Easy Death:
Transcending Mortality and Death in the Divine
The
Cosmic Mandala
The Cosmic Mandala
Adi Da's Teaching about mortality offers real help, not mere
consolation or impermanent philosophy. His Teaching addresses:
preparing for the death process; near-death experiences; life
after death; and reincarnation — along with practical
wisdom about grief and the fear of dying. This section contains
stories reflecting Adi Da's wisdom about dying, death and
beyond, and how devotees and others draw upon His Instructions
and His Grace to ease the death transition, and to live a
life that facilitates an 'easy death'.
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!"
Modern Westerners are always fantasizing the future on the
basis of an egoic identification with the body. The fact that
every one is, inevitably, going to die, and that every thing
is going to disintegrate (or pass away), is, in the modern
Western view, so terrible that, characteristically, all "Westernized"
individuals feel compelled to convince one another that it
is not so (by constantly "selling" one another lies that "prove"
it is not so). Nevertheless, the mortal "facts" really are
so.
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.
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
Part of the apparently conventional nature of our relationships
is the threat of separation and death. This body dies. That
body dies. We can rejuvenate, feel better, live longer, but,
even so, in this world everybody dies. That is why we do spiritual
practice, because we are conscious of the destiny of our separation.
We are willing to fulfill the law of love, but on the other
hand what we love dies. That is why this is one of the realms
of suffering. This world is not a heaven. This is not a place
of fulfillment. Thus, we must yield to the true Condition.
We must not become dependent upon the conventional aspect
of our relations. We must recognize our relations. We must
identify with the Condition of the loved one.You must become
established in the real Condition, or you will never be satisfied.
You will be driven to all kinds of preoccupations and great
schemes, trying to become victorious or immortal, for immortality’s
own sake, simply because you cannot deal with the fact of
death. But death is an absolute message in this realm. It
obligates us to recognize or identify one another in Truth,
and we are not relieved of that obligation in this place.
Avatar Adi Da Samraj
"The Transcendental Principle of Life Applied to Diet
and the Regenerative Discipline of True Health" The Eating
Gorilla Comes in Peace
Death makes your entire life bullshit. Don’t you see? That's
the problem. The body is going to die, every relation of the
body is going to die. You can't even depend on it continuing
for another moment while you're . . . associating with it.
That's the situation you’re in, but you use fabrications of
mind and so forth, individually and collectively, that distract
you from the fact of it, so that you won't feel it profoundly.
And so you build up this whole lifetime of endeavors, of attachments,
of things you own, things you do, things you’re known for,
things you know, things you know about — on and on and on.
And it all passes. But in the meantime. . . you bullshit one
another, effectively.
The Great Matter doesn’t confront you merely in death. It's
just that in death you are disarmed and you have no choice.
While you are alive, you delude yourself! You fabricate a
reality that's not altogether true, in order to give yourself
a sense of permanence, continuation, certainty — as if life
is about being enthusiastic, about fulfillment of the next
desire. In fact, you could easily drop dead in any moment.
All kinds of people drop dead every day. And a lot of them
haven't lived a very long life beforehand. All kinds of terrible
things are being done by human beings to one another and otherwise
by the situation itself.
So you can participate in the round of desires and consolations
as much as you are able for a lifetime, however long that
lasts, and then be necessarily confronted by profundity at
the point of death. Or you can go beyond even right now and
exist in that profundity right now. . .
True religious life is a great profundity. But the religious
life that people propose for themselves and propose to one
another, generally speaking, is the life of consolation, of
distraction, of arbitrary beliefs that suggest some kind of
continuation (or even permanence) of the present pattern.
Avatar Adi Da Samraj
Life is terrible, and human beings are deluded by the immediate
pleasures that they can receive. For these reasons, they ignore
the reality of mortality — and they must not do that. The
practice, while alive and at death and beyond, is surrender
to the Divine — really so — and to know the Divine. Not “know”
It in the thinking sense. The knowledge of which I am speaking
is a gnosis beyond self-contraction.
It is terrible and unbearable that people should fear death.
Death is a lie, but you must Realize that that is so. And
that lie must not be tolerated. Any devotee who has a devotional
response to Me must enjoy being opened to the Divine Reality
and experience it without doubt.
