Easy
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 The Cosmic Mandala (click to enlarge) |
This
section is organized as follows:
- Adi Da serving the death transition of His devotees (and their families)
- Lessons in relating to mortality and serving the dying (or very ill)
Introduction
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| Adi Da recommends that everyone be told this joke on their birthday each year: A person jumps out of a skyscraper window. On the way down, someone shouts out from a window as the jumper passes by: "How's it going?" The jumper responds: "So far, so good!" |
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For human beings, death Is A Proposition and A Puzzle That Must Be Understood and Transcended (By Correct and Revealing Information, or Fullest Education, and By The Real Process Of self-Transcendence). There Is No Peace For human beings Until This Matter Is Resolved. Avatar Adi Da Samraj, Eleutherios |
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| Are you ready for death right now? Could you handle it? Can you handle the death of the other? No one could be said to be in a position to enjoy that, but there is a Profundity that Absolutely Transcends it, Absolutely Perfectly, and is Untouched, Untouched by anything at all regardless of what happens to the body-mind, regardless of its fate and the fate of its relations. Avatar Adi Da Samraj |
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Adi
Da has brought into the world an immense body of wisdom about mortality, death,
serving the death transition, and the Divine Reality in which both life and death
are occurring. Much of this wisdom is codified in His book, Easy
Death, which Elizabeth Kόbler-Ross (author of the pioneering work, On
Death and Dying) described as "an exciting, stimulating, and thought-provoking
book that adds immensely to the ever-increasing literature on the phenomena of
life and death." The stories in this section are just a small sample of
how Adi Da's Wisdom and Blessing has served many people in their understanding
and experience of mortality, dying, and death, and their Awakening to
the Divine Reality altogether.
Your consciousness must become one with this Divine Reality. You must magnify your association with That, enter into heart-Communion with That, rather than reinforce the persona, or the egoic tendencies of attention. In this way, you prepare yourself . . . for death, but you also live well. You live in Wisdom. And if you have lived a lifetime in this Wisdom, then death will certainly become a profound event, not different in kind from profound meditation. Avatar Adi Da Samraj |
Quite
a few books (for example, Raymond Moody's Life
After Life, or Kenneth Ring's Heading
Toward Omega) are now available that report near-death experiences, and
describe such recurring patterns as: leaving the body (and possibly looking back at
it from the outside, for a period); one's life flashing before one's eyes (or some
other kind of life summary or review); passage through a "tunnel"; a being of
light at the end of the tunnel; and returning to life. There is a tendency in
many of these books to depict such experiences as entirely positive (and to make
the hopeful suggestion that death itself will be the same). But Adi Da makes clear
that all the aspects of one's psyche positive and negative that are
present (perhaps unconsciously) while alive, come into play (in an intensified, psychic
form, liberated from physical constraint) in the transition between lifetimes.
One need only look at one's dreams at night to get some feeling for what one will
experience in the death transition.
On this particular point, Adi Da's Teaching resonates with the more traditional accounts The Tibetan Book of the Dead, heaven and hell myths [1], etc. that are based on the wisdom of Spiritual Realizers aware of the complete death (and after-death) process, not just "near death" experiences. It also resonates with more recent "near-death" accounts such as Blessing in Disguise: Another Side of the Near Death Experience.
DEVOTEE: I was just appreciating what a real disservice to the cause of the Realization of Truth is done by these near-death experience reports. It seems to be very easy and blissful. ADI DA: It's inevitable that these reports will be given but they are propagandized also beyond mere reporting and this doesn't do any ultimate service to people. . . . So all kinds of possibilities are arising, may arise there you see. The immediate experience after death can be pleasurable temporarily but then it passes and all kinds of illusions arise. You think you're in some place, about to get your head chopped off or to be snuffed out in darkness or burned alive and then zap you're standing in a park somewhere and seeing your relatives and then zap you're seeing lights and tunnels and there's no end to it you see. In the case of a more benignly conditioned personality the after-death phenomena are more pleasurable but still founded in egoity and an essential discomfort; and for grossly and psychotically programmed personalities, the after-death condition can be horrible. It's not forever but it can be a terrible passage, the drama of confrontation with demons and purgatorial and hellish states of damnation, things that seem like they're forever [1] which suddenly vanish, but you don't know that that's the way it's going to be, you see. Avatar Adi Da Samraj, The Virtue of Discomfort On the basis of these reports [of near-death experiences], people create programs for death and techniques ["go into the light"] to help them feel more relaxed about dying. What actually occurs after death, however, they do not know because the after-death experience is created by one's karmic tendencies, and it is only affected by real Spiritual practice. Mind, or its absence, determines where you will go. Avatar Adi Da Samraj, Easy Death |
There is nothing fatalistic or negative about this viewpoint. It places responsibility for one's destiny squarely on one's own shoulders. As Adi Da puts it in a nutshell, "While you are alive, you make mind. But after death, mind makes you." So Adi Da's advice is to live a life of contemplation of (and surrender to) the Divine, so that that is what one is doing in one's death transition as well. If one does that, then one will have an "easy death", and one's transition will indeed be a positive experience.
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Adi Da Serving the Death Transition of His Devotees (and Their Families)
Short of Divine Enlightenment, one of the most fortunate and relieving events any person can experience is to have one's Divine Master, Adi Da, directly serve one's transition beyond this lifetime as the following stories illustrate. Adi Da does not merely offer a philosophical reorientation to death, through His Instructions to those who are dying. He offers a living relationship with the Divine Reality, in Person.
