There's a quote by Eckhart Tolle which I really love. He says, "The secret to life is to die before you die and find out that there is no death." I wish to offer a few words on what I feel is the truth behind this quote.
We live in an environment not very conducive to discussions about death. A brilliant story comes to mind, please allow me to narrate. At a dinner party after every one had had their food and were just sitting around talking, the hostess leaned the conversation towards death and asked her guests what they thought would happen after they died. One by one, everyone started pitching in their opinions - some said that they believed their souls would live on, some believed they'd be reincarnated, some believed that death is just final and there's nothing after that, still others believed they'll get to meet God and finally get some answers on the questions they had all their life, and so on. The hostess noted that a retired army general, who also happened to be very strict and a devoutly religious person, had not said a word. So she poked him asking him his opinion regarding the same. He replied back, in a bit of agitation, "Well, young lady, I'm perfectly sure that I'll get to go to heaven, but I'd really prefer that we do not have such depressing conversations right now."
Let that sink in. Even someone who believes he'll go to heaven feels that conversations about death are depressing. If that isn't typical of how we shush death all around us, I don't know what is.
Well then, what exactly is it about death that we just prefer to shush it. It is going to happen to all of us anyway. There is no coming out of it. As sure as you can be that you were born someday, you can be sure that you'll die someday. So what is the anxiety all about? Why do we feel depressed and morose around these thoughts? I would like to float the idea that it has something to do with the fear of the unknown that our limited self identification mechanism, or in other words our ego, cannot deal with. Let's talk about it.
Everything that lives dies. The leaves on all the trees around you, the trees themselves, all the animals around you, all the humans around you, everything and everyone dies. You may even say that dying is a part of life. And it is, really. Think of life as those beautiful sinusoidal curves we used to draw in our high school mathematics - there can be no curve without both peaks and troughs, every peak signifies that it'll be followed by a trough and every trough signifies that it'll be followed by a peak and this keeps it all going. The trough is as important as the peak; if there was no trough, nothing would ever get done. Peaks and troughs go together, and similarly life and death go together. Now I do not mean to imply that by equating death to a trough I mean that death is bad and life is good. Good and bad are adjectives and we'll give them their due when needed. Right now, let's just talk about 'what is' with as little labelling as possible.
So, if it is so natural to die, what is it about us that makes death so terrifying? You see, our minds are very acutely aware of time. We constantly think about what happened in the past and what might happen in the future. And more often than not, these thoughts govern our actions. What's happening in the present is almost always only a passing moment between the past and the future. And whenever we think about what has happened and what might happen, there is always this mental image of the subject who's acted upon by all this or is doing all this - the 'I'. We have this idea of a distinct entity behind all our thoughts and actions - the thinker behind the thoughts, the experiencer behind the experiences and the feeler behind the feelings. We always talk and feel in a subject-object manner. Sentences like 'I' did this, This happened to 'me', 'I' am this, and so on are very commonplace in our vocabulary. And so, all our thoughts spiral around this one thought - this mental image we have in our minds of 'me'. This mental image is what is referred to by our ego. (I wrote a little piece on this topic a while back, make sure you check it out here: More a verb than a noun). It is this ego that we seemingly try to revolve all our actions and thoughts around. To put in another way, it is this ego that tries to revolve all our actions and thoughts around itself. And that is what makes it so hard to let go.
When you try to envision or think about death, you're clueless because it's completely unknown territory. It's like going to sleep and never waking up again. Try to do it for yourself. If you try to envision your state in going to sleep and never waking up again, you'd realise it's the same state as the state you were in before you were born. It's the trough to the peak of our wave. It's blank, it's empty, it's void. And from this void emerges life. If there was no void, there would be no life. If you've ever seen a buzz saw in action, it always seems like the teeth of the saw are the ones doing all the work. But what is subtle and hence completely ignored is the fact that the teeth wouldn't function or rather wouldn't exist without the valleys between them. And that is how it is with life. Living and dying, being and non-being, existing and not-existing are two sides of the same coin, or rather two poles of a magnet. You cannot have one without the other.
Although going deep into this thought completely can make up for a fantastic meditation, it is completely unknown to our everyday conscious experience nonetheless. And that is scary and uncomfortable for our minds, our egos. Because what really makes us feel uncomfortable about dying? Think about it. One point that really sticks with everyone I have this conversation with, is fear for our loved ones. We think that we feel uncomfortable about dying because we care and hence fear for our loved ones. But if you go deep into this narrative too, you're bound to ask yourself, "Well what did you expect?" Did you really expect that you'll outlast all your loved ones, because that just means that you'd want all your loved ones to die before you die! At any rate, why would you expect something for your loved ones which you want to so desperately avoid for yourself? Or you'd want them to not die at all! Well how exactly would that work? What a bind! I hope you see the circular nature of these thoughts. It well and truly is your ego - all that you call 'me' and 'mine', all that you want to hold on to for eternity - that makes the thought of death uncomfortable and frightening. It's this thought in our head of a constant, well-defined mental picture that we identify with and want to protect at all cost.
So then you ask, what do I do? This is the question that I absolutely love. Because the answer to that question always is, "Stop thinking in terms of the 'I' that does something." And you may let that sink in and then come back and say, "Well Ok. But now 'I' want to stop thinking in terms of the 'I'". And we're back to where we started, aren't we? Ha ha. What a bind we've got ourselves in! Now believe me, this is the part where you're starting to understand what it's all about. As Alan Watts used to say about this sort of a situation, "You can't do anything about it, and you can't do nothing about it. There's nothing to be done, and there's no one to do anything anyway."
The above quote does not mean that 'you' don't exist and none of 'this' is real. If anything, it is an indicator to the deeper truth that the 'I' that you identify with, in your day-to-day life, is an illusion - an illusion not in the sense of the thing not being real, but an illusion in the sense of the thing appearing quite different that what it actually is.
<Next recommended reading: Who am I?>
George Gurdjieff once said, "The one thing you must realize is that you, and every person you see will soon be dead." Why do you think he said that it's so very important to realize this? Does realizing it really change what you do? I don't think so. I think it has very little impact on 'what' you do, but if you let it, it will have a very major impact on 'how' you do it.
So, consider death now. Don't postpone it. Die now. Not in the sense of death of the body. But in the sense of coming out of the limited identification of the ego. And realize that there is no death really. Who is there to die anyway?
Knock-knock! Who's there? Nobody home!
In all honesty, I prefer having personal chats rather than back and forth in the comments' section. If you feel like you want to have discussion with me regarding the content on my blog or anything else, please connect with me on my Instagram here: Chetan Narang - Instagram
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