In our culture, the way that death and fear of death are usually seen and experienced is a clear indication of deep misalignment with truth. Because of our conditioning, physical death is seen as the problem. In actuality, facing the death of personal identity is an immense opportunity to directly encounter eternal, undying presence.
There is a strong, conditioned belief that you are a psychological entity located in a body. In truth, there is no real psychological entity except as an image or a thought coupled with physical sensation.
When fear of death is directly investigated, it is discovered that only form is born and dies. Consciousness is free of formation, free of birth, free of death.
I have the experience of a continuing dread of death that just hangs around me like a cloud.
If you invite this cloud called death closer, you can experience it directly. In this extraordinary experience, what dies and what remains is discovered.
How do I discover that?
By being still. By neither repressing nor following any thought that arises. By not moving the mind in any direction. By ceasing all attempts to escape. Then where is this thing called death?
It’s squirming in me right now.
Find it. Go into it with your consciousness. What do you discover?
A sensation.
Meet the sensation directly. What is at the core of this sensation?
It feels like sadness.
Meet the core of the sadness. Be aware if your meeting is deflected by a mental discussion about the sadness.
It just feels like a deep, old grief.
Without qualifying, evaluating, or measuring, continue into the core. Directly experience that which is at the center.
It’s like a long thing. A sensation of a pole that sits in a cemetery.
An image is the result of separation between you and the sensation. With any image, there must be someone sensing and something sensed. I am speaking of being right inside the sensation. Leave the boundaries separating you and it behind. Release all imagery and dive into the core of the sensation.
I find myself going into it, then bouncing off and pulling back.
You are describing a mental image, another strategy of mind to avoid direct experience. When the image of bouncing starts, continue to relax. Drop into the core of the grief that you have dreaded and avoided. Other images or names might arise, but for now, rather than speculating about the grief, analyzing it, or overcoming it, discover what is present at the core.
In an open meeting, the nature of all phenomena, subtle or gross, is discovered directly. Any phenomenon can be met directly, whether it is the emotion of sadness, the thought of me, or death itself.
This is a great discovery. I am simply saying to put everything aside and discover the underlying nature of everything.
The usual strategy is mental movement away from direct experience and toward techniques of overcoming, escaping, changing, denying, repressing, acting out, or discharging. This habit of mind is ego. If this habit is recognized and set free, then where is ego? When you are not preoccupied and distracted by thoughts of escaping or clinging, seeing is clear. Seeing clearly is the inherent nature of consciousness.
Egoic habits of mind have been passed from generation to generation for millions of years. Strategies of escape or defense nourish the momentum of conditioned existence. In the willingness to experience what has not been experienced, the core of all internal and external phenomena is revealed, and the momentum of conditioning is stopped.
Expose and release the lie of ego. All our lives are conditioned toward complexity, yet release is absolutely simple.
Every emotion, sensation, or energy faced purely and simply reveals eternal life.
I’m troubled because the doctors say I must work with them or I’ll die.
Are you ready to die?
I don’t think that would be as bad as mucking around with doctors.
I have nothing against medical procedures or medicine. What I am for is you facing your death. Not just because someone has now spoken to you of the possibility of death, but because every body will die at some point.
Until death has been faced, there can be no lasting clarity. Countless hours are spent ignoring, fearing, chasing, wallowing in, or running from this thing we call death. Every decision and every choice is based on some kind of mental relationship with death. When the mind is kept busy running from, worrying about, thinking about, or denying thoughts about death, what is eternal is overlooked. Surrender the relationship with your mind, and have a meeting with death.
Let me stress that surrender has nothing to do with either tending the body or not tending it. Once death has been met, the decision to care for the body is not muddied with needs and hopes and expectations.
When Ramana was a sixteen-year-old boy, he experienced a fear of death. Rather than run to his mother or to the doctors, he lay down on the floor and faced death fully—not just intellectually—but fully and completely. He allowed himself to experience directly what it is that actually dies. From a true meeting, great awakening occurs. In finally facing death fully and completely, there is recognition of eternal life, life that is not born and therefore not subject to death.
