Death

This page was last updated on 12/20/22.

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

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

There is no universe without You. There is nothing without You. In no thing You are.

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

Sri Krishna said:
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.
~ Bhagavad Gita

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.

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

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.