You must receive My Gift and so be equipped for life and
death. All is a process in this same “Bright” Energy, and
you must get connected with Where you come from or you get
lost in this hell of egoic life here.
When the moment of death arrives, you must not be afraid
to be turned up to God. You must not be holding on in your
death. You must surrender to the Divine Light. That is your
business here. Let it be so.
Avatar Adi Da Samraj
Death is not just something that is going to happen eventually and you agree that there is nothing you can do about it so you can relax a little. You must participate in death. Death is the meaning of conditional existence, the very act of it, the principal ceremony- not just at the end of physical life, but all the time you live. Therefore, conditional existence is a great sacrificial process, and you must become a participant in it. Accept this obligation of "self"-sacrifice, and allow your confinement to that process (through "self"-discipline, through true devotional Yoga, through obliging your ego-possession to melt) — such that you become a participant in the Great Sacrifice, and you (thereby) become sensitized to the Divine Being, Truth, and Reality in Which all-and-All is arising and out-grow the realm of cosmic appearance.
'Tis a fearful thing to love what death can touch.
Yehuda Halevi (1075 – 1141)
Love is a great knowledge in human intimacies, but it is
a terrible knowledge, simultaneously. Love moves you beyond
the usual insult of mortality, but it takes place in the context
of mortality. At the same time that love relieves you, in
some respects, of the insult of mortality, it also makes the
suffering of mortality more profound. So, to love anyone is
a terrible "problem" — friend, intimate, child, mother,
father. To love at all is to be confronted with the terrible
nature of mortality.
Avatar Adi Da Samraj
In and of itself this is a horror, a terrible place of endings.
You cannot think your way out of here — when you are
lying there trying to catch the breath and feeling it going.
There is no thought that you have in mind that will give you
peace. None.
Only the sheer and Absolute Divine Presence solves the heart.
Avatar Adi Da Samraj, March 23, 2003
So do not be stupid and cruel people. Be a little more humorous
and loving, and acknowledge your friends compassionately.
All of them are fleshily presented, and dying. All of your
women friends, all of your men friends—everyone who lives
is dying and is confronted with the most incredible circumstance.
All are deserving of your love and compassion, and also of
your demand for the discipline of love beyond egoic "self-possession",
so that they too can enjoy the intuition of this Happiness.
Everyone is dying. All of these shapes get snuffed out with
trembling stupidity and insanity. When the body dies, the
brain becomes active for a moment, it begins to show you lighted
shapes and to dissolve you beyond the elements. First you
get fleshy, and then you get watery, then you get fiery, then
you get airy, then you start screaming and nobody can hear
you, and the body shakes all over the place, and then you
are dead. I certainly wish you could acknowledge it while
you are alive. If you can, you will love somebody, and if
you cannot, you will not.
Do not pretend that you live in a Disney world of beauty.
This life is many-sided, and you do not know what it is. And
your Happiness depends on the total inspection of this life.
Understand the situation you are in and become manly (male
or female) on the basis of this observation, so that you may
be lovers and friends. Acknowledge this terrible circumstance
and be Happy, and stop placing stupid obligations on one another.
You exist in a place that is open-ended, an edge to the Eternal,
and you are dying. The only way you can comprehend this complication
is by sacrificing it and becoming a lover and a friend. Nothing
else you may project in your lifetime can change that. You
are still a fleshy, homely being that can be crushed by circumstance.
Avatar Adi Da Samraj
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 Kübler-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.
The dead are rotted. And they are not art. They are all the
dead, the objects of your ritual. And they are not preserved.
Am I right? And you are the dead — about to be. You
are all waiting for it. You are all going to die. And it will
not release anything. You will be eaten. You are all biding
your time with this ritual of museumistic philosophy —
thinking and painting and drawing and musicking and lyricking.
