Ram Dass – Here and Now – Ep. 176 – Loving & Dying

[Music] this is ramdas here and now i'm raghu marcus and this week we have another edition of the podcast that follows a little bit in the wake of the wonderful alan watts ramdas combination podcast that we did a couple of weeks ago it was the last podcast in the here and now series boy did we get wonderful response and it was great for all of us to hear rahm das and and alan together in in one podcast you get the real feel of each of their perspectives so what we've done is put together real nuggets from ramdas's core teachings around death and dying and there is a reason for that because we have this incredible new podcast from mirabai bush who is many of you know of course mirabai and she has been she's part of the love serve remember foundation board she's the chair she has been working in uh had a wonderful organization still has called contemptible contemplativemind.org and and she was with us in india when ramadas went back the second time walking each other home that is the name of the book that she and ram das did that mirabai actually wrote after spending um much time with ramdas on a day-to-day basis in his home in maui and we thought oh well this is an opportunity to go back to some of the subject matter from the book using and and in the book much of what we are doing in terms of this compilation of material is reflected in the book so that's the reason for being grazon and we're going to do a fun thing too because nearby's first guest is john densmore john who played drums for the doors and he wrote a new book called the seekers it's all of his fantastic experiences with all sorts of legendary figures from music business and on and we're going to give that book away we're going to do a giveaway and all you got to do is listen to mirabai listen to the first podcast with john and then go to itunes or apple podcast and leave a rating and a review automatically you will be entered to win one of john's books and it'll be announced on march 17th so and it'll help out to getting miraby's podcast on the boards as they say so back to the compilation so that they're just i know these very well as i've been so closely associated with working with the material of course our expert nathan wilburn put this together for us and the first thing that's up is it's called love loss and soul and it's ramadan actually reading a letter he wrote to some people a family who had a a son that died in a swimming accident in hawaii and you know there's no even accounting for what they were put through you know young man early twenties and what ramdas said is so fantastic and uh we i don't know i i've sent it myself to a number of people who have had similar experiences and just wanted to know what ramdas might have said about it so um yeah this this is something to to refer to for anybody who has had most especially someone in the family a younger person or a younger friend or anything like that um this is just uh right on the mark from ramdas and then uh the next one is about grief and being with dying people i mean ramdas used to say all the time when we would talk about this it's just a matter of being a loving rock and that always meant to me to be completely solid not falling into the fear of dying being with a person who is dying and that of course takes much work on our parts to be able to get into the place where you we are not grasping at holding on to what we think is the reality of a body and uh nothing more so and the loving part is uh of course just sitting there and and just focusing on what ramadas used to call loving awareness doing a loving awareness meditations everything that you are relating to everything that you are seeing around you is simply from a completely non-judgmental place and a place where you're standing behind any preferences and then you can be that loving wrong he talks also there's one called karma and death and that you know talks about what we've accrued over lifetimes and how we can be an advantage point of letting it run off without judgment without hanging on without the grasping clinging that is our day-to-day uh lot as humans which we have to accept um but you know you get to the point this is the work that one needs to do way in front away before you get to the point where you're in your advanced years and much more better to do the practices that uh we can realize when like he's talking about karma we can realize how we are creating karma through grasping and clinging and how uh that certainly is uh affects us in that moment when we leave this planet oh hold on tightly let go lightly is the next piece and it's placing inside oneself or finding the place inside oneself that is not afraid and realizing that balance by opening to the making friends with the mystery as as hiroshi halifax might say it so yeah dealing with fear and then the last one is is is uh god it's so inspired the way that ram does just relates making peace with deaths and again appreciating the cycle of living and dying he said see it is a culminating adventure and and the reality is the work that we do and i've i guess i'm reiterating something that i really feel is important which is starting to work on this not when you're in your 60s 70s but when you're you start to realize there is a path and that you are on this path and you are following your intuition you are trusting that place inside that knows that you are not the body you are not the mind stops believing in the stories that one would tell oneself and that over that period of time that kind of work allows for a real acceptance and a realization that working through all of these aspects of attachment and fear will really dissolve some of those um very very pernicious gr the pernicious grip i can't even say pernicious grip of of attachment of the kalashas the obscurations greed anger and it is through the transformation of of all of these formulations that we can finally get into a place where we're not walking around fearing especially when we get into middle age but people leave at any point during the during a lifetime and you never know and so very very much the opportunity