Question::
What is death? Why should death exist in the course of life?
(or)
Why “death” is considered a complete loss, by the worldly minded? What are the advantages and disadvantages of death, from a spiritual point of view?
(or)
Why is death called a turning point, with respect to one’s “spiritual aspirations”?
(or)
Does sadhanas annihilate sanskaras, completely?
(or)
Can “understanding” help Emancipation?
(or)
What sort of outlook a spiritual aspirant has to have regarding death?
Answer:
(Extracted from Meher Baba’s literature, a copyright of Avatar Meher Baba Perpetual Public Charitable Trust(©AMBPPCT), Ahmednagar, Maharashtra, India/Bharat)
Friends and relatives of a departed one often are seriously upset by his death, because the dissolution of the form may seem to them to be the extinction of life itself. All of their attachments had been related to the “form”.
It was because of the form that they had contact with the soul, and it was through the form that their various physical and emotional needs were fulfilled.
The disappearance of the body that had acted as the vehicle of the soul is therefore often interpreted by then as the annihilation of the individual himself.
From the purely physical point of view, death does not involve annihilation of even the body, but psychologically it has become unfit to be the continued dwelling place of the spirit, and has therefore lost all importance.
From the point of view of the individualized soul as mind, death does not involve any loss whatsoever, as the mind and all its sanskaras remain intact. The individual, in essence, is thus in no way different. He has only cast off his external coat. Nevertheless, this ‘severance from the physical body’ is fraught with two important consequences.
- It is a means of introducing the individual to a new type of existence, and
- it is also in itself an incident of the utmost importance because of side effects of the greatest practical consequence.
When others die, the individual loses only one or at most a few friends who have played an important role in his earthly existence. But when he dies,
- he loses at one stroke, all the persons who had entered intimately into his own life.
- He also loses all his “possessions” and is broken away from the “achievements” on which he had built the very foundation of his “sense of accomplishment” in life.
- As the crowning touch, he must also leave the very “physical body” with which he had identified himself so completely that he was rarely capable of imagining himself as anything but that ‘physical body’.
This complete annihilation of the entire structure of the individual’s earthly existence is therefore a ‘crisis’ without parallel in his life.
This critical turning point which occurs at death is attended by both advantages and disadvantages. The greatest disadvantage lies in the fact that the individual must leave incomplete all the undertakings of his earthly life; he must leave the entire chessboard without taking any further interest in it. The scene of his life is blotted out, and chain of his mundane interests is hacked apart.
From the standpoint of objective achievement, the continuity of his undertaking has undergone an abrupt break. Advancement of the projects he has left behind must come from his previous associates, and can no longer be his concern.
It is rare for the individual to be drawn back through a “sanskaric linking” to the identical task which he had begun in a past incarnation, to develop it on from the point where his successors had left it.
It would be a mistake to think that death brings nothing but disadvantages. Death also brings about a general weakening of attachments by shattering all sanskaras which were fed by the earthly objects, because the mind is now torn away from them.
While it is true that many of the sadhanas°° undertaken by the individual during earthly life have the effect of unwinding previous sanskaras, still it is only in extremely rare instances that he succeeds in completely erasing the present and future effects of these sanskaras. This erasure is effected within certain well-defined limits by the sudden transplanting of the individual that occurs at death.
If the lessons inherent in a single death were to be thoroughly assimilated by the individual, he would benefit by the equivalent of several lifetimes of patient spiritual effort. Unfortunately, this does not happen in most cases because after death, the individual usually tries to revive his accumulated sanskaras. Through these revived sanskaras, he recaptures the experiences through which he has already lived. The period immediately following death usually becomes therefore, an occasion for the repetition of all that has previously been lived through, rather than a period of “emancipation through understanding all” that has been lived out.
Regardless of these shortcomings, death does give a severe shaking to the tree of sanskaras– root, trunk and branch– and this impels the mind to revise its attitude towards the objective universe. Death also facilitates a certain amount of disentanglement from the attractive world of form. The individual is never able to go back to earth without some modification of his approach to life.
Life in a new physical body must conform to lines determined by the individual’s sanskaras. Thus there is often a close resemblance to the past life on earth, but it is not a literal repetition of the past. It is a new experiment.
This readjustment of outlook, which is facilitated by the abrupt reorientation involved in death, is particularly helpful when it occurs after spiritual aspiration has been awakened in the individual. In such cases, the loosening of all attachment which occurs at death is very conducive to the further flowering of spiritual aspiration. The aspirant now has a chance under fresh circumstances to remodel the entire pattern of his life in line with his spiritual aspirations.
Because of these special opportunities which death offers, the aspirant does not regret his own death. For him, death is not a cloud, without its silver lining. The Perfect Master Jalalu’l-Din Rumi has said that he always progressed through frequent deaths. But, this cannot justify anyone, and even less a ‘spiritual aspirant in seeking death for its own sake. To seek death in this manner is to put a false premium upon it. Such seeking of death springs from fear of life and failure to cope with it, and inevitably must defeat its own purpose.
If death has any value, it is to teach the individual the true art of life. It would be wrong for the aspirant to seek death, with the hope of making further progress thereby. On the other hand, he should not fear death when it overtakes him. A true aspirant neither seeks death nor fears it, and when death comes to him– he converts it into a stepping stone to the higher life.
– Meher Baba
—————————–
°° Sadhanas :: Devotional and disciplinary practices.
Source ::
Listen Humanity, Pg :: 101-103,
© AMBPPCT, Ahmednagar, Maharashtra, India
