In this world we learn to know ourselves through Death. We learn to know the Divine Within through Death.
This may sound ghoulish or dark to the western mind, where focus is always put onto ‘light and love’ and ‘life’ and the positive through a denial of Death. The devotees of Kali spend their nights in graves and graveyards; saddhus cover themselves in ash and declare themselves as dead.
Samadhi, the trance state of at-one-ment means death.
Through death we learn that we are infinite consciousness; through death we learn that there is no separation; through death we learn that this world is only a story; through death we learn that is all is forgiven and always has been.
All fear is ultimately the fear of death. The body fears physical death and the mind fears emotional death and death of its identity and the dying to itself. And so it dies over and over without truly dying. It clings onto the story with great passion and investment; it holds onto opinions and ideas; it defends against attack on its personal value and suffering starts.
The most powerful symbol in the christian world is the sign of death : a crucified Jesus. And daily the mind crucifies itself without dying and thus prolongs the suffering.
Death leads to rebirth; from the cross rises an enlightened
Jesus; the phoenix rises from the ashes.
The human mind and heart has the power and ability to liberate itself from suffering. It has the freedom of choice. You may not be able to choose the drama that you were born into, but you have the power to interpret the story differently and to ultimately drop the story, but in order to do this, the one who is telling the story, has to die.
Every time you walk away from your need for justice; every time you walk away from your need to assert yourself, a part of your identity dies. Every time you step into meditation and you leave behind the story, you go through a small death.
The human mind cloaks and hides the Divine Within. When the personal self surrenders to the Divine in the form of the guru or the Ishta Devata, and when the personal self surrenders to the Fire of Shakty, liberation follows. But this demands death. Death of the self that you believe to be the sum total of who you are; death of your life as you know it; death of your happiness and comfort zones!
An orgasm is called a small death as you are so absorbed in an experience in your physical body, that you surrender and let go of everything that you are holding onto. Life introduces on a very physical level, this intense sensation through a ‘death’.
Death faces us wherever we look : in time, seasons, food, the dying of the breath, aging, night and day and our own mortality.
It is said that death is the great leveler of society and it does not spare anyone. Death ends all suffering in every moment. It is only death of the mind that allows the peace that surpasseth all understanding.
in prema