is always there to work on that aspect and to realize it cultivate the many ways that we are not mind body and emotions and and the key thing ramadan says here is in one of these little nuggets the way that is understood in the morning this is this kind of the close of becoming nobody film the way that is understood in the morning we can gladly die in the evening and that's exactly reflects what i've been talking about which is starting at a very very as soon as you know there is a path that's the starting point and so this is just all great great information and again i urge you to check out nearby bush's walking each other home podcast just check in at be here now network sign up and uh put your email in there they'll give you a notification when that's going to be happening but uh i believe i know it's going to be happening march 4th i'm going to take a wild shot at that and don't forget you can get one of john densmore's books called the seekers john densmar for the doors and uh just listen to the podcast and go to itunes and leave a rating and a review and you'll automatically be uh part of the possibility of getting a free book sent to you okay that's it for the moment and this is ramdas here and now on be here now net we're going to be here now network dot com so many great podcasts are going on there and uh from jack cornfield to christendos to sharon salzberg and joseph goldstein and me me mind rolling check it out we'll see you next week i received a letter in april from a man who was a um he worked on the assembly line in detroit at the autumn of ford motor company and he said that his son 23 years old had gone to hawaii on a vacation with some friends and was snorkeling uh looking underwater at the fish with a tube and about after they'd been there for a while it was the first time for all of them son was a very healthy athlete and a good swimmer they saw him just uh staying down a long time and they found that he had uh drowned and his um he he was brain dead uh and uh they put him on a respirator and the father flew to hawaii and [Music] uh at great expense of fifty thousand dollars flew him back in an ambulance plane to the united the mainland and then after a few weeks when he was brain dead finally had to be responsible to pull the plug on the respirator and then watch his son die and um he talked about what a wonderful boy this boy was what a wonderful job he had he was a very devoted son uh he would never leave home he'd never stay out late at night without calling home so that his parents wouldn't or wouldn't worry and he said they say that god is perfect but all i can think of is that god made a mistake i cannot believe there would be any good reason for him to allow this to happen and then he said three lives have been destroyed not just one my wife is a truly great woman and she did not deserve this i'm 60 years old and she's 50. he was our future and now everything seems futile and empty and i wake up crying every morning and then he says i feel it's cruel to send my son off into eternal life because he doesn't know anyone there only his grandparents and my wife's side are there before him but he never knew them because they passed away while he was very young uh to think of him as lonely makes it unbearable for me i pray you can give me some insight and understanding as to why this has happened and where he is now and he said i wish to people keep explaining this incident as an accident i don't believe this was an accident i can reiterate eight or nine things that happened as i look back over the months that preceded this tragedy and we see that it was all leading up to the occurrence i won't go into them now but i think something was there etc okay so um i won't read the whole letter i wrote to him but i'll read some of it i feel such pain for the loss that you and your wife have suffered the grief that parents experience the loss of a child is perhaps the deepest grief of all because it seems to upset the natural order of things what i can share with you from a spiritual vantage point cannot really allay your grief perhaps however it may allow you and your son to know each other in another way and that other way of knowing may give balance to the grief uh then i go on to say that because your son was attractive and was your son and so warm and vibrant you got to know him through his uniqueness and his separateness there is another way of knowing a person which we know through our intuitive heart this way of knowing one another is subtle and so it is often hidden behind the more obvious ways of knowing people through senses and thought but if we know what to look for and cultivate that intuitive way of knowing we find out for ourselves that we are each indeed more than just body and personality while no name is entirely satisfactory for this other dimension of ourselves for the purpose of our discussion the word soul will do and what is this soul it is a unique entity which when the time is right clothes itself in a personality and body to take birth on the physical human plane this personality and body are much like space suits for dwelling on earth can you hear me when i'm reading this inevitably in all but the rarest cases within a few years the infant becomes so strongly identified with its spacesuit that it loses its memory of its initial identity as a soul then we live out life engaged in our human vocations until our death when we leave behind the space suit and once again remember our true selves as souls now the soul itself has an agenda in taking birth as a human being it has certain work to do and complete while on the earth plane and it uses the body and personality to carry out this work and when the work is finished it leaves this plane the wisest beings with whom i have made contact in this lifetime all assure me that a soul leaves the physical plane neither a moment too early nor a moment too late now to us on earth who so strongly identify with our own bodies and personalities this is hard to understand to us because we have usually not listened deeply enough inside ourselves to know differently consider duration in life as an asset we tend