Life and death are always intertwined. It is a paradox, but to truly understand and master life, we must first take a close look at death. This might sound morbid to some people, but really it is not, as I hope to explain in this short series on Life and Death.
Death is one of the few things that we know is going to happen with absolute certainty. The only thing we don’t know is when it will happen. Since the event is inevitable, it makes sense that the worst thing we can do is avoid thinking about it in the foolish hope that it will go away. It is far better to face the fact of death square in the face, for in doing so, the mystery of life itself becomes dramatically clearer.
The majority of people – including many ‘enlightened’ individuals – have a fear of death. They see it as the end of something beautiful – as something that should be postponed for as long as is humanly possible. Thus modern society is endlessly concerned with prolonging life on this world. One thousand and one diets are launched onto an unsuspecting public, new exercise fads appear every week and scores of scare-mongers advise us not to eat eggs, or cheese, or beef… the list goes on and on and on.
Of course, life is precious and should be sensibly preserved if at all possible. But no diet, no exercise routine, no abstinence from cigarettes or alcohol is ever going to alter the fact that one day, every individual on earth must face death.
So let us face the facts. You were born alone, and eventually you will die alone. Of course, you may be in the company of others when the time comes, but from a spiritual point of view both birth and death are solitary journeys from one plane of existence to another.
This should not frighten you, but it should make you see that your preparation for this event cannot be passed on to someone else. Whatever your religious beliefs, you cannot rely on others to make the journey for you. For example, if you have Christian beliefs then you cannot rely on the faith of your minister to help you through death.
Likewise, this series itself cannot help you except in the form of guidance. You must face the event alone – like a warrior passing from the safe haven of his home into a gloriously new, unexplored territory. The amount of preparation you make in this life, in terms of spiritual progress, is entirely up to you.
Many people talk about life after death. They believe in something called eternal life, and assume that their human birth was the beginning of this life. This is incorrect. Eternal life has no end, but it also has no beginning. You existed before you were born, and will continue to exist after your physical death.
So if you look at the situation from another perspective, you have already gone through a ‘death’ experience when you were born. Before birth you existed in another form on another plane of reality. Then you ‘died’ on that plane and passed onto the physical plane through birth. When your physical body dies on this plane, all you are doing is going back to the plane you came from.
So what is the point of all this talk about death?
Well, the main point is to help you realise in a conscious manner that your life on earth will not go on forever. You do, of course, already know this – but how many people actually let that fact sink in? Not many. If they did they would see the futility of becoming too engrossed in material pleasures, or in wasting the time they do have here in shallow or even pointless pursuits.
Now that you realise that your time on earth is but a blip on the scale of your whole eternal existence, the question arises as to what you are here for. We believe that before physical birth, the spirit that is you actually decided where and when it was to be born. We believe that you chose your parents, your social status and even your neighbourhood because those people and situations would give you the best possible chance of achieving your life goal.
If you have experienced what you might refer to as a ‘hard life’ then you will know that this life has already taught you plenty. You may know what it feels like to suffer poverty, sickness or physical disability. Yet through these things you have learned more about yourself and the universe. However, you have not yet learned all there is to learn. If you had, your physical body would have died so that your essence may return to the other plane and ‘report back’ as it were.
Consider the old American television series Mork and Mindy, which starred Robin Williams as Mork – the alien from the planet Orc. His mission was to visit earth, spend some time here and report back to Orson – his superior – on a regular basis. Each episode had Mork experiencing something different – be it love, anger, jealousy, kindness, honesty and so forth – and then reporting about what he had learned.
If you see yourself as a spiritual ‘alien visitor’ who is here to experience life in all of its fullness and then ‘report back’ to your origin when you physically die, death holds little to fear. It will be seen as nothing more than ‘going home’ to the place where you truly belong.
Since you have so little time here and are meant to be experiencing everything which life has to offer, you can’t afford to waste a moment of it. You should treasure each week, day and hour of life as a precious gift – as another segment of time which has been given to you to use wisely.
