Adi Da: Mortality, death, and beyond: Common questions of spiritual beginners

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Q: What can we do about the fact of our own mortality? What does happen after we die? In what way — precisely — does how we live impact what happens to us after we die? What is the best way to live in order to serve tangible spiritual growth, as well as our destiny after death?

Part 1: You CAN'T take it with you

You CAN'T Take It With You Does your life have a purpose? If so, is it one that isn't going to get instantly ripped off when you die? Many of us spend our lives denying death, allowing ourselves to be completely consumed and distracted by our responsibilities, our indulgences, and our search for things we cannot take with us after death in any overt form (knowledge, accomplishment, fame, or friendship). But death is still coming. We get little support from culture, society, biology, or even conventional religion for becoming adequately prepared; indeed, we are actively discouraged from even considering the matter. In Western society, the “dying business” at best tends to help us come to the point of acceptance of death (which already should be true for us right now). And the “death business” tends to assist the living go on living rather than assist the dead in their transition, as more informed cultures do.

The ultimate key to freedom and happiness in life, in death, and beyond death, is not a matter of manipulating mind, body, or spirit; such techniques have limited potential by themselves. Instead, the ultimate key is based on linking up with the Divine Reality which is always present, and which transcends life and death, and, through that connection, allowing the Divine Reality Itself to set us free.

Perfect Happiness is not about changing ourselves or our situation. It is about Awakening altogether from the dream of being a separate, limited self — who is living, who is dying, who is suffering, who is stuck on the wheel of re-birth. We can make all kinds of improvements while we are asleep, to our dream character or our dream circumstance, but none of those changes in the dream represents the same radical freedom as does Waking Up from the dream. The great revelation of Enlightenment is that, in Reality, there are no separate selves; there is only One Being, the Divine Being. Divine Enlightment is to Wake Up out of the dream of mortality as the One Divine Being, in Whose Consciouness the realms of life and death are being dreamed spontaneously.

Avatar Adi Da Samraj 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.

It’s not merely the state of the world at the present time — which, of course, is dreadful — but it’s not merely that which confronts you and suggests that perhaps you should become serious. Even if it were not as chaotic as this, the great profundity still confronts you and you could embrace it — or you could continue to ignore it. . . . The same profundity that exists in death is right now. The vortex of fire exists right now. And the fundamental Light exists right now.

Easy Death

recommended reading: You CAN'T Take It With You

Part 2: You WILL take it with you

You WILL Take It With You What will occur after we die? This question can be answered, on the basis of a large body of reports across the centuries — on near-death experiences, experiences with the dying, after-life experiences, reincarnation experiences, paranormal phenomena, the experiences of sleeping and dreaming, and the direct awareness and report of Spiritual Masters — as well as by studying the laws of the psyche as we observe it in life, to predict its destiny after death. The report is not all roses, though. In fact, its conclusion is that there is life after death, and re-birth, but it is also likely that we are going to suffer greatly during the period between lives, unless we develop, during our lifetime, a powerful Spiritual practice that truly links up with God.

Reported near-death experiences tend to be positive because they are only near-death experiences, and thus generally include only the earliest events in the after-death sequence (for instance, the Vision of the Divine Light). But they don’t tend to report what occurs after that in the actual death process, because the experiencers return to life instead at that point.

There are endless lifetimes, an endless wheel of births and deaths, until we Wake Up. Between lives there is an extended process of purification that we go through before reincarnate. We don’t simply go straight to some fixed place called “heaven”, “hell”, or “purgatory”. We go through a series of dreamlike events, some positive (even the Vision of the Divine Light) and some negative (even very hellish experiences). What determines these events is how we have lived our lives.

Being conventionally “good” will not get us into “heaven”. (Which is not to say that you can be conventionally “bad” and get into "heaven", either!) The full expression of the great Spiritual law (summarized by Jesus and other great Spiritual Masters) is to love God, then love all others. If we do (or rather, try to do) the second without doing the first (which requires first finding God for real; otherwise to speak of “loving God” is meaningless), we are not fulfilling that fundamental law. Finding and communing with God, who is Love, allows us to be Love, in turn, and fulfill the second part of the law.

If we do not learn how to find and commune with God while alive, then we will not be able to stay in communion with God, when the Vision of God appears (fairly early on in the after-death sequence). We will then go through a series of dreams determined by what was our “unconscious” in life, but which is now our environment (as when we are in a dream); the physical body has dropped off, and we are now in a realm of pure mind.

It is commonly said that human beings do not know about death, since nobody has come back to tell about it. Of course, this is false. Many people have died and been revived, and their reports are very revealing. Likewise, many reliable individuals devoted to one or another form of Spiritual practice have enjoyed and subsequently communicated about the subtle and Transcendental aspects of human existence, all of which relate to the process of death and one's destiny beyond it.

What people truly mean when they say they do not know about death is that they do not know exactly what will follow it in their own case. But the generalized attitude of no-knowledge about death only provides an emotional excuse for avoiding confrontation with the reality of death and the necessity to study it and prepare for co-operation with its process.