to think of the earth plane as the be-all end-all so that we want to make it last as long as possible however once one begins to look at life from the soul's point of view the picture is quite different a human birth is a bit like enrolling in the fourth grade and we stay just as long as it is necessary to achieve what we need from that specific grade or form and then we are naturally ready to go on for further evolution by leaving this plane i can sense from your description of your son and from the pictures he sent me pictures the purity of his heart and the beauty of his soul and i suspect that though you considered his work on earth just at the beginning for his soul the work was completed even the manner of his leaving was part of his work now i realize that for you it is inconceivable that a son who would call when he was going to be late at night could possibly leave you in such a fashion by choice but you see it was not his personality's choice but his soul's choice his personality in fact would never be able to leave you because of the power of the bonds of human attached love that existed between you and your wife and him but the soul is not limited by human attached love because it knows and is joined to others by what is sometimes called the love that surpasseth understanding it is conscious or spiritual love it is the love that christ shares with his father it is the same love that binds you and keith together far more deeply than even the human love of father and son now when your grief is at its strongest it is hard to tune into this deeper love especially since it makes no rational sense however you already have intimations and later it will become much clearer to you that the true love that you and your son share is untouched by these recent events for the in the dimension where this love exists that is soul love there is neither coming nor going that love is not vulnerable to time or changes in form only when your mind will be quiet enough will your heart give you the reassurance that you seek that the essence of the love is still very much with you as i said at the outset this in no way will negate the pain of the loss of his form to which you were deeply attached but it will balance that loss with a new opportunity for now that his captivating form is no longer present you are more free to make contact with his soul especially as you are able to acknowledge your own do you hear that the question of whether your life has been destroyed by this event is another point that is touched by our discussion for your personality the pain is shattering and seemingly unbearable i have no doubt that you awaken crying and find life now meaningless such suffering is what the personality would avoid at all costs if it were able for your soul however it is an entirely different matter for your soul suffering is that which forces you to grow spiritually and brings you closer to awakening to whom you in truth are i realize even as i say all these things to you that it's really too much for me to ask of you that you understand the way in which the manner of your son's death was his soul's gift to your soul i suspect all that seems topsy-turvy to you but you did ask me how i understood such tragic events and this is my truth that i'm honored to share with you actually however from the tone of your letter the premonitions etc i suspect that you are more ripe to hear these things than even you suspect now as to how your son is i can only intuit that a moment after he left his body after leaving a thread of consciousness in his body for some weeks to give you a chance to get adjusted to the loss and giving you the opportunity to help him along the way he was filled with an indescribable light of the most profound love even though there were not people familiar to him from his day on earth to greet him there were many beings most familiar to his soul ready to welcome him but probably your suffering and attachment to him and sense of loss is felt by his soul although he now understands what has happened why it had to happen the way it did and why are you are suffering as you are i'm sure he is surrounding you with healing energy and as you're able to quiet your mind i suspect that you will feel it it of course acts to your benefit even if you don't feel it to the extent that you're able to sit quietly and just hang out with your son talking to him as you normally would about the many experiences you shared together but in doing so look to see the thread of spirit that pervaded each experience imagine that you and he are souls who met on earth this time as father and son how many times in your years together did the love between you nearly rend the veil of mystery that would have allowed you to recognize the truth of soul that lay at the root of your relationship it takes only a moment for two people to recognize their bond as souls for souls know no time and now even though your son is no longer embodied you and he can recognize one another in no way do i think there was an error on your part in removing the life support system your hand was guided by deeper forces of truth within yourself under such conditions we do what must be done let your mind be at ease about this were it not your son's time to leave his body there is no way you could have done what you did you were just playing your part grief is the um the realization of the loss of a dream um if you have a relationship with somebody you build an expectation and a model of what that of of reality with your mind and then when that is torn away when that person dies or leaves you or something happens the breaking of that expectation takes away your security so there's fear but also there is incredible feeling of loss of sadness of feeling incomplete because you built a sense of your completeness around living within your dreams and when the dream collapses it's as if your whole identity has died there's a there's a a mini death involved because we know ourselves in part through our relationships with all the people around us it's like when my father died last september i i went around to say to everybody now i'm an orphan yeah which