Poetry and politics — an involvement in action and repetition
and experience. Until, one day, completely out of the blue,
whenever it will occur — at twenty, or thirty, forty,
fifty, sixty, seventy, eighty, ninety, a hundred, a hundred
and fifty years, whenever it occurs — out of the blue,
you will get this stuffy sensation in your chest, and your
mind will become unavailable to you, and your personality
will become magnificently obsolete, and you will puke yourself
out and become nothing. And, for a moment, you will fulfill
the Law with your bodies. But, in the next moment, all of
you will be stretched out, with a little cord of Light. It
is the only thing that keeps this body alive — with
three parts, into the three stations of the bodily apparent
heart. And you will stand up in the room, and see your dead
body, and feel so relieved from it.
And that will seem like the fulfillment of the whole gesture
of your understanding. But, then, you will turn around, and
somebody like your mother, your uncle, the Virgin Mary, Jesus
of Galilee, Gautama Sakyamuni, Swami Muktananda — somebody
will be standing there saying, "Ah, hey, it's alright! You
have died now, but you are not your body. Now, come with me,
and we'll go into the other world." And you will believe it.
And, actually, you should have been swept out centuries before,
lives before, moments before your death. How unfortunate to
have had to die in order to be relieved from your body. But,
actually, you have not been relieved from your body-identification,
only from the body itself. And, in the next moment, having
submitted to this argument, this preacher of your own mind,
you will be swifted into some place with all kinds of smiling,
white-shirted people, whose entire business it is to make
you feel as comfortable — as consoled and dead —
as you could possibly be. And, then, you will be put to sleep,
and you will dream for endless years.
Avatar Adi Da Samraj, July 12, 1976
Ideally, it seems, it would be best if men and women did
not ever have to take the life of anything, but this cannot
be done. Even your next breath will slaughter beings. And
you, yourself, bodily, will be given up eventually. The entire
cosmic display is a kind of slaughterhouse, if you will, killing
everything birthed.
Observing this, one can be possessed by a desperate and negative
vision. That is why one must Hear the Truth and Wake up. One
must understand that, indeed, the conditional universe must
be transcended, but, as a process, its greater meaning is
positive. It is a process of sacrifice, of yielding, of going
beyond, as best one can.
Avatar Adi Da Samraj, 1987
Life, rightly lived, is an intentional freefall. You cannot
at all prevent your death. You cannot call the hour, the day,
the moment of it — it could happen at any time. Even
right now, while we are talking. Anybody could drop dead at
any time. You cannot prevent it. You can build your life on
trying to prevent it, but it is an illusory effort, a terrible
philosophical ordeal, because you cannot prevent it. You can
indulge in illusions that desensitize you to this, and that
is what most of "religion" is about. That is what exoteric
"religion" is, for most people. It is a way of desensitizing
them to the facts of existence in this conditional life. One
cannot blame them for the fear — and their clinging,
then, to consolations. But there is no Truth in it. The true
renunciate knows there is no Truth in it, and relinquishes
those consolations, and allows the freefall. Then you make
great discoveries. That is what the esoteric life is about
— the discoveries in freefall. You cannot control the
ultimate thing you fear. That freedom from fear is about allowing
the freefall and relinquishing consolation. Your right relationship
to Me is not a matter of consolation, it is a matter of the
embrace of the Beloved, the certainty of the Absolute, under
circumstances in which you are utterly bereft of certainty
otherwise, in which you allow the overwhelming force of conditionality
to be the way it is. It is only in that disposition that you
discover the Truth of Existence.
Avatar Adi Da Samraj, June, 1980
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
If you are constantly trying to survive, you become more and more afraid. You become afraid of dying, afraid of separations, afraid of the loss of things
and the loss of others.
The better things get, the more afraid you get.
The longer you persist in the attempt to survive,
the more threatened your survival becomes.
Ultimately, you do change, and separations
and changes do occur. Other people die, and you die.
All of that is the Law, and all of that is Real God.
All of that is true to everyone.
But if you spend your lives in the refusal of it,
in trying to survive only,
death and change only 'happen' to you.
Whereas, if you live in the acknowledgement of your True Condition, death does not 'happen' to you.
Death becomes a process for which you are responsible, just as much as for breath and dinner.
You must become a 'self'-sacrifice while alive.
Only then do you live in Real God.
Only the life of 'self'-sacrifice acknowledges
the totality of your True Condition.
