Death

This page was last revised on 4/11/24.

You’re dying. You take your last breath. Your heart stops beating. You hear someone say, “He’s dead.” You think to yourself, “holy shit, this is it! I’m dead!” You’re moving down a long dark tunnel. You see a little light ahead. The light grows bigger. It’s comforting in some familiar way. As you move closer to the light you see that there are beings hovering about, departed family and friends, welcoming you home. There’s no turning back this time. You move.. into the light. It’s alive! The light is alive! It’s pure ecstasy! Love and bliss and unity with everything that ever was, is, will be, or can be. You realize that this unity was what you were seeking in a million different unsatisfactory ways while you were alive. How could you have forgotten? You want this ecstasy to last forever. You disappear…. And it does last forever, in a timeless realm, but after a time in another realm, you start to feel a sense of individuality and boundaries separating your consciousness from everything else. You feel a desire to return to the divine unity, and a desire to return to the material world. Your desire to become physically embodied builds and builds, it builds and builds, until you feel emotions, and start having thoughts… and feel physical sensations. You sense a rhythm, the sound of your mother’s heartbeat. You remember it all. This time you won’t forget.
~ David Jay Brown

There is no universe without You. There is nothing without You. In no thing You are. Knowing that no appearance is Real, Don't go toward the light. Go nowhere now here only deep within at the hour of death and all times and not be fooled again. ॐ

Thoughtless awareness in day dream leads to awareness of dreaming in sleep dream leads to thoughtless awareness in sleep dream leads to awareness of being aware in deep sleep. Awareness in deep sleep is only Awareness. Awareness is outside the box. Awareness doesn't sleep, Awareness doesn't dream and Awareness doesn't die.

As it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.  ~ Glory Be!

Death is not something prolonged; it comes immediately, and it is over. To die to the past immediately requires a great deal of attention, a great deal of inquiry, a great deal of inward apprehension. Not apprehension in the sense fear, but inward awareness. Then out of that, there is a different kind of life altogether. Therefore there is no fear of death because you are dying every day to everything you have gathered. So your mind becomes extraordinarily alert, fresh, young and – if I may use that word which is so laden – innocent. It is only the innocent mind that can live, not that jaded mind.
~ Jiddu Krishnamurti from a conversation with Donald Ingram Smith, New Delhi, 24 December 1966

At the hour of death, when a man leaves his body, he must depart with his consciousness absorbed in Me. Then he will be united with Me. Be certain of that. Whatever a man remembers at the last, when he is leaving the body, will be realized by him in the hereafter; because that will be what his mind has most constantly dwelt on, during this life. Therefore you must remember Me at all times, and do your duty. If your mind and heart are set upon Me constantly, you will come to Me. Never doubt this. Make a habit of practicing meditation, and do not let your mind be distracted. In this way you will come finally to the Lord, Who is the light-giver, the highest of the high.
~ Bhagavad Gita 8:5-10

In the Bhagavad Gita, Sri Krishna says:
Remembering Me at the time of death, close down the doors of the senses and place the mind in the heart.Then, while absorbed in meditation, focus all energy upwards to the head, repeating in this state the divine name, the syllable AUM that represents the changeless Brahman. You will go forth from the body & attain the supreme goal.

Death Is the Most Misunderstood Phenomenon
~ Osho, Zarathustra: A God That Can Dance, Talk #16

Death is the most misunderstood phenomenon. People have thought of death as the end of life. That is the first, basic misunderstanding.

Death is not the end, but the beginning of a new life. Yes, it is an end of something that is already dead. It is also a crescendo of what we call life, although very few know what life is. They live, but they live in such ignorance that they never encounter their own life. And it is impossible for these people to know their own death, because death is the ultimate experience of this life, and the beginning experience of another. Death is the door between two lives; one is left behind, one is waiting ahead.