is bizarre i mean i the word orphan doesn't usually seem relevant to somebody that's 58 years old you can't milk it much you know it's not like a little tyke that's an orphan but i i was an orphan and i but i saw that something very profound changed in me that up until then even though dad was 90 and i was definitely out on my own for many many years there was a way in which my identity in terms of elder and child and something changed and there was a loss of the security that came or the i security that came from being identified as always having somebody that was my elder and that was there to finally protect me or take care of me or something and it really is grieving is that grief is the mind's attempt to deal with the the breakdown of expectation and what you do to deal with grief is that at first you grab states of mind or grab models to try to make it go away or to counteract it because it has a feeling it's raw and it has emotional qualities that are that are very difficult to be with sometimes because they're they are interpreted as negative feelings sadness depression crying and the tricky or the art is not to grab prematurely to try to make it go away like a lot of people who break off in a relationship and then start to grieve over the loss of relationship react to their grieving by grabbing a new relationship and they're building the new relationship on the sand of the grieving of the old one and they haven't given it the space to run its course through to come out the other end so i'm inclined always to push people back into grief rather than to bring them out but not have any model about how people should grieve you know i don't feel that you gotta cry or you gotta open up or anything how do i know how you're supposed to grieve some people grieve very quietly and some people shriek and shy and cry and scream and rent their hair and their garments and stuff like that and i don't see that there's much difference in all that i don't think you've got to show emotion but i think there is a timing there is a healing process that goes on as you start to exist after the dream has died the model the relational concept and then after a while there's a kind of a natural way in which the raw ends kind of heal a bit and you start to find new ways of being in the universe and that's just very gentle and up until that time it's like a roller coaster a person gets very sad and then they seem to be all better he says oh you've dealt with it very well and you come up and you're all smiley and then suddenly it hits you again i mean it can hit you with seeing somebody's shoes or their old you know biscuit box or whatever i mean suddenly you're you know your you're it awakens it again until finally you can live with all this stuff and you can real the bitter sweetness and the the art of grief is not to see a lot of there's a little subtle thing about grief is where people feel that if i stop grieving i am betraying the person or the thing that left because i'm forgetting and i must remember or else i wasn't a true lover the extraordinary thing about it is that as you quiet down from the active process of grieving you quiet down and you listen and you begin to appreciate that the way in which you are with another person in love exists independent of coming and going even independent of death and all of those things and that you see that what you were grieving was at the plane at which you were a separate entity and there was separation at the plane at which there's unity sramana maharshi the saints said when he was dying of cancer and everybody said to him bhagwan bhagwan don't leave us don't leave us and he looked confused he says don't be silly where could i go i mean i'm just dropping the body i'm not going anywhere and so you realize that the grieving is part of the dramatic storyline of your separateness because you can't grieve something that didn't go anywhere and it's interesting because even if you break off with a lover and there's acrimony to the extent that there was even a moment of true love between the two of you of true transcendent oneness that's there that thing has no time and space connected with it we keep reducing relationships into time and space like if you love me you'd spend more time with me you wouldn't leave me i watched when maharaji people would come to maharaji the reason he said jaio so quickly was that what had to be transmitted between two human beings takes just that long i watched it i watched it happen i watched the minute if the person was ripe to come into a space of unconditional love for one flicker of a second there's the uh and then it's done and everything else of the collecting is lack of faith that what really happened really happened and it's very profound to me now and i that has tempered my life a lot because i now am not willing to spend as much time with people as i used to to reassure them that the love is there and i see it as their needfulness constantly do you love me how much time will you spend to me will you do this with me will you do that can i have more of you and it's because they can't get inside behind to the place where could we go from one another and i find it extremely interesting to love people more and more and awaken in them the feelings of love and then watch their minds take that and turn it into something that fear touches so that then they want to grab it and collect it and be testing it and being sure about it when you want to say it's here it's here we don't even have to see each other again and it's still here that's a big one to ask of people i understand that and you look at death and you see it's the heaviest melodrama going it's the one that sucks everybody in you might be very very spacious about everything ah working ah children are playing but you come to death and suddenly i'm dying at first when you were trying to get high you were trying to push away the things that brought you down then when you want to get free you see that the only things that bring you down are yourself nothing's bringing you down but your own attachments so that the things that get you in life are the secret they're the clue to