You fulfill the Law through love,
through free feeling-attention, through sacrifice
of 'subjectivity', and, most ultimately,
through sacrifice of the whole body.
When you begin to become that 'self'-sacrifice,
fear dissolves. Fear is only your mood,
your reading of what you see reflected in your contraction, your recoil from Infinity,
your attempts to survive, your own 'Narcissism'.
If, instead of holding on to mind and emotion and body and relations and the 'world' itself, you release it all, there is no fear whatsoever.
Fear is only the reflection of the holding on.
Stop holding on, and there is obviously no fear.
Then you will stop refusing the excluded aspect
of the body, and the 'world', and the Divine Reality,
and Real God.
The failure to love is the same as the fear of death. That is why you have so much difficulty maintaining this life of love. You are afraid of death,
that is the only reason why you cannot do it.
The mechanism that would be love
is not available to you consistently.
It is locked into fear, into the attempt to survive,
to define yourself through anxiety.
If you give yourself up, the whole body is transformed and the whole character of your life changes.
But you can only love if you are no longer afraid to die, because love is death.
Love is the sacrifice of inwardness and independent existence into mere whole bodily existence, and the surrender of mere whole bodily existence into Infinity, beyond visions, beyond 'self'-definition.
Love is the ecstasy of the presentation
of one's existence to Infinity. That is the Way.
Avatar Adi Da Samraj
People tend to think that, at death, maybe you are just dead, or else you go to heaven. For most people, death is in the future. It is not connected with the present.
However, what occurs after death is actually determined by how you live and by your state of consciousness while alive.
During life, the individual consciousness is limited by the physical vehicle, defined by the brain, the nervous system, the mechanism of the body.
You are kept from access to most of mind by this barrier of brain and nervous system. Therefore, most of mind is in the so-called "unconscious".
Because this is so, it is possible to just live your life on the basis of the stimulation of this bodily entity, and to take from life the pleasure that you can.
Such is the choice that many make, because they do not understand what is on the other side of the barrier that is the body. Yet, the barrier is lifted at death,
when you fall into the domain of the so-called "unconscious".
Before death, you make mind.
After death, mind makes you.
Mind is your circumstance after death, and not just the thinking mind of your limited conscious awareness. The unconscious is your circumstance after death.
You know the potential in your life for dreams.
If you stay healthy and keep your mind focused on positive thoughts, perhaps you will not have bad dreams.
However, the nightmare is still potential all the time and after death you no longer have the physical means to prevent the unconscious from becoming conscious.
If you use the circumstance of the present body-mind as a means to purify the unconscious, or the mind that is outside the realm of the brain and that is presently cut off by the brain, then the mechanisms of the unconscious will not control your destiny after death.
On the other hand, if you use your lifetime simply as an opportunity to indulge in bodily-based existence, you do nothing but add to the sum total of karma in the unconscious, which then becomes your destiny.
length: 15:23 event date: December 12, 1988 views: 3101 In a sobering discourse, Adi Da speaks of the condition after death in which mind determines one's circumstance, without the limitations of the body, brain and unconsciousness. He addresses the fact that where one's attention is fixed during life affects attention and destiny after life. He recommends that devotees direct their attention to sadhana so that the purification process gives one wisdom that frees one from karmic limitations.
This talk is published as "After Death, Mind Makes You", in the book, Easy Death.
AUDIO
The Cosmic Mandala length: 06:09 event date: 1982 listens: 3796 In this 1982 talk (available on the CD, The Cosmic Mandala), Adi Da speaks about what is required — in the death process, and in life — in order to transcend the mechanism of attention and Realize the Divine Self-Condition.
In this talk excerpt, Adi Da tells us that, to Realize permanent Happiness, we can make use of the natural motivation toward release from un-happiness.
In the death process, He recommends engaging the discipline of relaxation and release of the hold on body, mind, and all states of attention, thereby surrendering and transcending fear.
length: 25:38 event date: September 18, 2004 views: 5767 Throughout the years of His Divine Avataric Teaching-Revelation, Avatar Adi Da spoke at length in response to devotees' questions on all subjects relative to the human circumstance — including death, and all the sorrow and fear inherent in the circumstance of human mortality.