There is nothing ugly about death; but man, out of his fear, has made even the word death ugly and unutterable. People don’t like to talk about it. They won’t even listen to the word death.

The fear has reasons. The fear arises because it is always somebody else who dies. You always see death from the outside, and death is an experience of the innermost being. It is just like watching love from the outside. You may watch for years, but you will not come to know anything of what love is. You may come to know the manifestations of love, but not love itself. We know the same about death. Just the manifestations on the surface – the breathing has stopped, the heart has stopped, the man as he used to talk and walk is no more there: just a corpse is lying there instead of a living body.

These are only outer symptoms. Death is the transfer of the soul from one body to another body, or in cases when a man is fully awakened, from one body to the body of the whole universe. It is a great journey, but you cannot know it from the outside. From outside, only symptoms are available; and those symptoms have made people afraid.

Those who have known death from inside lose all fear of death.

Everyone has to die; so, die as your true nature
~ Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

Everyone has to die; so, die as your true nature. Why die as a body? Never forget your true nature. It may not be acceptable to many, but it is a fact... this body has nothing to do with you. If you must have an ambition have the highest, so that at least while dying, you will be the Absolute. Decide that now firmly, with certainty and conviction. Giving up the body is a great festival.

Death is generally considered to be a traumatic experience, but understand what happens. That which has been born, the knowledge 'I am' which is the same everywhere, but which has gotten itself limited by the body, again becomes unlimited. A speck of consciousness is given up. Why the fear? How has this fear of death crept in? That which cannot die somehow became convinced that it was going to die. It is based on the concept that one is an individual who is born... all the fear arises from mere words told to you by someone. This is the bondage. It is like someone gives you a drink and then tells you, "I have put poison in that drink, and in six months you will die.? Immediately you become very frightened because you think that you will die. But then you meet a friend and he tells you not to worry. He says, "Here, drink this and there will be no death for you. First there is one concept which fills you full of fright, and then there is another concept which negates the first concept. Like this you get involved with the flow of maya and there are concepts, ideas, creations... pain alternates with pleasure... but all of it is just ignorance and misery. It is only when you search for your Self that you become aware that it is all a fraud.

Be still in your beingness. Then even it will disappear and you will merge in Truth. All that needs to be done is to find out your real source and take up headquarters there. From the Absolute standpoint, your beingness is only ignorance. Nothing comes and nothing goes; it is a mirage. All there is is the Absolute, all there is is the Truth. The witness of the consciousness never comes into the realm of the consciousness. When you pursue this spiritual path of understanding the Self, all your desires just drop off... even the primary desire... to be. When you stay put in the beingness for some time, that drops off. Then you are in the Absolute... there is no movement for you. You are minding the show. Consciousness extinguishes itself, knowingness disappears, and you, the Absolute remains. That is the moment of death.

Suffering is exclusively the result of attachment or resistance, it is a sign of lacking readiness to go on, to flow with life. In my world, nothing ever goes wrong. It is your restlessness that causes chaos. Love is will, the will to share your happiness with all.

Being happy, making others happy, this is the rhythm of love. If you are angry or in pain, separate yourself from anger and pain and watch them. Externalization is the first step to liberation.

The real does not die, the unreal never lived. Set your mind right and all will be right. When you know that the world is one, that humanity is one, you will act accordingly. But first of all you must attend to the way you feel, think and live. Unless there is order in yourself, there can be no order in the world.

Nothing is done by me, everything just happens. I do not expect, I do not plan, I just watch events happening, knowing them to be unreal.

Everybody dies as he lives. I am not afraid of death, because I am not afraid of life. I live a happy life and shall die a happy death. Misery is to be born, not to die. You do not have any problems, only your body has problems... In your world, nothing stays, in mine nothing changes.