Most people spend their lives ignoring the reality of the death of the body, and then they are quite surprised when it is their body’s turn. Ninety-year-old people are still surprised. It is part of the education of our culture to pretend that death is something separate from life. In our culture, death usually takes place in the back room. Bring the specter of death into the front room. Welcome death to satsang.
What a gift the prognosis of death can be. What an attention-getter! What a way to draw attention to what does not die. The most feared event is announced. That announcement is your invitation to direct experience.
When I met you the very first time, I was so touched by what you said. Afterwards, at home, I felt like everything was breaking and burning.
Wonderful.
Yes, but it’s scary.
Yes, it is not casual. It is not trivial. The whole mental house of cards is shaken.
Then I tried to accept it, to meet it, and it was very difficult because it’s so scary.
Now you can stop trying anything. Let it be scary.
The fear arises that I cannot manage my life.
Yes, I know this fear. You fear that you will not be able to manage your life or even survive. Those fears are all the fear of something—the fear of death, the fear of homelessness, the fear of irresponsibility. Fear of goes on and on. Approach fear itself. As long as you stay with fear of something, you are hovering on the perimeter. Discover, in truth, what fear is.
Are you aware of this fear now?
Yes.
Leaving all speculations behind, report to me from the core of it.
It’s difficult.
In the core of fear, where is difficulty? Where, even, is fear?
Something that I learned.
Well, that’s true, but I want your report to be deeper than an analysis. In the midst of this something that you have learned to call fear, what is found?
It is a fear of not existing.
Yes! The primary fear is the possibility of nonexistence.
Let yourself fall effortlessly into and be the fear of nonexistence. Any mental effort is another tactic to try to escape nonexistence. Let go of all struggling to not be touched by that fear, and meet nonexistence.
The fear is huge!
I appreciate that it is a colossal fear. In your willingness to meet this colossus directly, truth is discovered.
Notice if you are telling yourself a story, or even just aimlessly talking to yourself. If so, stop. Allow the mind to be open.
Now I feel a lot of body sensations.
Let them be. They mean nothing. Let sensations, energy, phenomena of all kind, be.
Nowhere!
Yes. Now you know the truth of ease, and the truth of difficulty. Difficulty arises when you try to escape the experience of something. Ease is present when you are willing to stop and meet whatever has been haunting you.
When you finally, completely, face fear itself, it is nowhere to be found. Fear can never survive a total meeting with conscious awareness.
The closer I come to being in labor, to giving birth, the more I fear death.
The fear of death is deep in the psyche. When it rises to the surface, there is usually the impulse to either overcome it or get away from it. Open to the fear of death today, right now. Don’t continue the habitual tendency to contract the mind. Right now is the time. For this opening, all the stories about death must end.
It doesn’t seem scary if I open to it.
That’s right. That’s the truth.
Certainly death is an extremely powerful event, as is birth. Whatever appears to be born dies. Whatever appears disappears. Whether it is flesh, idea, thought, emotion, or state.
What is not born cannot die. Death is not the end of life. Death is not the polar opposite of life. Birth and death are opposites. Life is the constant. Life is the presence that both birth and death appear in.
Be willing to die before the flesh dies. Give up the struggle against the fear of death. When you face the fear of death, you discover it to be a nonexistent guardian of the gates of realization. You do not need to overcome what is nonexistent.
Usually fear is transmitted through the womb, as well as anguish, desire, hope, failure, and success. When you are willing to meet the fear of death, the realization of what is true is transmitted from being to being. You will transmit an extraordinary secret of life through the womb.
I’ve been going through a lot of loss lately. Today I thought I was going to lose my life. A lot of fear came up, and I’m wondering how to address that fear.
Invite the fear back. Right now, as you sit here, invite it to show its face in the light of satsang.
I can’t seem to get it to come.
Yes, this is the secret. Fear is powerful only when you are trying to escape it. Turn to fear and say, “Yes, come now. I am ready.” You will see how fearful fear is. It is not to be found.
Through past generations your ancestors have run from fear. Finally down the line, one of you awakens and says, “Okay, fear, I’m ready to meet you. Where are you?” Direct experience goes against the momentum of conditioned existence.
Look for fear and tell me, what is present? Call it in even more strongly. If fear of death shows up at satsang, it is ready to be liberated. If it is not ready to be liberated, it runs as far from you as it can.