This video excerpt is from an Avataric Discourse given by Adi Da on September 18, 2004. In this Discourse, Adi Da points out that all fear is fear of death or fear of extinction. This fear is like a constant background noise, from which we constantly try to distract ourselves with the games of life. Adi Da describes the choice we face: to live in fear, the "native mood of the ego" — or to realize the profundity of the inherently fearless Condition.
Avatar Adi Da calls us to a surrendered life that is about Realization and all that is relevant to Realization, including compassionate service. Such a surrendered life is the key to an "easy" death.
This DVD compilation of ten talks spans thirty-four years of Avatar Adi Da's Work. It includes His compassionate Instruction about: - the sorrow of loss - the fear of death - serving the dying person - how to practice during and beyond the death process - the Ultimate Demonstration of Divine Translation (or Most Perfect Realization of the deathless Condition).
From His Perfect Disposition of Absolute Freedom, Avatar Adi Da Samraj reveals the greater process within which death occurs, and the Ultimate Demonstration of What Is, Prior to life and death.
[This video clip is a longer version of another video clip we posted in September, 2013.]
length: 12:59 event date: October 12, 2004 views: 3015 In this excerpt from an Avataric Discourse from October 12, 2004, on Adi Da Samrajashram, Adi Da addresses the inevitability of death, the life of profound purpose that outshines mortality, and how living life as a sacrifice in the Divine is the key to the death process.
part 1 of Death Is a Living Process length: 02:47 views: 3961 Adi Da recites "The Heart of Understanding", the Prologue to His autobiography, The Knee Of Listening. "The Heart of Understanding" also is the Prologue to His book, Easy Death.
The recitation is accompanied by photos of Adi Da.
"The Heart of Understanding" is extraordinarily good news: death itself can be transcended! The death of the body-mind is not a problem, and is utterly acceptable, if one realizes and stands as Consciousness Itself, in which all mortal forms and limited worlds are arising.
In the final words of "The Heart of Understanding", Adi Da reveals that He is That: Consciousness Itself. Because this is so, He transmits that Revelation to all beings, and provides (and is) the means whereby all of us finally can be free of mortality and the mortal vision.
This excerpt is track 1 of the CD, Death and the Purpose of Existence, a collection of talks and recitations that exemplify Avatar Adi Da’s essential Wisdom-Teaching on death and dying.
part 3 of Death Is a Living Process length: 16:00 event date: February 11, 2015 views: 2951 An excerpt from the February 11, 2015 Adidam Webinar, "Death Is A Living Process". In this clip, Angelo Druda talks about the stages of death, based on Adi Da's wisdom in His book, Easy Death, and the familiar stages of grief introduced in the groundbreaking work of Elizabeth Kubler-Ross.
To view the entire "Death Is a Living Process" webinar, click here.
Angelo Druda has conducted seminars on Easy Death for thousands of people around the world for over two decades. He is a certified practitioner of Traditional Chinese Medicine, a member of the Australian Natural Therapist Association, and a senior educator in Mate Moce, the Ministry established by Adi Da Samraj to instruct human beings about the death process, and serve their transition. He is the author of The Tao of Rejuvenation and The Easy Death Workbook.
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.
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.
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.
Tom Closser
A
Devotee's Journey into Death and Back
— In December 1983, two months after Adi Da's arrival
at Adi Da Samrajashram (on the island of Naitauba in
Fiji), an accident occurred that would have been fatal
without Avatar Adi Da's Intervention. The story of that
incident is told by two people: Frans Bakker, one of
the doctors involved; and Tom Closser, the devotee to
whom the accident occurred, who describes his near-death
experience, and a profound lesson about how "guilt"
can become a self-destructive impediment to growth.
A
Cosmic Journey — At the time
of this story, Connie Mantas worked with the
dying. Connie was taken through a remarkable,
visionary experience by Avatar Adi Da. Through
silent instruction, He guided her through the
patterns of conditional existence that are experienced
in the death transition, for a very unusual
"near-death experience"—
that suggested to Connie a greater purpose to
a human lifetime than the usual one of self-fulfillment.
