Mystery of Death

Today is a very special day, I have lost count of dates, but I remember its October of 2007. I have come face to face with death that too, death of different natures within last one year. We always believe that death is an event which happens with everybody and every living creature goes through it and it is inevitable… but after my experiences I differ from it… the real death is a very different phenomenon, and only the most fortunate ones get the chance to go thru this… and even if all the living creatures who go thru this, only a few knows actually what has happened. And the one who goes thru this experience and witness this self experience, they never die… Death never happens to them.

Of all the living creatures, humans have been the most fascinated about death and I would say the most inquisitive as well. Almost all the religions have talked about death but only a few traditions have actually worked on the event called Death. Buddhist are one of the most pioneering people who worked and experimented so much with death… there is numerous techniques like Bardo et all which Buddhist still experiment… while some one is dying or already dead.

I have been to hindu’s cremation ground many a times and have attended cremation of some of my very close loved ones… I have also witnessed my loved ones dying in front of me… almost like in my arms. And I always associated death with the body, like an end of a world, of an independent universe of a human being. But let me tell you, death is much more beyond this… much vaster, much more experiential… and unless it happens to you, you can’t even know what it is like.

Most of us have been scared of death by our society, by religion, by our loved ones and most of all by our own desires and ego… but I tell you, it is the most heavenly experience you can ever have, It is so contradictory. People say that one can never experience death coz at that time, most of you go into death in the sleeping or dreaming state. Very few have ever experienced getting into death in a wakeful state.

In my experience, death is just not a single phenomenon of end of this body and liberation of the soul. Death actually happens at two levels and that’s why I say, only the most fortunate one will ever know the experience of death in the wakeful state and the most ultra fortunate one will ever experience both the kinds of death.

Almost about a year back, it was a cold dark night, I think the month of august/sept of 2006. during mid night, I was lying in my couch and suddenly I observed that my breathing is becoming very fast, very heavy, as if I have ran for hundreds of kms… and when my breathing was at its peak, suddenly it stopped… and stopped completely, not even a slightest movement of air in my lungs. I could feel the emptiness, no movement, silence of my wind pipe and of my lungs… I could also feel the resting of my heart… everything stopped, I actually felt as if the time and space have also stopped… A few feets away I saw from outside the door which opened in the empty space from my balcony, a ray of light coming in with the reflection of all those small particles that we often see in the ray of sunlight, wow the ray was as bright as the first ray of sunlight, but it was really a dark night… slowly I started leaving the body and I starting going towards this bright light. In that movement, I was just floating, a state of complete weightlessness, I went a few feets above my body and got connected with that golden bright light. I saw my body lying there with my closest ones around the body and a strange happiness and peace was even physically visible on my face… I also experienced as if there are a few great masters which are invisibly part of that light, without a shape or a face but I could just feel their blissful presence in that moment, in that light… a few moments up their and slowly I was diverted back to my body and as I went completely in the body, my breathing started once again, but this time with very slow rhythm… I realized that I’m still smiling and looking at that golden light, as if communicating “Hey I have found it, realized it, the source of my origin… come back soon and let me be one with the source again”…

That day I realized why we humans are so much in pain. We are in pain almost all the time coz of our attachments, fear, possessions, jealousies, desires, anger and all. But actually we are in pain for an entirely different reason. And that reason is, our inner being, our true core always wants to connect back to the source and it is this longing for connecting and merging with the source which is the cause of all pains… on the periphery we might give any reason for our pain, our ego anything… but it’s the longing to be merged with our source that is causing a constant dis-content, a constant discomfort in all of us. Naming this eternal discontent is not going to help… only a reunion with the source will solve all the human miseries…

But apart from this gross body death, it happens at yet another level as well.

We come to this life and make some temporary bondings and attachments here… in the process we start living thru these attachments and bondings. We generally call these bondings as our love relations, be it with our spouses, family, friends or any body… eventually we all forget the impermanence of every thing, including our relations, as explained by Buddha as the foremost reason for our sufferings. When we live these relationships, we create a new self image of ours, or shall I say that we create a new SELF, a new entity, a new personality, almost like a new living being. When these relations goes awry, this new SELF of ours starts suffering… some of our relations are more treasured to us then even our gross life… these are the relations which have the power and depth to give us the experience of life and death. The 2nd type of death that I’m referring to is the death of this SELF, whose existence depends upon the existence of these relations. And if these relationships go astray, the self starts getting pained, and this pain if goes beyond its limit, can cause the death of this illusionary self. But even this death can be experienced only if you try to witness this extreme pain of relations without getting too involved with it. The beauty of this death is, it’s not the death of gross body, but in most cases, it is more painful then the gross body death. As I shared earlier, in most of the gross body death cases one enters death in a state of sleep or dream. But in the case of death of this illusionary self, one dies in full awareness (coz otherwise, one would not even know that the illusionary self is dead with this pain)… so that’s why I say, this death is even more subtle and more awakening then the gross body death. Coz it has the power and the potential to shake you, to awaken you and to show you the real truth or atleast the path to TRUTH.

Love to all sentient beings…