your stash of attachments of mine and you begin to see how each thing that gets you is showing you where you're holding where you're still clinging to a model of this versus that of i want this but i don't want that i like this but i don't like that and the quietness of mind is standing behind preferences you stand behind this versus the that the yin versus the young the all of the polarities you stand in the one behind the two so now once you want to be free at first you want to hang out with people to keep you high later you want to confront the fires that catch you you want to purify through those fires you just find yourself drawn towards the things that are still catching you so that you can get to the point where you can be in them but not lost in them where you can keep your space even when you're in them and dying is one of the big ones that sucks everybody in and so part of the work is developing the ability to be with somebody that's dying or be dying yourself and stay very clear and very present because those that are from religions that focus on the moment of death which is most of the religions that have reincarnation in them see life as a preparation for the moment of death they see that and they see as don juan says that you keep death over your left shoulder you live each moment as if it's your last moment not in a kind of macabre uh horrible negative way but in a way in which each moment is is the one where if it's to be you a death moment it's ah here i am right and that'll be that moment and then the next moment is the what follows after the incarnation is what's created by the attachments of the moment of death so that those beings that are going to go into the white light are about three quarters of the way turned around before the moment of death they're already right here with all of it even before they die so that a lot of the work you're doing in a lifetime is the preparation for the moment of death and keeping death present enriches the moment of life that the optimum way to be healed is the optimum way to die which is your full consciousness but your full consciousness listens does what it can to preserve the precious human body but also allows what is to be and a lot of people lose it because they are so attached to which way it all goes all the time like i work with people that are having like a slow illness terminal illness and they're losing their motor abilities and their control sphincter controls and things and each stage they lose i watch some people who are able to open to the new stage and say ah so and those people don't suffer and then i watch somebody who looks at the shoes in the closet they'll never wear again and sits around feeling sorry because they can't wear those shoes anymore they're holding onto the model of who they were a moment ago a moment ago there was somebody wearing those shoes now they're not wearing those shoes the minute you let go into what is uh the minute you hold on to a model of what might be or what ought to be or what should be or what was suffering it's that disparity that creates the suffering so that any time there is suffering it's a clue to where your mind is holding and that's why you keep using suffering finally suffering is the tastiest clues about your stash it's a very interesting thing to play with and so with death just the people that open to each stage of consciousness and move with it don't suffer same way at all not at all and there's a whole other level of the game and that's what the tibetan book the egyptian book of the dead are about it's what all of the understanding of death as the deepest teaching of a lifetime it's the best vehicle for awakening if you only identify with that which dies why would you want a teaching at the time of death the minute you identify with the soul or with the awareness or with something else you can see that death from a curriculum point of view is one of the topics of the curriculum and the question is how much you can learn from that now some of us like me want to be around dying people because it's a way for me to work on my own attachments it's the same way as in southern buddhism they send the monks into the cemeteries to meditate on the decaying corpse on the uh different corpses states of the corpses in the uh cemetery in order to get them free of that attachment to body to see that the body changes and it decays well we don't we don't have that access in this culture so i like to work with people whose bodies are decaying because it gives me a chance to work with my reactions to that and see where my attachments are where my fears are to all that and then there are people who are facing a terminal illness who would like to be in a place where everybody doesn't get sucked into their drama it's interesting about how powerful that drama is so when i walk into a room i just start to be with another person and then we explore together whatever the drama is here's an example gene humans jean is a uh she's an awareness that was in a 62-year-old body of a quaker woman in boston very close to death she asked me to come and see her so i came to see her and i came up into the room her husband brought me up and then he left went downstairs and she said to me ramdas i finished my work on earth i want to die i want you to help me die now that statement could have come from channel 4 from seoul that would be like the tibetan llama who sends out postcards saying next thursday at 2 i'm leaving my body won't you come by for tea and you go and you have tea and then he turns around three times sits down goes into samadhi and leaves his body it could have come from there but intuitively i'm listening and feeling and it's not it's coming from her ego she's saying i've decided i've finished and i'm going to leave so my response to that was gene how do you know you're supposed to die yet maybe you're going to lose each sense sense by sense milk it for all you can it's a precious birth don't rush she said but ramdas i'm so bored you hear that one empty listen of course you're bored gene if you have to do anything full-time it's boring you got to die all day long couldn't you die like 