Welcome all to satsang. This meeting called satsang is not different from the simple willingness to be. Just be.
Now you know the secret of fear, because you have spent so much time running from it, and more importantly, because you have stopped to face it. Now fear is a useful vehicle to discover the divine secret.
Keep the invitation open. The minute you begin to close your mind, some fear from back in time may appear to chase you. Open the door and where can it be found?
My son just wrote me, and he is in a very dangerous place. I fear for his life, and I really don’t know how to face that fear.
Your fear is not about your child’s death; it is about your own death. Until the nature of your own death is recognized, you will project your fear onto others.
Every body is in a dangerous situation at every moment. The body is a walking time bomb. At any moment it could cease to be. Your body and your children’s bodies will one day cease to exist. To become involved in your children’s death before you meet your own is a distraction that serves only the continuance of fear.
I understand the pull on you, but facing your own death is all you can do. And, in fact, it is enough. If your child has stirred up this fear of death, very good. Bow to him. Stirring up what hasn’t been faced is one of the great gifts of children.
It is impossible to know how long a child will live. If you are distracted by the thought of that, you overlook the opportunity to meet what has been stirred up. Stop using your thoughts to delay meeting any emotion that appears from this stirring. Take five seconds to turn and face what you have run from.
Your children will be much happier if you face your own death. They will receive a transmission from you of the willingness to meet death fully. Then, when you speak to them about anything, you will speak from that realization.
He also worries about death.
He learned to worry from you. The same way he learned his name or his first word. The fear of death is contagious. You must stop the contagion. Facing death is the medicine to cure the disease. If the disease is exposed to the medicine, the disease cannot survive.
But he can be stabbed. He can be beat up.
Yes, of course. Always. The difference that meeting death makes is in the quality and experience of life. Are you wandering around looking for the potential stabbing, imagining the potential stabbing, while fantasizing the loneliness? This is the way most people spend their lives, isn’t it?
He says he hears gunfire in his neighborhood, and it’s not his imagination.
Death is in every neighborhood. Do you think death is located only in particular neighborhoods just because it is obvious there? Death is in every house.
I am not speaking of the outer circumstances of his life. I am speaking of the inner circumstances of your life. Your life right now. Your own death.
You have learned the horror of death. You have seen pictures of it, and you have read books about it. You have thought about it, and now you are imagining your child in that horror. This is a nightmare. Wake up in this nightmare.
You cannot control death. You can move to the biggest house with the biggest security fence, and still you cannot control death. You need only read the newspapers to see that this is so. Violence is the byproduct of a fearful, violent society. There is no help for a society running from fear.
Running from fear leads to isolation and separation. The desperate attempt to control the enormous fear of death fosters more fear, more isolation, and more violence.
It must begin with you. The whole world is waiting for you.
I am serious. I am speaking to everyone. It is no good to wait for someone else to awaken so that all will then be taken care of. It is you the world is waiting for. Not just for your children, but for all children, all neighborhoods everywhere. It is up to you. You must awaken and discover directly what has never been born and therefore cannot die. This is a child’s real heritage. Anything else is just passing on further conditioning based on fear.
I have a question about the mind and the body. I often have this tiredness that affects my everyday life, and I am wondering about the power of the mind to heal.
The power of mind is enormous and can be used to support either sickness or health. I suggest you accept only the true healing, the true refuge. All the rest is playing with feelings of personal power.
Many people seek personal power because they think it promises security. Then one day the body dies. I suggest you discover what is beyond healing the body.
Take care of your body; even love your body. Feed it properly, exercise it properly, and give it proper rest. If it is sick, give it medicine, but don’t think that the body is who you are. If you think the body is who you are, it will never satisfy you. This misidentification and the dissatisfaction that follows are the larger sickness.
Generally, when I speak about illness, I am addressing psychological illness. I define psychological illness as the notion that you are separate from the source of fulfillment or that you need something else to make you happy. This sickness is epidemic.
If you believe I am sick, then there is suffering and the attempt to escape suffering. Stop all attempts to escape, and ask yourself who is sick.
Be willing to discover the truth behind your sense of lack of fulfillment. Be willing to receive the revelation of what is always whole—your own self.
One of the clarifying experiences of an aging body is the recognition that death of the form really happens. It is not abstract. The body does return to dust.