RAMPRASAD
O small self, you are a sparkling fish at play in the ocean of consciousness,and your life is swiftly coming to its end. Death will skim above you and throw its sharp net. You will not be protected by your watery world, for selfish actions have kept you in the shallows.The fisherman’s fatal net will surround you suddenly, Why do you remain so near the surface of relative existence where Death is granted its fishing grounds? Yet there is still time. Leave the dangerous shoreline, mundane mind, and plunge into the silent profundity, the black waters of Mother Kali’s mystery.

Enlightenment Is Aware Death

Ramana Maharshi Enlightenment
towards the end of July, 1896, Madurai, age 16

It was about six weeks before I left Madurai for good that the great change in my life took place. It was quite sudden. I was sitting alone in a room on the first floor of my uncle’s house. I seldom had any sickness and on that day there was nothing wrong with my health, but a sudden violent fear of death overtook me. There was nothing in my state of health to account for it, and I did not try to account for it or to find out whether there was any reason for the fear. I just felt “I am going to die” and began thinking what to do about it. It did not occur to me to consult a doctor or my elders or friends; I felt that I had to solve the problem myself, there and then.

The shock of the fear of death drove my mind inwards and I said to myself mentally, without actually framing the words: “Now death has come; what does it mean? What is it that is dying? “This body dies,” and at once dramatized the occurrence of death. I lay with my limbs stretched out stiff as though rigor mortis had set in and imitated a corpse so as to give greater reality to the enquiry. I held my breath and kept my lips tightly closed so that no sound could escape, so that neither the word “I” nor any other word could be uttered.

“Well then,” I said to myself, “this body is dead. It will be carried stiff to the burning ground and there burnt and reduced to ashes. But with the death of this body am I dead? Is the body I? It is silent and inert but I feel the full force of my personality and even the voice of the “I” within me, apart from it. So I am Spirit transcending the body. The body dies but the Spirit that transcends it cannot be touched by death. That means that I am a deathless Spirit.”

All this was not dull thought; it flashed through me vividly as living truth which I perceived directly, almost without thought-process. “I” was something very real, the only real thing about my present state, and all the conscious activity connected with my body was centered on that “I”.

From that moment onwards the “I” or Self focussed attention on itself by a powerful fascination. Fear or death had vanished once and for all. Absorption in the Self continued unbroken from that time on. Other thoughts might come and go like the various notes of music, but the “I” continued like the fundamental sruti note that underlies and blends with all the other notes. Whether the body was engaged in talking, reading or anything else, I was still centered on “I”.

Osho Enlightenment March 21, 1953, Jabalpur, age 21
~ Discipline of Transcendence, V2,11

Just before twenty-first March, 1953, seven days before, I stopped working on myself. A moment comes when you see the whole futility of effort. You have done all that you can do and nothing is happening. You have done all that is humanly possible. Then what else can you do? In sheer helplessness one drops all search.

And the day the search stopped, the day I was not seeking for something, the day I was not expecting something to happen, it started happening. A new energy arose -- out of nowhere. It was not coming from any source. It was coming from nowhere and everywhere. It was in the trees and in the rocks and the sky and the sun and the air -- it was everywhere. And I was seeking so hard, and I was thinking it is very far away. And it was so near and so close.

Just because I was seeking I had become incapable of seeing the near. Seeking is always for the far, seeking is always for the distant -- and it was not distant. I had become far-sighted, I had lost the near-sightedness. The eyes had become focussed on the far away, the horizon, and they had lost the quality to see that which is just close, surrounding you.

The day effort ceased, I also ceased. Because you cannot exist without effort, and you cannot exist without desire, and you cannot exist without striving. The day the desire stopped, the day I looked and realized into it, it simply was futile. I was helpless and hopeless. But that very moment something started happening. The same started happening for which for many lives I was working and it was not happening.

The day I stopped seeking... and it is not right to say that I stopped seeking, better will be to say the day seeking stopped. Let me repeat it: the better way to say it is the day the seeking stopped. Because if I stop it then I am there again. Now stopping becomes my

You cannot stop desire; you can only understand it. In the very understanding is the stopping of it. Remember, nobody can stop desiring, and the reality happens only when desire stops.