10 minutes an hour you know do you have to be dying all it's interesting how dying is so preoccupying everybody gets caught and doing it all the time and it gets very dull she said but i feel as if there is everything is too much too much too much energy too much light people are too much everything is feels too much to me what i experienced was an image that as a person opens into gets closer to death and opens into these higher planes of consciousness they tune to more and more and more energy until the white light is all the energy in the universe and if you're holding on to who you think you are as the you open into these other planes it's too much energy it's like being a one quart container and trying to pour in two gallons of water so well gene gee that's because maybe because you're holding on too tight why don't we expand outward together gene gene and i sat there and i said you hear the clock ticking [Music] let's experience it inside of ourselves hear the children playing outside let's experience it inside of ourselves feel the counter pain under your fingertips experience it inside of yourself my voice inside of us and we just started to expand outward until it got very very spacious in the room whole the light of the room was a very purple color and i looked at her she was just radiant with light after a while i said she sat up and she started to hold me and caress my ear and we started a kiss and hug and it was like a celebration of form from the point of view of formless well i said well gene you know what i know probably i i won't see you again in this body so stay conscious and i left they called me this next morning at 7 30 her husband say she had died during the night and he said her dying was just like ink being poured into water it was just expanding outward he said i came away from her death with one of the deepest experiences of peace i'd ever had in my life but it's interesting that when it works when a person stays conscious through that transition if you're around them you end up feeling like you have been blessed you feel like you have just experienced incredible grace incredible grace of somebody who is just like christ did it showing you the ephemeral nature of the body from a quiet space now the karma that we have accrued over many lifetimes as we start to awaken in the middle of a lifetime not after death but in the middle of the lifetime like we are doing here then we start to live our lives consciously in such a way that we don't create new karma but the old karma keeps running off and it may run off for many lifetimes all right and even though you've prepared yourself right up to the moment of death so that you're ready to keep god in mind as you die at the moment when the ego structure starts to disintegrate and there is what is called the review or seeing your life flash before you and all the events that have happened in your life and the way in which you have loved or hurt or whatever you've done and passports all of it there is whatever karma is left will grab at that point and that grabbing will start to determine what your next work is in your next birth so that you can anticipate that although you get yourself very clear and very ready and very open and very flowing you don't necessarily wipe out all your karma you may still have more work to do but the difference is that when you die consciously openly going towards it there is no karma created by the death process itself for the clinging to life at the moment of death that yearning keeps creating life after life after life after life and it's at the point where you let go of physical plain existence that you can start to get on with it in terms of other work you have to do when mahatma gandhi was dying he walked out into his yard an assassin shot him three times our images of assassins in america think of kennedy brothers martin luther king and always there's horror and violence connected with it and we see we imagine if we can the moment that somebody's shot that they are stunned or confused gandhi had just as much time as any of the others when he shot and as he shot as he falls over he just says ram just he goes out on the name of god he's ready for his death because every moment of life is the moment of death and when you are deep enough into like vipassana meditation and you see thought being created preserved and destroyed you see the universe being born and dying over and over again with all your thoughts and you see that life is a series of many deaths and rebirths the whole process you see as death and birth not only seasons but thought forms and the universe as you created now perhaps the biggest fear of aging is the fear of death and as long as you are identified with your separateness and you think that's what you are you will have fear and if you cultivate the part of you that is not identified with your separateness you will have a place in you that is not afraid as well as the place in you that is afraid you'll have a balancing of those things and you might even get light enough a zen monk is dying and his he hasn't written his death poems and monks are supposed to write death poems and his students say to him master you haven't written your death poem yet and he says oh i haven't written my death poem and he grabs the brush and he calligraphies madly and he dies and it says birth is thus death is thus verse or no verse what's the fuss now my guru helped change my feelings about i mean i had had many experiences of what it called out of body experiences so i had a sense that i wasn't this body anyway but my guru was walking with one of his old devotees and he started my guru started to laugh and the old devotee said what are you laughing about he says well so and so this old woman devotee just died and the friend said what are you laughing about what are you some kind of a butcher and maharaji said to him what would you like me to do make believe i'm one of the puppets would you like me to make believe it's all that real the question is where does somebody go what happens it's a mystery when i sit with that mystery all the experiences i've had i don't even have a flicker of