Connie Mantas
3. 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 earliest 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.
"Be
Fearless!" — John Bent tells the
story of Adi Da Samraj's great Blessing Work with
His devotee, Tamara Mcphail (who was John's intimate
partner from 1999 until her death in 2002).
John Bent and Tamara Mcphail
Angelo Druda
"Send
Him My Love and Blessings"
— Angelo Druda tells a miraculous story of the Blessing-Power
of Avatar Adi Da Samraj — the Power that transcends space
and time, body and mortality — to
serve Bernie Kelly's passing, and communicate the Love
of the Divine Heart to the need of the human heart.
4.
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 Enlightenment.
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.
Therefore, in the face of the death of an other, be confounded
— and be moved to Real God. Remain sensitive to your
present relationship with that one who has been irrevocably
transformed before your eyes. Let the grosser part return
to the dis-union of original elements. But remain free and
Happy, allowing that one to be a blissful sacrifice in the
mystery that also obliges you. Hold on to no thing and no
one, not even your apparently individual self. Be certain
of no knowledge. Be the sacrifice of all conditions in every
moment — and (thus) abide in Communion with the Eternal
Truth (Wherein the root of your independence is eternally
hidden, and your common Identity is always already Revealed).
In this manner, you will affirm and participate in the Eternal
Existence in Which all appear: Surrender into Infinity with
all your friends, and hold on to no thing or condition that
ever appears. Forget all things in present-time Happiness,
and so forgive the universe for all its playful changes. Always
love one another — and (thus) forgive one another for
appearing, for changing, and for passing out of present sight.
So be it.
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.
The
Living Divine Light — Scott Belanger tells the story of the last
days in the lifetime of his father, Serge Belanger
— from December, 2016 to March, 2017 —
and how Scott helped enable Adi Da's Grace to enter
into his father's life in those final moments.
Serge Belanger
Leroy Stilwell
About
the Death Transition—
Leroy Stilwell provides a vivid example of the importance
of holding the three-day vigil for the death transition,
as recommended by Adi Da.
Feeling
Without Limitation — Elizabeth: "As
I sat in the church, I was feeling Beloved Adi Da throughout
my body and radiating beyond my body, by His grace. My
eyes ran tears for the entire funeral service; but I was
deep in the Heart, feeling everyone and their profound
sorrow — and suddenly I noticed:
there was no problem! Waves of deep love and sorrow flowed
through me, seemingly radiating to everyone and beyond."
Elizabeth Midwikis
Mono Lake
True
Water— Wayne
Owens tells the story of how his very ill brother received
Adi Da's Grace, in response to Wayne's prayers.
Serving
the transition of dying animals—
People often wonder what to do when their
pet, or another animal, is dead or dying. Adi Da Samraj
has given instruction on the death process for humans
in His book Easy
Death. The process is essentially the same for
non-humans yet there are unique points to consider in
serving the death of animals, including whether euthanasia
is appropriate.
"No
Fish Is To Die"
— Jeff Polson tells of the lessons he received about
mortality and compassion from Adi Da, while caring for
the Master's fish.
About
ghosts— Leroy
Stilwell presents Adi Da's wisdom about ghosts, along
with a "ghost story" by Anne Rogers.
length: 15:15 event date: October 3, 2004 views: 4834 Adi Da Samraj talks about the pain of loss, and about liberation. This is in response to a devotee's question about the Devotional Prayer Of Changes and the death of the devotee's grandchild.
This video excerpt is from the DVD, Easy Death. Subtitles in English, French, Italian, German, Dutch, Polish, Czech, and Hebrew.
length: 10:43 event date: May 31, 1980 views: 2073 In this discourse from May 31, 1980 at The Mountain Of Attention, a student of Avatar Adi Da asks Him for suggestions to help her dying mother. Adi Da then responds both with compassion and also with very practical advice on how to serve the dying.
length: 10:38 event date: October 6, 2005 views: 1675 Excerpt from an Avataric Discourse given by Adi Da Samraj on October 6, 2005, at the Mountain Of Attention Sanctuary.
