Death Meditation

 

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Death Meditation

The biggest fear everyone has is that of dying – that is always at the back of your mind! The other day a friend of mine told me that I should try death meditation. What is death meditation? Just tell yourself that you are dead, keep repeating that in your mind. “I am dead, I am lying on the ground, people have surrounded my body and they are in grief, I am watching all this from above, I am dead.” Keep repeating these words or whatever words you are comfortable with in the language you are comfortable with.

After this feeling of being dead is etched deeply in your psyche, you will suddenly start feeling lighter, feeling empty inside. When this feeling comes the mind also dies down and becomes quiet. At this point you can invoke the Guru-energies, chant the Guru-mantra and then go into meditation or go with the flow and just drift off into meditation. Whatever works for you!

This is an experiment in meditation which really worked. A long time ago I had heard Osho’s discourse on the ‘Art of Death’ and this reminded me of that discourse. The Buddhists too practice what is know as ‘maranasati meditation’ – where they say that of all the mindfulness meditation techniques, meditation on death is supreme. With this technique, one is actually preparing for death, that final moment which decides whether you are reborn or whether you have reached the state of no return – the state of void, moksha or liberation.

With this practice one can get rid of the fear of death once and for all – you reach a state which is like that of the dead, you keep sensing the energy as it keeps flowing in the body, the body feels light and you are in a state of void which is so quiet and peaceful – it is beyond description. The meditation is really deep and profound, you get lost in nothingness as your being floats in consciousness, becoming one with the universal energy, it is something which has to be experienced individually. Once you experience it, you too will be lost for words.

Life is finite – there is a beginning, birth, and an end – death. In between is something which happens, which is called life. Death is inevitable, so might as well prepare for it and be ready to go in the blink of an eye when the time comes, no pain, no suffering just merging with universal consciousness. There is no beginning and there is no end, we are just part of an infinite continuum and this practice will help you realise that there is no beginning and no end and we are just passing through on earth in the blink of an eye - in relation to the timeless universe our existence is ‘NOTHING’.