Some bodies will have more sickness than other bodies. Some plants grow stronger than others do. This is simply the nature of form. If you cease seeking fulfillment through the body, there is no problem. There may be physical discomfort, but discomfort does not mean anything about the source of fulfillment. The truth is that who you truly and always are is already complete.
First face the psychological lie that you are incomplete, that you are not good enough. Face this directly, rather than trying to get complete, or to become enlightened, or to be worth something. Face incompleteness directly, and discover immediately what is true.
Rather than continually trying to outrun some physical or psychological sickness, face whatever it is that you imagine separates you from fulfillment.
Extraordinarily good news is revealed at the core of every fear, as well as at the core of every other emotion. With exquisite irony, when you stop expecting the body and its condition to lead you to fulfillment, you can see clearly what your particular body actually needs and provide for it.
I recently had the experience of being in an MRI machine. I could not move, and I had a panic attack. I thought I was going to die, and there was a loss of control that I couldn’t let go into.
Most everyone has a great fear of losing control, but the truth is that each night before you drop into deep sleep, you have to lose all control. It is impossible to go into deep sleep without losing control. If you are still attempting to control anything, either you won’t sleep or your sleep will be very light and filled with dreams.
As you give up control, the definition of who you are is released. With the death of definition, all thoughts of what you can and cannot do naturally die. Since there is no thought of you, there are no thoughts of what can or cannot be borne, what can or cannot be done. Thoughts of what should have been or might have been are all finished, in simply giving up the illusion of control.
I understand the great fear that if you give up control, you might become like a vegetable or a madman or something horrible. But you are like a madman in your attempt to keep control over what cannot be controlled.
Life cannot be controlled.
At a certain stage of maturity, you recognize you have no control over life. However you may try, you will never be able to control the true teacher, which is life itself. When you recognize life as the uncontrollable teacher, the concept of control is humbled. In this humbling, life then has the possibility of living its own fulfillment through a life form.
I am not suggesting you give up control to somebody in particular. I am saying to surrender your idea of who you are and all definitions of who you are. These ideas are all just some futile attempt to control life.
If this body, this form, is illusion and not the true self, it almost seems like a cosmic joke. Why aren’t we just the source?
You are the source. Limitlessness has no problem with form. Why limit true self to either form or formlessness? Do you think we should be limited to no jokes? Do you think God is not playful?
Well, I guess I don’t mind a joke unless it’s played on me!
The best joke is the one played on oneself. That joke destroys any idea of self-importance.
If you were two or three or even ten years old, maybe I would not speak to you like this, but now you are long past your time of maturity, so get the joke. Enjoy the joke. The joke itself destroys the knot of identification. Self-righteousness and self-importance are ego-righteousness and ego-importance. Recognizing the joke is the medicine for the disease of egoic importance.
It is a beautiful joke, a joke with uncountable levels and permutations, tears and laughter, longing, beauty, and silence. It is a divine joke, not a paltry joke that can be read in a book. It is the most mysterious, far-reaching, never-ending joke. This is God’s joke.
It’s as though my body is physically struggling with this. My heart is beating very, very fast. The fear grows, and I open to the fear. I realize it is the fear of losing this body.
The primal identification, the primal struggle, the primal fear, is that without your body, you do not exist. You believe that your body is where you exist and is the proof of your existence. The purpose of satsang is to meet this fear.
Relax and allow the fear to be. There may be great shaking. There may be energy released. There may be sweating. There may be tears. There may be the impulse to bolt, the impulse to cover your face. All of this is normal, given the deep conditioning of identification with the body.
Relax. The fear is a good sign. If people tell me they never have fear, I realize they probably have not touched this primal fear.
Self-inquiry is not intellectual inquiry. It is inquiry of the deepest order. It is the great good luck of this human incarnation that you possess the capacity to ask a question of such depth, to actually question death itself.
You are the source, untouched by birth or death. You are pure, boundless, unborn consciousness, giving birth to all bodies and reclaiming all bodies in death. You have nothing to fear! Take a moment to die, and you can see clearly, obviously, what dies and what is eternal self. Then your body, for as long as it may exist, is no problem. Even though it may have its problems, it is no problem.