ADI DA: "I find people's sorrows and losses to be heartbreaking and terrible and an immense burden and I am sympathetic and bless people in their trouble. However you must understand that is the nature of this place. This is not utopia, it is not paradise. It is a place of death, endings, suffering, brief amusements. It is not enough and merely to react to your difficulties for overlong and try to make an entire life out of it is fruitless. You do have to move on beyond that reaction to any moments suffering and loss. You must know the place you’re in and live in accordance with that knowledge instead of being sympathetic with some false view of the world or self or trying to idealize some aspect of potential experience, indulging in what amounts to addictions, repetitions of experiences, in order to avoid the knowledge of what is inherent in life, as well as all the hell that is coming on earth and is here. You will not be fulfilled.”
part 4 of Death Is a Living Process length: 16:07 event date: February 11, 2015 views: 3153 An excerpt from the February 11, 2015 Adidam Webinar, "Death Is A Living Process". In this clip, Rachel Kuhn talks about serving her mother's death, after her mother had suffered with multiple sclerosis for many years. She tells a story of how love overwhelmed the fear of death and the trauma of living a difficult life.
To view the entire "Death Is a Living Process" webinar, click here.
Death
Is a Freedom-Ritual of Self-Sacrifice — This passage
is an excerpt from Avatar Adi Da's literary masterwork,
The
Mummery Book. It also appears in the Epilogue
of Adi Da's book, Easy
Death (and is republished from the Easy
Death website). The protagonist of The Mummery
Book, Raymond Darling, speaks his final resolution
of the problem of life and death, which he has uncovered
and investigated throughout his story.
The "world" is in a state of utter bewilderment because of
egoity. Egoity, "point of view", separateness, "self"-contraction
— such is the basis of human design in the mummery of
the ordinary "world". In that circumstance of ego-made awareness,
people seek The Divine. They are moved to seek The Divine
because the egoic life is the very form of suffering. The
egoic life inevitably becomes associated with all the modes
of suffering. The search for a philosophical resolution to
the "problem" of the suffering of separateness is inevitably
pursued, and, on that basis, "solutions" to the suffering
are sought-including the search for the "solution" that is
described as "Union" (or "Re-Union") with The Divine.
Human beings are in a vulnerable position. Human beings are
born into an "experiential" circumstance in which all kinds
of apparent separations can take place-harm can come to them,
death can occur seemingly at random, and others upon whom
they depend can be separated from them (or can be indifferent
to them).
What human beings must Realize is The Prior Unity of all-and-All. You must Awaken to a fundamental emotional
sense of Inhering in Indivisible Reality Itself — Which
does not kill you, does not separate from you. Such is the
fundamental nature of Spiritual awareness.
Merely entertaining "religious" beliefs or imagined ideas
of "God" is not sufficient to truly "cure" the stress of vulnerability.
There must be actual Real-God-Realization, actual Realization
of The Prior Unity of all-and-All-Direct Realization of The
Indivisible Coincidence of Self-Radiant Energy and Self-Existing
Consciousness.
Avatar Adi Da Samraj, "Perfect Adidam", The
Aletheon
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".
Your practice must go on through death. You must respond
whether anybody else does or not, whether the "world" changes
or not. Your practice must not depend on that. Once you respond
to Me, and My Teaching Word is understood, then you simply
must go on with it, even through death, regardless of what
takes place in the "world".
People feel there are so many conditions of existence that
seem to be justifying reaction rather than the response to
the Divine, or that are too overwhelming and seem to justify
too much negativity and ego-possession to permit the response
to God and the development of a responsible life, a life of
Divine Communion. As a result, their response is minimal,
remains at the beginning stages, and grows slowly.
The "world" situation is dreadful, but why is it dreadful?
Because of what has traditionally been called "ignorance",
or, in other words, the absence of response to Reality Itself,
to the Divine. Where there is no such response, where (in
fact) there is this contraction of which I speak, there are
obviously going to be all kinds of "problems", all kinds of
limitations, all kinds of "cause-and effect" motions established,
based on contraction, and (therefore) creating limitation
and suffering.
