Own Vastness – In Gita Verse 8.6 Whatever state of being one remembers when he quits his body, O son of Kuntī, that state he will attain without fail.
Krishna is saying that in any state if you die, you realise your own vastness.
Death Is the Most Misunderstood Phenomenon: Death is the most misunderstood phenomenon. People have thought of death as the end of life. That is the first, basic misunderstanding.
Death is not the end, but the beginning of a new life. Yes, it is the end of something that is already dead. It is also a crescendo of what we call life, although very few know what life is. They live, but they live in such ignorance that they never encounter their own life. And it is impossible for these people to know their own death, because death is the ultimate experience of this life, and the beginning experience of another. Death is the door between two lives; one is left behind, one is waiting ahead.
There is nothing ugly about death; but man, out of his fear, has made even the word, death ugly and unutterable. People don’t like to talk about it. They won’t even listen to the word death.
The fear has reasons. The fear arises because it is always somebody else who dies. You always see death from the outside, and death is an experience of the innermost being. It is just like watching love from the outside. You may watch for years, but you will not come to know anything of what love is. You may come to know the manifestations of love, but not love itself. We know the same about death. Just the manifestations on the surface – the breathing has stopped, the heart has stopped, the man as he used to talk and walk is no more there: just a corpse lying there instead of a living body.
These are only outer symptoms. Death is the transfer of the soul from one body to another body, or in cases when a man is fully awakened, from one body to the body of the whole universe. It is a great journey, but you cannot know it from the outside. From outside, only symptoms are available; and those symptoms have made people afraid.
Those who have known death from inside lose all fear of death.
Krishna says that when anyone leaves the body either the soul transfers from one body to another if the person is unconscious of the self but if he is conscious of self and fully awakens then from one body to the body of the whole universe. In this transition – Whatever state of being one remembers when he quits his body, that state he will attain without fail.
The greatest mystery in life is not life itself, but death. Death is the culmination of life, the ultimate blossoming of life. In death the whole life is summed up, in death you arrive. Life is a pilgrimage towards death. From the very beginning, death is coming. From the moment of birth, death has started coming towards you, you have started moving towards death.
And the greatest calamity that has happened to the human mind is that he is against death. Being against death means you will miss the greatest mystery. And being against death also means that you will miss life itself – because they are deeply involved into each other; they are not two. Life is growing, death is the flowering of it. The journey and the goal are not separate; the journey ends in the goal.
Krishna says – Everything returns to its original source, has to return to its original source. If you understand life then you understand death also. Life is a forgetfulness of the original source, and death is again a remembrance. Life is going away from the original source, death is coming back home. Death is not ugly, death is beautiful. But death is beautiful only for those who have lived their life unhindered, uninhibited, unsuppressed. Death is beautiful only for those who have lived their life beautifully, who have not been afraid to live, who have been courageous to live – who loved, who danced, who celebrated.
Death becomes the ultimate celebration if your life is a celebration. Let me tell you in this way: whatsoever your life is, death reveals only that. If you have been miserable in life, death reveals misery. Death is a great revealer. If you have been happy in your life, death reveals happiness. If you have lived only a life of physical comfort and physical pleasure, then of course death is going to be very uncomfortable and unpleasant because the body has to be left. The body is just a temporary abode, a serai in which we stay for the night and have to leave in the morning. It is not your permanent abode, it is not your home.
Tags: Own Vastness
