=kit042.txt

KIT 42 - Death & Resurrection

"Die before death and resurrect now." (Sufi saying)

People are beginning to ask more questions about death and its
process. This is because today people are more bent on confronting
feelings honestly, rather than dismissing them out of fear. While
all the investigations on spiritism of our forefathers in the
beginning of this century, and the testimonies of people who have
lived to recount their experiences in a "clinical death" are not
considered by many as evidence of survival after death, it doesn't
make sense to our minds to assume that a person has achieved and
attained in a lifetime can be wiped out in a moment of utter
annihilation. The programming of the universe, while often
paradoxical and not altogether consistent to our way of thinking,
still does not make more sense than that!

Admittedly, if one has left works of art or inspiring thoughts of
pioneered break-throughs in science or technology, one survives
indirectly through one's creativity that may indeed seed further
achievements relayed by others. Besides, one's personality does
indeed spill over that of those who love us by an uncanny osmosis,
which links humanity by dint of a kind of interdependence in a
network like that of the terms of an equation. Yet the individual
- individuality - does it not mean something irreplaceable in its
uniqueness?  Mutations in nature are triggered off by individuals;
the forward march of civilization is impelled by the genius of a
few exceptional beings. If indeed, their incentive has meant so
much to so many, how could one postulate that their special
contribution is now replete?

Nature optimizes its chances of progress, of beatings its records.
Perhaps our misconceptions about death are due to our
preconceptions about our body, or matter in general. In as much as
the body acts as a scaffolding for the building of the
superstructure of our being, one might infer that if it collapses
while the building is being is build, the completion of the
building would be halted. who can claim that the building is ever
complete?  What sense for nature to leave a building half build? 
If we consider the body as the support system, then indeed it
would collapse. What sense in all that went into it in the
beginning?  Is it tenable that the programming works that way? 
No, this doesn't make sense.

Matter never dies: it undergoes changes, gradual ones (as
radiation, osmosis, aging) and also sudden ones, as in a quantum
leap (water into steam, the jump of an electron from one orbital
of the atom to another, what we call death).

In the evolutionary leap from the inorganic to the organic, the
electrons within the atom rearrange themselves more meaningfully
and efficiently as a support system for the advance of
intelligence and consciousness than in the previous arrangement.
Hastily observed, the devastating eclipse in the in-between stage
could easily be misconstrued as a falling apart. Never does the
same water flow under the same bridge, yet the river remains.
Judged from the point of view of the particular drops, it looks as
though they have eluded one's gaze.

If a magnetic field structuring metal filing into a pattern were
to undergo a momentary de-polarization and then get polarized,
perhaps with different voltage, the metal filing would dispense,
then reform again, no doubt differently. The reality of the
frequency pattern of the magnet is more importantly attributable
to the magnet; the outer pattern of the metal filing is secondary.
The reality of our body is not visible structure, but what Dr.
Rupert Sheldrake calls the "morphic resonance", which is more
basic than the building blocks and survives their demise, while
mutating over the aeons of time. If you take a computer apart,
just examining the chips, it would be difficult to figure out the
software. If you know the software, however, you are in possession
of the key that would enable you to make upteemed computers. Grasp
the soft ware of the universe and even the intention behind that
software. If after death you have freed yourself from the support
system, you don't need the hardware anymore.

After the quantum leap we call death, then the protons and
electrons of the body get scattered in the universe. Owing to the
limitation in the speed of light, that cannot communicate by the
kind of signaling that we encounter in the universe in its
explicate state, but they are still interconnected, say the
physicists, in a "non-local" state, the implicate state, while
conforming to our ideas about causality. Since each sub-atomic
particle stores some information (in its spin) and they still are
interconnected, forming together the network that acts as a
support system for our minds and consciousness, "Death, where is
thy sting?" (a reference to the French physicist, Dr. Jean
Charron). If you have experienced even a flash of out-of-body
travel, you will realized that indeed, one can continue to see
without eyes, hear without ears, displace oneself without wings,
communicate without language signals and understanding, without
involving the brain. 

While one may grasp splendor as it transpires through a scene of
beauty, one can moreover grasp splendor directly, irrespective of
or bereft of its physical support system. While one's
understanding is usually based upon the assessment of a situation,
one may, moreover, grasp meaningfulness directly, a kind of feed-
forward instead of a feedback. Although the stress of a challenge
will mobilize one's latent power to achieve, one gains a still
greater power by renouncing the fruit of action; this is the
epitome of unconditional love.