Adi Da's compassion for those who are dying is extraordinary and moving. This is especially so for His devotees, because their devotional response to Him allows Him to serve their passage in a more profound way, as the following exchange (from January, 1993, excerpted from Easy Death) illustrates:
ADI DA: My devotee, Barry Juarez, passed yesterday morning. He has My Blessing. May all his karmas be purified. My Barry was a longtime devotee of Mine, one of the earliest. Some of you may remember him from the earlieast days. He was by his own confession a homosexual, and he died of AIDS. Unfortunately, he was infected with this dreadful plague. Yet, he always remained My devotee. My devotees served him. He listened to My Word and contemplated Me as My devotee in his dying time. He had My Word directly to him in that time. I love him! And he is alright. DEVOTEE: I remember one time he wrote You a card, and he gave it to You himself. You told him that you valued his relationship to You, that it was special. This meant so much to him. He told me about it at the time. It was so clear how much he loved You then, and that he always loved You. ADI DA: He came to Me in Los Angeles in the very early days. He was My devotee for two decades. Barry always took care to maintain his relationship to Me. Therefore, he is a good sign for such a relationship to Me. Because he was suffering greatly, I am glad he has passed now. It was thought that Barry might live for another week or so, but I felt it would be best if he could go quickly. He was ready. He was willing for death to occur. He had suffered enough. I am glad that he is relieved of that extraordinary distress. DEVOTEE: Beloved Lord, You love your devotees so much. It is a Grace to see You regard Your devotees in any moment of their life of practice, but it is particularly moving to see Your Blessing at the time of their passing. |
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Lessons in Relating to Mortality and Serving the Dying (or Very Ill)
Even though Adi Da is no longer present in human form, the Divine Reality He came to reveal is still accessible through Him, as is His Blessing Grace. Invoking that Grace continues to be the core of how devotees serve the dying and death transition of others (as well as their general health and well-being while alive). Adi Da created the Mate Moce Ministry for this specific purpose: to have devotees trained in His Wisdom about the death transition serve others in that transition (including the practical management of the three-day vigil that follows the death of a devotee).
Most of us have been raised in a materialistic, death-denying, and death-fearing culture. Thus we tend to relate to our own impending deaths, and the deaths of others close to us, with trepidation and reactivity of every kind [2], rather than seeing death as inevitable and (more importantly) part of a larger and natural cycle of births and deaths all of which ultimately is to be transcended in the Awakening beyond conditional existence that is Divine Enlightement.
If you observe only the mechanics of the fleshiness of things, it is very easy to believe that death is the final event. But if you are possessed of the True Vision of the Infinite and Eternal Circumstance in which you live, and if you are able to be sensitive to the totality of your living (not just the fleshy part), then you already know very well that death is just a moment in the Totality of Indivisible Light. Avatar Adi Da Samraj |
Being sensitive to the Divine Reality that is always already present, whether in our life or our death transition, endows us with the right orientation toward our own death and the death of others, allowing us to best serve those passages.
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Always remember that your inherent heart-disposition wants and needs Infinite, Absolute, True, Eternal Happiness. But first you have to become supremely Real about your situation. The real man or woman learns to live by becoming willing and able to die in any moment. Such a one is able to confront the difficult barriers and frustrations of this (only slightly evolved) "world" and yet remain capable of ecstasy in every moment. Therefore, the primary initiation that leads to human maturity is the confrontation with mortal fear. Only when the ultimate frustration that is death has been fully "considered" and felt and understood as a process can the individual live without "self"-protective and "self"-destructive fears. Only in intuitive freedom from the threat and fear of death is the individual capable of constant love of the Divine Being, and thus of all seeming "other" beings. Only in freedom from mortal recoil is the (apparent) individual capable of ecstasy under all conditions. Therefore, be alive but learn right life by first dealing with your death. Become aware that you do not live, but that you are Lived by the Divine Person. Become the devotee of Life by surrendering your illusion of independent life, which is the "self", or body-mind-complex, in ecstatic Communion with Real God. Become willing to die in any moment, and maintain no armor against it. Die in every moment by not holding on to your (apparent) separate life. Give your life up to the Divine Being, and allow the Divine Being to Transform and Translate the body-mind-complex into Itself. The Secret and the Realization of all of this is in the Teaching and the Reality-Way and the Company of the Divine Avataric Master. In That Reality-Way is the only positive Destiny of the individual and the "world". Avatar Adi Da Samraj, "Death is the Way to Life" |
| [1] | But not in the reductionistic sense of eternal salvation or damnation, as proposed by religions such as traditional Christianity. The "places" ("bardos") one can appear in between lives can include some that are heavenly, and some that are hellish, even as one can have heavenly dreams or nightmares at night, while alive. These experiences can appear to go on for a very long time, but eventually one does reincarnate. (Note: the subjective sense of time spent in bardos does not necessarily correspond with the amount of "calendar time" passing between death and rebirth.) |
| [2] | People typically go through different stages of reactivity to their own impending death, before they come to a simple acceptance of it. In her widely cited work, On Death and Dying, Elizabeth Kόbler-Ross identified these different stages of reactivity as denial, anger, bargaining, and depression. Our modern society's death-denying disposition tends to only exacerbate such reactivity when death finally arrives at one's doorstep. This is in direct contrast with the many traditional societies that steep their members in an acceptance of death from childhood on. |
| Quotations
from and/or photographs of Avatar Adi Da Samraj used by permission of the copyright
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