You are dying — now, in this moment. Everything you think you are is dying, now in this very moment. Yourself as individual body, yourself as world, yourself as experience, is dying, right now.
There are many deaths everyday. There is the death of every moment and the death every night when you drop into sleep. There is death when a relationship ends or when a child leaves home.
However, the death I want to speak about is physical death. In our culture that death is usually the most avoided, the most denied. We are so terrified of it, so frightened of being nothing.
Bhavo died. He slipped away quietly in his sleep while three friends were with him and I was on my way to see him. It was such a treasure, such a gift, being with him in the weeks before he died and that morning being with his body in death. This was not a theory about death; it was the reality of being in the room with death. Death approaching, clearly approaching, and then death here, taking the life energy. This was being with a body when nothing is done to make it look good — when it is deathly pale. Just the stark naked fact of death of the form. The willingness to be present with naked death reveals the absolute, undeniable beauty and presence of what is eternally alive. So Bhavo is gone, what we knew of the form of Bhavo is gone; it is now cremated and is ashes; it is GONE. We all will have memories of Bhavo, memories of his sweet personality, of his irritations, of the whole realm of Bhavo.
The presence that animated his form is the exact same presence that animates your form; that animates all of form. To wake up to yourself as that presence is the willingness to meet death in all form, including what you call your own form.
He left an enormous gift to those of us who were willing to be with him in his physical suffering until the end. There was preciousness in his death, because he knew it was coming. He was not in denial about death. It did not mean he was not fighting his disease; he did fight, doing everything he and his doctors thought possible. It is not about not fighting the disease. It is knowing that you are fighting the disease and knowing that death will come when it comes. And, having the capacity, as he had, to meet that finality. When he heard, "We have lost the fight. The fight is over." the next morning he was dead.
Many people come to the spiritual search looking for attainment, but true spiritual attainment is achieved through the conscious loss of everything. What does this mean, to lose everything? In death we lose everything: our families, our lovers, our history, our past, our future. In the willingness to consciously lose all, the truth of one's being is revealed.
Luckily, Bhavo did not have to wait until disease was taking his body to face that loss. So he could die free, he could die in peace, losing something very precious but gaining more than can ever be lost. It seemed to me that those of us who were with him that day, with his ashen, dead body, felt an unknowable, incomprehensible joy of beingness. Bhavo in his dying was a gift for us. The truth is, he had been a gift for us before that, because he had faced death long before physical death came. Both his living and his dying were, ultimately, relatively and absolutely, the same gift.
Every body will die sometime; it is a guarantee of birth. However, right now you have the opportunity to meet death before your body dies, to recognize your love of and attachment to the physical form and to let that attachment die. It is the misidentification with the physical form that needs to die. And, in this dying, you wake up to the truth of who you really are. If you are willing to stop for one moment and die to this attachment, it is likely that you will have at least some time left to discover "What is life like when I have faced death? Then you can spend the rest of your life sharing your discovery with the rest of us. There is such a hunger, such a thirst, for the nectar that comes from that recognition.
To die in this way, one must first uncover the mechanism of resistance. What, for example, is the thought that supports the belief that "I can't face death right now," or "Yes, but what if... ?" Resistance to facing death arises from the fearful thought, "I will not exist." I understand that fear.
Many have said, and I say, "But you are existence." I am not asking you to believe what I say, but I am encouraging you to really meet the fear of non-existence, to dive into the unknowableness of the possibility of your not existing.
Usually we deny that possibility, but to actually investigate, to ask, "Who or what is it that will not exist?" is self-inquiry.
It can be said that you are Radiant Consciousness, you are the Light, the Truth, God, or Beauty. However, you must recognize yourself for yourself.
Are you the body? I know the body is obviously infused with you, so I am not saying you are separate from the body.
Are you willing to die right now, to be dead to who you were, dead to who you think you are and dead to who you think you will be?
Bhavo died. He slipped away quietly in his sleep while three friends were with him and I was on my way to see him. It was such a treasure, such a gift, being with him in the weeks before he died and that morning being with his body in death. This was not a theory about death; it was the reality of being in the room with death. Death approaching, clearly approaching, and then death here, taking the life energy. This was being with a body when nothing is done to make it look good — when it is deathly pale. Just the stark naked fact of death of the form. The willingness to be present with naked death reveals the absolute, undeniable beauty and presence of what is eternally alive. So Bhavo is gone, what we knew of the form of Bhavo is gone; it is now cremated and is ashes; it is GONE. We all will have memories of Bhavo, memories of his sweet personality, of his irritations, of the whole realm of Bhavo.