamaraj in this regard? Yet when Nachiketa reaches Yama's abode, he is told by Yami (Yama's wife) that Yamaraj is not there.

This is no coincidence. It happens to all the time. When we consciously enter death (as we do by going deep within our consciousness in meditation) we make this startling discovery. Death does not exist. We are essentially pure energy - full of charm, grace, light and love. Nothing else exists.

So, what this friend of mine seeks is a journey of merging into the eternal. Whether the body exists or not or how long will the body exist - these questions are immaterial. What is material is that there is light and there is love. As loving fellow travellers and co-seekers, we are always going to be there with persons like her in thought and intention. Having someone like her in our midst is a great blessing for which we have to be grateful to the divine.