THE FEAR OF DEATH

An epidemic in modern society

The fear of death, so unfathomable common in our society and yet so rare to be conversed. The fear of death, I firmly and truly believe, is one of the most dominating factors at play, when it comes to the epidemic of anxiety in our world.

Death is beautiful, death is magnificent, death is not to be feared.

A realization you, too can achieve.

Read on...

When one fears death, what is it that one really fears? Is it the hours before death, all the emotions that might arise? The unknown that may or may not follow? Or is it the in-between? Death itself? Death itself isn’t really a thing, is it? This would imply a state of being that is neither alive nor dead, essentially a state of infinite possibility. Some would say that such a state does not exist, but I disagree, just as quantum physics would. But that is a topic for another day. The bottom line is that most people, practically everyone, have never thought about such a state in between, so the feared is one or both of the remaining two. The hours and minutes before death, and/or the potential aftermath of death. The hours before death is essentially not any different than the years and decades before, which basically is a part of being alive. So even though one might be anxious about these hours that which are truly terrifying and feared must be the unknown occurrence concluding death.

These two phenomena, the hours before death, and the potential aftermath, I will now explore.

The fear of the hours before death is essentially a resistance to life itself. Life is constantly filled with risks - risks one can do nothing about. So why not make friends with what one cannot do anything about anyway?

Put differently, to become free of the anxiety and fear of these hours before death, one must first accept the flow, the rhythm, the waves and the play of life, accept the impermanence, accept change (change, the only constant in life). One must, in essence, fully accept being alive, which constantly is a state of change, and accept the risks we face every single moment of it.

One must fully accept that one has not got any control of anything (actually, I firmly believe and intuitively know that the opposite is true. That we indirectly are responsible for every single manifestation, in our lives. Therefore we essentially control everything in our lives. This is called the Law of Attraction. So even though we essentially, in this sense, are completely responsible for our lives, the following philosophy about reaction separates itself from the whole Law of Attraction phenomenon, as reacting is something you do or do not do about a situation regardless of how or why it is manifested.)

In life, there is only one factor we fully and directly control.

This one factor is reaction. The reaction which happens deep inside oneself, and from which one decides what to choose going forth. From every situation, one can choose one of only three possible reactions.

One can act “positively”.

One can act “negatively”

And one can choose to be non-reactive.

Essentially only 2 reactions can be chosen from. Reaction or non-reaction. In other words, positive and negative is an illusion the ego creates.

Additionally, there are only 3 possible choices that can be made in any given situation. 2 in terms of reaction and 1 in terms of non-reaction. The first reaction is “changing the given situation”. The second is “removing yourself from the given situation”. And last but not least, the non-reaction is “accepting the given situation fully and totally”, another word for this is “surrender”.

Now, you may be considering not continuing to read and may be thinking: “nonsense, negative and positive is definitely not an illusion”

But I encourage you, please read on...

Think about it. The things and situations, and reactions for that matter, one calls negative or positive, is no more than plain reactions, no more, no less. Just as the weather is just weather or our feelings are just mere feelings. It is the ego, not you, that imposes the positive or negative attributes on the situations, feelings or reactions. Yes, the feelings or situations may feel “uncomfortable”, and yes, others might feel and “look” positive and “comfortable”, but this is because of the arbitrary traditions and do’s and don’ts, we have been taught since childhoods, that supports our born-into-culture. Arbitrary indeed. The things we do in the West which are looked upon as comfortable and “good” might most certainly be the exact opposite in the East. We are told from birth which feelings to suppress and which not to. This, in turn, creates the illusion of discomfort and dis-ease or the other way around. Take a look at two different cultures. That which the first culture firmly and sincerely will say makes them very uncomfortable, the second culture will say the complete opposite about and also firmly and sincerely mean it.

To you, it might seem like I am going off on a tangent, but I assure you, I am not.

Death in itself is exactly that, just death, neither positive nor negative. It is just an ending of a story, of a beginning. What would one do if one had to read the same book forever and ever never getting to the end? To never comprehend the meaning of that book? That’s for you to decide.

The opposite of life is not death, life hasn’t got any opposite, it is perfect, has no beginning and no end, it is eternal.

The opposite of death is birth.

Just as birth is one of the miracles of life, and is a magnificent and beautiful experience, so is death.

Death, just like sleep, is the time of contemplation, of reflection. It is the time of getting to the feeling-understanding, to intuitively grasp the meaning of life.