You can observe what is "causing" all this suffering. The
"causes" are the things done by people (and other conditional
entities and forces) in a contracted state. But the ultimate
"cause" — and it does not really have a direct "cause-and-effect"
relationship to things — the ultimate, fundamental "cause"
is the lack of response, a lack of surrender, a lack of inherence
in the Divine. That being absent, and, rather, a contraction
being there in its place, this contracted entity-force is
moving, "causing" all kinds of "effects", and trapping itself,
being bewildered, seeing itself being trapped in a great machine,
in which everything and everyone is similarly reacting rather
than responding, contracting rather than surrendering.
There is really only one Way, and that is to surrender completely,
respond completely to the Divine, depend absolutely on the
Divine, Inhere completely in God, without any concerns whatsoever.
Through your complete surrender, every aspect of yourself
becomes a conduit, a place of Divine Activity, Divine Influence.
So, surrender itself is sufficient. Everything else is Done
by Divine Grace. As soon as the Divine acquires a conduit,
It Does all the work.
Avatar Adi Da Samraj, November 11, 1980
My Appearance does not limit you. The appearance of any other
human being limits you. Mine does not. This is also fundamental
to your devotional recognition
of Me. Your right recognition of Me is such that even
if you did not perceive Me in the likeness of this human Manifestation,
you would still devotionally recognize Me. It is still Me.
This is why, while you are alive in human form, you must devotionally
recognize Me and Commune with Me in all of My Forms, at every
level of recognition. This gives you the strength, the capability
beyond this "world" — beyond death — to participate
in the Transcendental Spiritual process of devotional Communion
with Me, where you may (possibly, though not necessarily)
be shifted out of any association with this human likeness.
Your devotional recognition of Me will still permit you to
recognize Me — in that place, in that state, in that moment
— As I Am, and in some other Form that is not associated with
this human likeness. But you may also see this Appearance
or a transformed version of It. You will always "Know" Me.
Avatar Adi Da Samraj, September 9, 1984
Death is not an explanation. Life, itself, is never, finally,
explained. What follows the present life is not an after-death
of explanation — but, only more of life, itself. Continued.
Unexplained. And only this — mere more of life. Until, the
Living Light — the Brightness That Is Consciousness, Itself
— Outshines the ceaseless life-time of separate ego-"I".
And Only That Outshining Brightness Un-explains the Unexplainable
— by Disappearing all the living mind that asks to be explained.
You should be so focused in the Love-Bliss you Realize in
My Company that, in effect, you will almost swoon through
this life — not disregarding it, but, even as you participate
in it, feeling beyond it so profoundly that you hardly
even notice your death. Be so focused in My Love-Bliss
that life is a profound devotional Communion with Me for you,
in which even all the stages between human birth and that
transition place evaporate because of the intensity of your
adoration of the Living One.
Avatar Adi Da Samraj
"Be Drawn into the Swoon of Infinite Love-Bliss"
For My true devotee, the life-process is constantly volunteered
and freely allowed to be the moment to moment death-process
of the apparently separate "self" (or the psycho-physically-patterned
illusion of ego-"I").
In both life and death, the single process of devotion to
Me is the whole-bodily-searchless Beholding of Me — Which
Is, Ultimately, the "Perfect Practice" of devotional and Transcendental
Spiritual Communion with Me.
In the Context of That "Perfect Practice" of Communion with
Me, Divine Translation Is Demonstrated.
There need be no concern at all about whether conditional
existence continues or vanishes in this instant.
As long as conditions arise, there is, for My devotee, only
the process of whole-bodily-recognition-responsive devotional
turning to Me.
There should be no reluctance, no "self"-contraction, relative
to thismoment being the moment of Divine Translation,
in which all conditions are Outshined.
Such Is the Intrinsic Freedom of true devotion to Me — the
Freedom from clinging to conditional existence.
Even though death rules to here,
There Is an Indivisible Eternal Sun Over-head.
And that Eternal Sun Is —
Beyond even all conditional visibility.
I have Come to Confirm This to you — each and all — Absolutely.
I Am That Eternal Sun — the (Self-“Bright”) “Midnight
Sun”, apparently (and Infinitely) Above all-and-All, and Always
Already Free-Standing, Beyond (or Perfectly Prior to) all-and-All.
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 Kübler-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.
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