accepting death

Know thyself: When the mind refuses to accept death

"Although life's experience speaks otherwise, you tend to believe that life is one smooth, beautiful, happy feeling." - Sri M

Why is it that there is this deep-seated, deep-rooted feeling of existing forever and that I am not going to die. Is there something to it?

Well, the Upanishad says–perhaps you think so because, deep down in your subconscious, it looks like you know that there is some Entity which survives death, which does not end when the body ends, and since the subconscious has an inkling of it, it refuses to believe that life is going to end. This is one explanation.

Somebody told me the other day that it is because of the desire to live forever. This is also true, could be both. Why not? There is a subconscious inkling that there is an Entity that exists forever within the body, which maybe our true identity. We will come to that as we go through the Upanishad properly.

It could also be that the mind refuses to die. Why? This is so because it does not want to give up the pleasures; even though there are sorrows, the desire is to enjoy endlessly.

If you were promised, guaranteed, that when you die, you can take everything that belongs to you–all that is dear and near to you, what you love most, what you enjoy most–then do you think there will be fear of death?

The mind refuses to leave all that it is attached to. It can’t be as free as the wind because it is entangled in pleasures and depends on this enjoyment for its existence.

Sometimes, I wonder. It is not so much the fear of the unknown as the fear that we might have to leave all that is near and dear and what we enjoy when we die. This is probably the great fear of death, which the mind refuses to admit. The mind refuses to leave all that it is attached to. It can’t be as free as the wind because it is entangled in pleasures and depends on this enjoyment for its existence.

This may also be the reason. Why may be? It is the inner fear of death and, therefore, the mind is refusing to admit that it is going to cease existing. That’s one view, then the other is–we all want to be happy, we all desire that which bring happiness to us. The only problem is that we think it is going to be permanent. Although life’s experience speaks otherwise, you tend to believe that life is one smooth, beautiful, happy feeling. It isn’t and when it is proved so, you are plunged into depths of sorrow–sometimes, to such depths that you wonder if you are ever going to recover and come back to life as you knew it.

Therefore, the illusion is that life is one smooth movement, while the fact is that life is full of ups and downs and there is fleeting joy sometimes, which is replaced very often by sorrow, but that sorrow is not going to stay either. It goes and then comes–a little sunshine of happiness, but then that sun has to set, all suns set in all universes at some point.

So, the understanding here is that you get into the darkness of sorrow and then into the light of happiness alternatively. This is a ceaseless up-and-down affair that consumes the mind from the time it begins to register the world to the time when we cease to exist on this earth as a physical being.

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