Last night
as I navigated
multiple dimensions of existence in my sleep and in my dream world,
escaping from this dream world. Somehow.
A deeper intelligence told me that I should uh for now wind up
the series on the mystery of death because we've covered a lot of ground.
And even if you've been watching the series sequentially,
there's a lot to digest.
And so for now this will be my
last post on the mystery of death. And I would just
basically read a few principles and then
conclude with the wonderful experience that we
call both life and death from the Great Seer Rabindranath Tagore.
So first a few summary points. Every life is framed by two mysteries.
Only one of them, birth, is considered a miracle.
If you are a religious person,
birth brings a new soul into the world from its home with God.
If you're not.
The miracle is that a single fertilized egg
in a mother's womb can divide and subdivide again
and again, but a mere 50 times total
to produce a complete new person.
A blob of protein and water
somehow knows how to shape itself into ice, hand, skin and brain,
whatever
it is that occurs the death for most people, I believe now from my own experience
that it deserves to be called a miracle.
And that miracle is that the real value does not die.
Uh here's something that the great Persian poet
Rumi says that is our wedding with eternity,
Ludwig Wittgenstein wrote for life in the present, there is no death.
Death is not an event in life. It is not a fact in the world.
So here's what I think
death accomplishes
and these are miraculous
events.
It replaces time with timelessness.
It stretches the boundaries of space to infinity.
It reveals the source of all life, the source of all existence.
It brings a new way of knowing that lies beyond the reach of the five senses.
So it's also transcendence.
It reveals the underlying intelligence that organizes and sustains creation
whatever you want to call that the source God Allah Brahman
itself.
In other words, that is a fulfillment of our purpose here on earth.
And what we call everyday reality, as I've said,
is a virtual reality.
The basis for virtual reality is complex,
but in simplest terms in non physical region
exists prior to birth
of the physical universe.
And this
non physical region is not location in spacetime, its kind of pure geometry,
this region is void, but it's far from empty,
just as when you are dozing on the couch and my mind is empty, but can awaken instantly
to an infinite choice of thoughts. So, the virtual realm
fundamental reality spaceless, timeless, irreducible
without form,
borderless, infinite
and
holo-movement, a kind of a holo-movement.
So,
so too you can awaken instantly
from the deeper domain of non locality.
In fact, that's where all these experiences being processed right now,
including the experience
of the conditioned mind. Creation leaps from
the void to complete fullness just as eternity
leads from timelessness into the fullness of time.
So of course, I grew up in India where you know, the cultural tradition of
of basic hindu thought was replete with gods and goddesses.
There were innumerable locas or non physical worlds.
There was also a hierarchy of angels, angels and demons. Um
very similar to anything that you might read in Dante
in the face of such bewildering university. The Rishis, the great stages
didn't offer one god.
They offered one reality that encompassed every possible
experience both in this life and beyond.
They posited that every level of existence was actually a state of awareness.
And all these gods and goddesses and archetypal
forms were also forms that are generated in the same
way as these forms are generated with this everyday reality.
The lucid dream, the vivid now.
Other words, all worlds
including this one
are formed in awareness.
Therefore, as creators of these worlds, we can experience them and influence them
at this is the essence
of the one reality.
What the Rishis were proposing was more like a philosophy.
It was an invitation to participate. What the Rishis was proposing
was more than a philosophy.
No, not more like a philosophy,
more than a philosophy and experience an invitation to participate
in an endless experiment, Kind of timeless experiment
that you can keep experimenting until the end of time
and
realize that time itself is a modified
form of timelessness.
The purpose of the experiment was to test the
truth of reality by exploring it within itself.
Okay,
so again, the Rishis believed that knowledge wasn't external to the north,
but woven inside consciousness.
Soul and Atman are a spark of the divine.
The invisible component that brings God's presence
presence into flesh and blood. The biggest difference between them
in between them is that in the non dual traditions, the soul isn't separate from God.
There is unity between the human and the divine awareness of this. Unity
is the necessary step that makes reality
dawn
in our experience
something eternal, boundless unchanging cannot be personal
out of habit. We say my soul, but that's misleading.
The soul doesn't belong to me the way my house does
as a possession or as my Children do as an extension of my flesh and blood.
It doesn't belong to me like my personality or my memories
and it is in fact the source of all
the above
dying isn't more real than any other moment, but it is
in a way
more definitive, no matter how rich and gifted you are, Death is the great equalizer.
So, you know, at this point,
I think I will conclude the series from three of my favorite poems
from Rabindranath Tagore. I grew up with me. So you can see that I was familiar
with these ideas, both as metaphor and as experience
and right now I'm in the midst of exploring
my own
journey of death
and I do this through various practices at night
before I sleep and I'll share them with you.
But these three poems actually
summarize
our fear
from Tagore.
When I go from Hence, let This be my parting word.
That what I have seen is unsurpassable.
I have tasted of the hidden honey of this lotus that expands on the ocean of light.
And so I am blessed that this be my parting word
in this playhouse of infinite forms. I've had my play and here
have I caught sight of that which is formless,
my whole body and my limbs have thrilled with this touch. Who is beyond touch.
And if the end comes here, let it come, let this be my parting word.
And then the second poem that I wanted to read today. And uh it is
um
it is here: On the day when Death will knock at your door. What will you offer to him?
Oh! I will set before my guest
the full vessel of my life.
I will never let him go with empty hands.
All the sweet vintage of all my autumn days and summer nights,
all the earnings and gleanings of my busy life.
Will I place before him at the close of my days
when Death
will come
to my door
Last poem today,
And then we'll conclude the series. For now
I dive into the depths
of the ocean of forms, hoping to gain the perfect pearl of the Formless
No more. Sailing from harbor to harbor with this. My weather beaten boat.
The days are long when my sport
was to be tossed on waves.
And now I'm eager to die
into the deathless
into the audience hall by the fathomless abyss
where swells up the music of tuneless strings.
I shall take this harp of my life.
I shall tune into the notes of eternity,
of forever,
when and when it has sobbed out its last utterance.
I will lay down my heart
at the feet
of the timeless,
silent being Divine
in me, that is the divine in you. Okay, my friend so much now and onto something else,
always on to something else.