Death is our ultimate fear for as long as we identify with the body-mind, the separate human-self limited in time and space; many sub-consequent fears come along with it.
And one goes on and on, walking on this planet confused of one’s true identity and belonging…
Who Am I?
What is next?
What shall I do?
Does he love me?
Where do I belong?
Etcetera.
1000 questions fill our unsettled minds, monkey minds enjoying the prance of self-analysis for self-identification, the full-time job of being human.
Shall it take a rest? For just a moment in eternity? But where shall it go? So habituated we are to be ourselves in the meanders of our mind, it seems there is nowhere else to go, here we seem to be bound to the physical and mental realms of our human identity.
In this earthly realm where we found ourselves, night and day sway to infinity; darkness and light co-exist; death and life cycle; fear and love ponder.
In the night, ghosts abound, unseen dangers, all threats to our life, the life of a body separated from the other forms, unceasingly concerned with its survival.
The greatest Saints of timeless wisdom suggested we die before we die, and perhaps see the absolute truth of ourselves. They guided us to let go and surrender for at least a moment, in mediation, in sacred communion, or in trance, to slip in the eternal now where we may realize an absolute truth beyond the relativity of dual consciousness.
To die for a moment resumes in shutting everything up, switching off all lights of excitement, anything that gives us a sense of identity: perceptive senses, thoughts, desires, even feelings and sensations. How shall we when we are so identified with our human self, s/he who thinks and feels?
Ramana Maharshi, a great Indian sage of the twenty century, experienced such death of the ego at 16 years old. A powerful fear of dying suddenly attacked Ramana. Instead of running away, which he thought was not an option, he faced this fear and investigate. Imitating a corpse, Ramana laid down and distanced himself from body and mind, pretending to be as dead as possible. He entered the condition of silent beingness and from thereon knew himself as pure Awareness. All fear of death had vanished once and for all.
The ancient Greeks practiced the art of Incubation to enter the realm of Mysteries. They laid, unmoving like corpses, shutting off all survival instincts. They would then enter the dream world where possibilities appeared in their mind eyes out of the Dark Womb, from which everything is born and where everything returns.
As we open our eyes to the dark where death resides, we may be taken into a field of nothingness, where only awareness remains. Yet before we land awake in the Dark Womb, we shall face our fears, and we shall release the many tears we have held back for they scared us too; we shall abandon our need to control our experience. In total surrender only, shall we realize the eternal Self beyond the human self and its spacesuit, the body. To die before we die is to face all fears, all fears of the dark.
Darkness is potent as the night, indestructible like the depth of the ocean. Darkness has its place on the terrestrial plane of existence, only fears make it bad. As we entertain wisdom, we shall cultivate the courage to look into the dark, where fear has paralyzed us and kept us suffocating in the cage of ego survival.
Ascension is the transcendence of the human vessel; the actualization of the True Self; the realization that the body is in the Self, the mind is in the Self, the Heart is in the Self. The heart is nonetheless a portal to the Self.
The Saint knows she is not in the world,
but the world is within her.