The desire has to be understood. You can understand it, you can just see the futility of it. A direct perception is needed, an immediate penetration is needed. Look into desire, just see what it is, and you will see the falsity of it, and you will see it is non-existential. And desire drops and something drops simultaneously within you.

Desire and the ego exist in cooperation, they coordinate. The ego cannot exist without desire, the desire cannot exist without the ego. Desire is projected ego, ego is introjected desire. They are together, two aspects of one phenomenon.

The day desiring stopped, I felt very hopeless and helpless. No hope because no future. Nothing to hope because all hoping has proved futile, it leads nowhere. You go in rounds. It goes on dangling in front of you, it goes on creating new mirages, it goes on calling you, 'Come on, run fast, you will reach.' But howsoever fast you run you never reach.

That's why Buddha calls it a mirage. It is like the horizon that you see around the earth. It appears but it is not there. If you go it goes on running from you. The faster you run, the faster it moves away. The slower you go, the slower it moves away. But one thing is certain -- the distance between you and the horizon remains absolutely the same. Not even a single inch can you reduce the distance between you and the horizon.

You cannot reduce the distance between you and your hope. Hope is horizon. You try to bridge yourself with the horizon, with the hope, with a projected desire. The desire is a bridge, a dream bridge -- because the horizon exists not, so you cannot make a bridge towards it, you can only dream about the bridge. You cannot be joined with the non-existential.

The day the desire stopped, the day I looked and realized into it, it simply was futile. I was helpless and hopeless. But that very moment something started happening. The same started happening for which for many lives I was working and it was not happening.

In your hopelessness is the only hope, and in your desirelessness is your only fulfillment, and in your tremendous helplessness suddenly the whole existence starts helping you.

It is waiting. When it sees that you are working on your own, it does not interfere. It waits. It can wait infinitely because there is no hurry for it. It is eternity. The moment you are not on your own, the moment you drop, the moment you disappear, the whole existence rushes towards you, enters you. And for the first time things start happening.

Seven days I lived in a very hopeless and helpless state, but at the same time something was arising. When I say hopeless I don't mean what you mean by the word hopeless. I simply mean there was no hope in me. Hope was absent. I am not saying that I was hopeless and sad. I was happy in fact, I was very tranquil, calm and collected and centered. Hopeless, but in a totally new meaning. There was no hope, so how could there be hopelessness. Both had disappeared.

The hopelessness was absolute and total. Hope had disappeared and with it its counterpart, hopelessness, had also disappeared. It was a totally new experience -- of being without hope. It was not a negative state. I have to use words -- but it was not a negative state. It was absolutely positive. It was not just absence, a presence was felt. Something was overflowing in me, overflooding me.

And when I say I was helpless, I don't mean the word in the dictionary-sense. I simply say I was selfless. That's what I mean when I say helpless. I have recognized the fact that I am not, so I cannot depend on myself, so I cannot stand on my own ground -- there was no ground underneath. I was in an abyss... bottomless abyss. But there was no fear because there was nothing to protect. There was no fear because there was nobody to be afraid.

Those seven days were of tremendous transformation, total transformation. And the last day the presence of a totally new energy, a new light and new delight, became so intense that it was almost unbearable -- as if I was exploding, as if I was going mad with blissfulness. The new generation in the West has the right word for it -- I was blissed out, stoned.

It was impossible to make any sense out of it, what was happening. It was a very non-sense world -- difficult to figure it out, difficult to manage in categories, difficult to use words, languages, explanations. All scriptures appeared dead and all the words that have been used for this experience looked very pale, anaemic. This was so alive. It was like a tidal wave of bliss.