The death process, like all the common events of human experience, is clearly available for you to witness in others and to study as a common as well as a personal physical or psycho-physical event. You can and must prepare for that event, even as you normally prepare for other great events, such as childbirth, or an operation, or a test of knowledge and skills relating to a profes-sion. Just so, like every individual, you have many experiences during your lifetime that clearly duplicate at least some of the psycho-physical aspects of the death process. These include the regular act of going to sleep, the experiences endured during periods of illness, and the progressive revelation enjoyed via a lifetime of meditation. Also, many people are given remarkable experiences that reveal and demonstrate to them the actualities of the death process. I Myself have had such experiences, including complete duplication of the death process, leading to emergence from the physical body, the mind-self, and this world, as well as to rebirth, or eventual resumption of psycho-physical existence.

Therefore, you should not presume that you do not and cannot know about the death process. You can and must know about that process, and you must prepare for it through psycho-physical self-study. Even if you do not come to know in advance exactly what will follow your own death, you can know about and do preparatory exercises in the death process itself, since it involves the familiar processes of your present body-mind. And you can, while still alive in this world, enter into the profound practices of esoteric Spirituality, wherein you can Realize your Real Condition and Ultimate Destiny as well as the actual structures of your experiential existence.

recommended reading: You WILL Take It With You

Part 3: You CAN take it with you

You CAN Take It With You What can we take with us after we die? True wisdom takes into account both the fact of our mortality and what we are likely to carry with us after death, and uses the course of a lifetime proactively, for the purpose of understanding our limits, linking up now with That which is greater than life and death, and developing the Spiritual capabilities necessary to pass through death and the after-death process Gracefully:

Our connection to (and distraction by) the Divine Presence must become stronger than our tendency to be distracted by all manner of mind-forms which will otherwise (apparently) draw us out of the Presence of God after death.
Our transcendence of fear (and our self-understanding altogether) must be great enough that the mind-forms which otherwise can form the stuff of “hells” after death do not cause us to contract, and separate from Divine Communion.
Ultimately — as is also acknowledged in such traditions as Tibetan Buddhism (and such texts as The Tibetan Book of the Dead) — we must be in a position where we can directly recognize all that arises after death as our own mind-forms (as in a dream). This cannot be accomplished merely intellectually; it is a profound Spiritual Realization.

What is required to wake up? What can you do within the dream to wake up? Nothing. There is only the waking itself. All actions within the dream are forms of the dream itself. Waking is another process, and it occurs by other means, by already conscious means. The Guru is not a symbol, a condition of the dream itself. Such a one cannot wake you up. The Guru is the Light of Consciousness, the very Self, already awake, functioning alive. The Guru appears in human form within the dream of life, not to console you, but to awaken you through the crisis of real consciousness. The true Guru is a frustration to the unconscious condition of the dream.

The waking state is simply a "radically" different condition from the dream. That is why you feel free of the dream upon waking. The Guru appears in the midst of the dreams of ordinary waking life like sunlight in the morning. When you are still dreaming, still asleep, the sun comes up. It gets brighter and brighter, and the light comes into the room. At last, the light, the day itself, becomes sufficient to wake you, and then, all of a sudden, you are not dreaming, and everything is all right. The Guru is simply that sunlight process, that intensification, rising on you always, without any other special activity. The Guru's relationship to you, your condition of relationship to the Guru, just that relationship, is sufficient to wake you up. It is the kiss of the Prince and Sleeping Beauty. Such is understanding.

The Divine Siddha-Method Of The Ruchira Avatar

recommended reading: You CAN Take It With You

Part 4: The Way of Divine Realization is the Way beyond mortality

Communion with the Divine Person — the One Being Who is Awake — is the only way beyond mortality and the otherwise endless cycle of births, deaths, and limitations on happiness. We will only be able to commune with the Divine Person after death, if we have spent our lifetime doing the same. The Way of Adidam is all about this extraordinary possibility. Adidam is not merely a matter of practicing techniques by oneself. The Way of Adidam is possible only because the humanly present Spiritual Master, Avatar Adi Da Samraj, is Transmitting the Divine Reality unceasingly to all beings. The fact that He is here in human form is what allows Adi Da Samraj's Transmission to be be directly and tangibly received by human beings. The practice of Adidam allows otherwise ordinary human beings to enter into a Spiritual relationship with Adi Da Samraj. Such a relationship, fully lived, allows us to take advantage of that Divine Transmission, to the degree of real transformation and Spiritual Realization, by becoming absorbed in (and ultimately Identified with) the Divine Reality and Person.

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.

June 20 and 28, 2001
(excerpts from instructions to a dying devotee)

recommended reading: Avatar Adi Da Samraj, Easy Death

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All excerpts from the works of Avatar Adi Da Samraj and and pictures of Avatar Adi Da Samraj © 2011 The Avataric Samrajya of Adidam Pty Ltd, as trustee for The Avataric Samrajya of Adidam. All rights reserved. Perpetual copyright claimed.