One might say that one is scared of what comes next, comes after death, for the “horrors” of life after death.

I wonder myself. One thing is for sure. It cannot be comfortable or uncomfortable, nor positive or negative. Because death, just like birth, comes out of nothingness. Can you remember what it felt like before you were born? Do you feel it? No, of course not. How could you.

In just the same way, death is just as non-dualistically-beautiful as birth. From birth one wakes up from a sleep one never fell into, and when one dies one falls asleep to never wake up again. This is wondrously beautiful.

One needs to realize, to remember from deep within, what life is all about. Death almost every time helps one to realize this (I say almost because some people keep resisting life even in their last bodily breath. This results in continued suffering, in not grasping the meaning of life).

If one live one’s life without facing death, facing one’s own mortality, one will die without having lived.

I often ponder the question... “Why do people fear “non-existing”, fear the aftermath of death, death itself so much, to go to sleep and never waking up again?”

Non-existing, is exactly what it implies, to not exist.

“To exist” means “to stand out”. So basically, non-existence is the drifting into the un-manifest.

Then you might ask “what is the un-manifest”?

The essence I’m trying to convey to you with this article cannot be understood intellectually, it needs to be felt. Everything I am saying is only signposts, signposts which points to this essence. The signposts may be understood intellectually, but the essence they point to cannot.

This needs to be understood through feeling, through being.

The reason why I’m saying this now is because, in order to explain the un-manifest, the signpost-statement is more important than ever.

One may say that the un-manifest isn’t real, isn’t a part of life. But I assure you, it most certainly is.

Just as the foreground of a picture cannot be without a background, the manifested world cannot be without the un-manifest to be the space in which it pervades.

What is the essence of the room you are in right now? Is it the walls? The objects? No. The essence is the space within it. The room could not be without it. Music, what is the essence of that? Is it the many tones and sounds which make it up? No. It is the silence in between.

So even though space and silence don’t exist, don’t stand out, is “no-thing”, is un-manifest, it is very real indeed. Just because one cannot see or hear it, does not mean that it isn’t there.

This is the un-manifest, this is what when one dies, I intuitively know, one drifts into. Our natural state of being, which one returns to fully.

The un-manifest is a state of no duality, of no opposite. It is a state of “no-thing”. This state is a state of peace and love, it is a paradoxical state that transcends our intellectual understanding, and therefore needs to be felt to be understood.

Essentially, the un-manifest is the essence, the background of all form, the background of which everything pervades, of which everything is manifest. It is the essence of you, me, your family, the animals, the inanimate objects, the trees, the stones, the sea, the air, the earth, the stars, the universe, the whole nature, existence itself.

The un-manifest is paradoxical but true.

To answer my question about why people fear non-existence, fear the aftermath of death, death in itself so much, I would say...

The whole question is irrelevant.

To fear death is to fear one’s own existence. So if you fear death, I say to you, start living instead.

To end with I would like to briefly share an experience from my own life-situation...

Something amazing happens in the short period before most people die. They accept death fully and therefore becomes wholeheartedly peaceful and loving. You can see it in their eyes; you can see it in their whole being. You can feel it.

My father passed away when I was 17 years old. Many of you may think that this would be a detrimental time for me. But no, quite on the contrary.

What happened was that my father, on the day of his passing, in the morning, would come out from the toilet of the hospice he was staying in, and say “now I just want peace”. The rest of the time up to his passing (approximately 14 hours later), he wasn’t able to speak. And yet he spoke to me more clearly than I have ever experienced, he was telling my sister, mother and I that he loved us, that everything is going to be alright and that death isn’t to be feared.

Even though I couldn’t see it back then, in the moment of my father taking his last breath, passing away, I now see that the whole experience was divinely beautiful.

Although I didn’t realize this until years later, something Incredible happened in the months following my father’s passing.

For some reason, my father’s peace, made me accept his passing (and a couple of years later, death itself) fully and totally, I have never experienced anything like it. There was almost no grief. And still, I did not suppress anything. The acceptance had just transmuted my inner state of being into a sense of deep peace and love about my father’s passing and everyone closely involved.

In my opinion, one thing that made this one experience even more profound was the fact that everyone around me was grieving immensely, for years afterward. Some are still grieving to this day, almost 5 years later.

This experience sowed the seed, which later in my life would sprout into this very article.

Contemplate on that.