anything other than an appreciation that when we drop our body we just drop our body ramana maharshi is dying and the people say don't leave don't leave and he says don't be silly where could i go it's like i'm just selling the ford i'm not going anywhere you know no don't leave us don't leave us it's just a shift of and if you have loved somebody in the love that transcends form even for a moment you and they aren't going anywhere your mind may say they've gone but that's your mind the minute you quiet down go back into your heart they're right there again and love really does transcend death there's not even a doubt in my mind about it and you remember when i said to emmanuel my spook friend manuel what shall i tell people about dying he said tell him it's absolutely safe he said it's like taking off a tight shoe that's the world i live in so when i have a sense of who we are that is so much more vast buddhist said do you know how many times you have taken birth like this he said imagine a mountain six miles long six miles wide and six miles high and every hundred years a bird flies over the mountain with a silk scarf in its beak and it runs the scarf across the mountain once every hundred years in the length of time it would take the scarf to wear away the mountain that's how long you've been doing this sure gives you a different perspective doesn't it about time and the meaning of life can you see a life as so precious and beautiful and still learn how to hold on tightly let go lightly how to not cling to it how to be open to the mystery and open to the next part of it by saying okay and now this and now this in the tibetan tradition when you're dying you are trained to stay in the moment instead of the model i am dying you are just in the moment the earth element leaves you notice heaviness the water element leaves you notice dryness the fire element leaves you notice coldness the air element leaves you notice the out breath is longer than the in-breath just moment moment moment now this now this now this i have been sitting now with dying people for 10 15 years i guess and i can tell you that it is the richest experience of my life it is such incredible grace the two things that awaken the same feelings in me are being present at a birth and being present at a death and at that moment of death when you feel the awareness leave the body and when that person's connection to that which is beyond their body is deep enough because they have relaxed the mind that keeps grabbing at their separateness so that they can just let go very gently there's not even a ripping there's not a pushing there's not a grabbing the whole secret is to live this moment fully now this moment now this moment so if you're in this one how do you know the next one may be the one you die in the best preparation for your dying is that you live this moment now fully moment by moment and then one of them will be the one in which you drop your body and it'll just be another moment nothing special it's not really that dramatic we milk it so much such a big drama will he die won't he die shouldn't you die sure we're all gonna die i want to tell you a secret you're all gonna die but though you perish you will not die the whole secret is of extricating yourself from identification with form because all form corrupts it all dies you take care of it you honor it you clean it up you keep it healthy as it is slowly corrupting hold on tightly let go lightly just recognize what an adventure this transformation is the appreciation of death and the spiritual journey after death is the prerequisite for living life joyfully now death does not have to be treated as an enemy for you to delight in life keeping death present in your consciousness as one of the greatest mysteries and as the moment of incredible transformation imbues this moment with added richness and energy that otherwise is used up in denial i encourage you to make peace with death to see it as the culminating adventure of this adventure called life it is not an era it is not a failure it is taking off a tight shoe which you have worn well but those that find the way in the morning can gladly die in the evening it is said in the mystical literature so i encourage you to explore and find in your being that part of you that is on those other channels so that when on channels one and two the world turns series comes to its final chapters you won't be caught in feeling loss but rather the adventure because from where i'm sitting life on this plane of reality because i live in the world of reincarnation of karma of life on this plane is like being in the fourth grade you took birth here because you had certain work to do that involves the suffering you do the kinds of situations you found yourself in this is your curriculum it's not an error where you are now with all your neuroses and your problem you're sitting in just the right place imagine that imagine that nobody made an error and all that stuff in you of saying if only if only i could be no this is it including the if only it's perfect and then at the time you graduate and somebody says oh but he died so young so if you graduate from fourth grade early big deal wonderful don't get so caught in worshiping life that you lose the balance that realizing that the spirit it says live life fully and richly as a partner with god and at the same moment don't be afraid of the next thing go towards it with openness and with love and not with forbidding the way that is understood in the morning one can gladly die in the evening this podcast is brought to you by the love serve remember foundation and ramadasa.org we appreciate you listening and we appreciate all the support that you've given us please continue that support and donate at ramadas.org we can then continue to share what ramadas has been sharing for all of these years thank you

Channel: Be Here Now Network

Views: 6,474

Rating: 4.8941798 out of 5

Keywords: francesca maxime, podcast, buddhist wisdom, wise girl, buddhism, buddhist, rerooted, rerooted podcast

Id: g7xkAyZ0IT0

Length: 58min 0sec (3480 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 25 2021