The whole day was strange, stunning, and it was a shattering experience. The past was disappearing, as if it had never belonged to me, as if I had read about it somewhere, as if I had dreamed about it, as if it was somebody else's story I have heard and somebody told it to me. I was becoming loose from my past, I was being uprooted from my history, I was losing my autobiography. I was becoming a non-being, what Buddha calls anatta. Boundaries were disappearing, distinctions were disappearing.

Mind was disappearing; it was millions of miles away. It was difficult to catch hold of it, it was rushing farther and farther away, and there was no urge to keep it close. I was simply indifferent about it all. It was okay. There was no urge to remain continuous with the past.

By the evening it became so difficult to bear it -- it was hurting, it was painful. It was like when a woman goes into labour when a child is to be born, and the woman suffers tremendous pain -- the birth pangs.

I used to go to sleep in those days near about twelve or one in the night, but that day it was impossible to remain awake. My eyes were closing, it was difficult to keep them open. Something was very imminent, something was going to happen. It was difficult to say what it was -- maybe it is going to be my death -- but there was no fear. I was ready for it. Those seven days had been so beautiful that I was ready to die, nothing more was needed. They had been so tremendously blissful, I was so contented, that if death was coming, it was welcome.

But something was going to happen -- something like death, something very drastic, something which will be either a death or a new birth, a crucifixion or a resurrection -- but something of tremendous import was around just by the corner. And it was impossible to keep my eyes open. I was drugged.

I went to sleep near about eight. It was not like sleep. Now I can understand what Patanjali means when he says that sleep and samadhi are similar. Only with one difference -- that in samadhi you are fully awake and asleep also. Asleep and awake together, the whole body relaxed, every cell of the body totally relaxed, all functioning relaxed, and yet a light of awareness burns within you... clear, smokeless. You remain alert and yet relaxed, loose but fully awake.

The body is in the deepest sleep possible and your consciousness is at its peak. The peak of consciousness and the valley of the body meet.

I went to sleep. It was a very strange sleep. The body was asleep, I was awake. It was so strange -- as if one was torn apart into two directions, two dimensions; as if the polarity has become completely focused, as if I was both the polarities together... the positive and negative were meeting, sleep and awareness were meeting, death and life were meeting. That is the moment when you can say the creator and the creation meet.

Near about twelve my eyes suddenly opened -- I had not opened them. The sleep was broken by something else. I felt a great presence around me in the room. It was a very small room. I felt a throbbing life all around me, a great vibration -- almost like a hurricane, a great storm of light, joy, ecstasy. I was drowning in it.

It was so tremendously real that everything became unreal. The walls of the room became unreal, the house became unreal, my own body became unreal. Everything was unreal because now there was for the first time reality.

Eckhart Tölle Enlightenment
1977, Cambridge, age 29

It was in my 29th year I woke up in the middle of the night and this was not uncommon for me waking up in the middle of the night and feeling intensely depressed and in a state of great fear at the same time and that happened again that night and the thought occurred to me I can't live with myself any longer and that thought repeated itself in my mind. I just can't live with myself.

Suddenly I looked at the thought. I kind of stood back from that thought and looked at it and said that's a strange thought I cannot live with myself. Am I one or am I two? This this thought seems to show that there's two people here I and the self that I cannot live with.

What is the self? I felt drawn into a void! as if I were disappearing in it. There was a moment of resistance and I heard something almost like a voice inside me that said resist nothing so I gave up resisting the feeling of disappearing into nothingness and don't remember very much else that night.

I didn’t know at the time that what really happened was the mind-made self, with its heaviness, its problems, that lives between the unsatisfying past and the fearful future, collapsed. It dissolved. The continuous mental noise I now call the compulsive and largely useless thinking that I previously continuously engaged in came to an end.

The next morning I woke up and everything was so peaceful. The peace was there because there was no self. Just a sense of presence or beingness, just observing and watching.

The peace remains because it is continuously nurtured by long gaps and intervals of no thought and no longer covered up by the anxiety of a hyperactive mind.