DYING TO LIVE
Death. The one certainty in life. The last great adventure. What is it? What happens? What dies? Is it complete extinction of everything, or does something survive the death of the body? Is it something to fear? Is it something to enjoy? Can you prepare for it? Can you learn to go through the process of death while still in bodily existence?
We’d started talking about meditation, so let’s take it from there. How do you meditate? Well, it’s all a question of focus, of concentrating the mind. But where, and how? Some folk focus on a candle or a statue, some on their breathing, others on various energy centres within the body. Others try to still their minds absolutely. A complete blank. No thoughts whatsoever. Some add various ascetic regimes to their practice – fasting, staying awake at night, and so on. Some try chanting. These are all valid techniques for achieving particular goals. But not all roads lead to Rome. Why should they? (Whoever thought they did must have been a disoriented Roman.)
To experience, in meditation, the process of dying, the attention has to be focused in the centre of the forehead, a little above the eyes. Since we take it for granted that the head is the seat of mental activity, it makes sense to try and focus the mind there in meditation. When the attention is fully and completely concentrated at this point in meditation (by repetition of a mantra), we become unaware of the body. All consciousness is withdrawn from the body. Our little being then leaves the body and rises up to higher levels of being or consciousness. Our soul leaves the body through a sort of ‘door’ or ‘gate’ in the forehead, and enters a higher level of consciousness.
Some traditions call these higher levels of being, heavens. Just as this world is a state of mind, a level of consciousness, so too are the heavenly worlds. And that’s the process of death. The focused consciousness rises up from the body and passes through the ‘gates of heaven’, also called the ‘gates of death’.
Naturally, when the body really dies, the kind of place we go to depends very much on the kind of mind we have. It seems reasonable that a loving mind will go somewhere loving. And a mind full of hatred, negativity and material inclinations will end up some place reflecting that. Fair’s fair! As in life, so in death. We go where our mind takes us.
So that’s the start of meditation. To learn to die while living. To pass consciously through the gates of death before the body actually dies. “Die before you die.” But to get such a degree of focus that we can come to understand death is not so easy. It can take a lifetime, because it entails dealing with all the stuff we’ve accumulated in our mind that prevents full concentration. The mind has to be purified of all material and outgoing inclinations, of all thoughts of self, of everything but the One Being. And achieving that is no joke. We have to face our own psychology – to come to know everything that is going on inside our head, much of which is presently unconscious, and awareness of which will probably make us feel uncomfortable.
So meditation involves a great deal more than simply sitting down with your eyes shut, and mentally repeating some verbal formula. It is the primary means of spiritual evolution, of spiritual growth. It is a shedding of all that obscures the light of our inner being. It becomes a way of life that includes the development of inner understanding, as well as learning how to conduct ourselves with grace, kindness, compassion, and love. Everything that goes into the making of an excellent human being, full of all the best human qualities, is to be rediscovered. “Be ye therefore perfect.” We are to learn to live as the spiritual beings we actually are, as sunbeams of the great Sun, drops of the great Ocean. To become continuously aware of the presence of the One Being within and without. And that takes time.
Only when our inner being is purified of all the rubbish does it become still, and capable of passing through the gates of death while still living. Then we can come and go from the body as we please until the time comes for our actual physical death – upon which, we gladly lay down the body, and step out in a higher world.