Information is built up at the cost of the expenditure of its
support system: energy (negentropy). This is precisely what is
meant by resurrection. Besides, we need to distinguish between the
knowledge that we attain by processing and interpreting the input
from outside (that is, reacting to circumstances and adapting
ourselves with conditions), and a kind of pre-cognizance
irrespective of the feedback of experience. In philosophy it is
called proto-critic knowledge. Imagine the mind, having built its
constructs on experiencing other than itself, now discovering
meaningfulness within itself, because our minds isomorphic,
homologous with (that is, of the same nature as) the mind of the
universe and co-extensive with that global mind we call the mind
of God. Even as the global mind, so our mind, which actuates that
mind is self-generating. A good example in Greek mythology is
Bellerophon abandoning his steed, Pegasus (the support system of
the mind), who could reach no further and proceeded on his way to
the Olympus!

"The tendency of the soul is to reach to the highest spheres to
which it belongs, but is cannot rise from the lower regions until
is has left behind all earthy attachments", said Pir-o-Murshid
Inayat Khan. Do you ever feel that your body cannot contain you or
constrain you or live up to the thrust of your mind or withstand
the exhilaration of your soul?  These are the vistas attained in
farther reaches of the mind where illumination flashes as
realization. Here mediation will help one have a foretaste of life
after life.

Imagine that you have awakened from your commonplace perspective,
having shaken off that perspective like a snake of its skin, and
you remember having been caught in that bind in the mind. For one
who values splendor, the software of the universe is more
thrilling than the hardware. I have a hunch that after death, if
one has awakened, while still getting flashes of the manifestation
of the divine intention transpiring from a distant perspective,
one highlights that intention grasped directly, so that its
manifestation is secondary and in the twilight of consciousness.
You may prepare yourself for this in meditation with open eyes by
as the Sufis say, always looking for the hallmark of the divine
intention behind all occurrence.

Imagine that you are attuned to the splendor that manifests as and
through the forms of the universe. You will not suffice yourself
with its inadequate expression in the forms your perceive in the
universe, however beautiful. Suppose you have been cultivating
mastery and now touch upon the magic that mobilizes the marvel of
existence. You will exult in that power and not try to appropriate
it for your own covetousness. Suppose that you are dancing with
joy, not withstanding all the frustrations and wounds wreaked upon
you by the limitation whereby the divine perfection in your being
suffers in the existential condition. You will demure from
building your joy upon precarious circumstantial conditions.

Suppose that you have reached a peace, not the peace of withdrawal
from strife, but the peace in the vacuum of the existential realm
out of which all activity emerges. You won't have to seek the cave
or escape life.  Suppose you are shattered by the ecstasy of
unconditional love. You will love those who make themselves
unlovable by acting loathfully and obnoxiously, even though you do
not approve either of their behavior or their intentions or their
attunement. The children of the world will spit at your face and
tear your hair, poke our your eyes and trip you over, and you will
still love them, for "they know not what do".

According to some testimonies, at the eleventh hour, at the moment
of death, one's life on the Planet comes to a head. That which was
accomplished, that which one failed at , one's assets and one's
defects or foibles, the harm one did to others, one's resentments
for those who offended one, the ruthless and inexorable unexpected
we call fate, one's love and enmities hopes and disappointments,
struggles and satisfactions, all interweave into an evanescent
kaleidoscope pattern upon the screen of the mind.

The dint of the interfacing and interacting of the plethora of
elements flashing over the over the threshold between the
unconscious and the conscious issues enacted in one's life pattern
and the challenges met or mis-matched by our resourcefulness, or
what we made of our resourcefulness, suddenly zooms into
perspective. As Dr. Kubler-Ross once pointed out, one is assailed
with the remorse of not having done those things one could have
done, but more desperately, for not having become what one might
have become. I like to add "how one could have been if one would
have been what one might have been." Here lie the crucial issues,
particularly the latter. Obviously, it would have been wiser to
have dealt with this earlier. Let us deal with the paramount issue
now: our personality. Three parameters strike us: 

1. unfurling the resourcefulness lying dormant in our heritage
from the whole universe as much in its enormous compass as at all
its levels;
2. customizing these levels creatively according to our own bent
or peculiar genius by rearranging them, fluctuating them like
variations on a theme, and confronting and sharpening these by the
encounter with the challenge of our lives;
3. transmuting them so as to extract the essence of them, like the
perfume out of flowers.

In the early stages of one's life, the first seems to prevail; in
the middle of life's struggle, the second; at the autumn of one's
life, the third. One needs to learn to resurrect before death.
This requires pruning, assessing priorities, freeing oneself from
a lot of ballast, most importantly, identifying oneself with the
perfume extracted from that flower that was our personality, with
its many idiosyncrasies: it petals that will need to fall apart so
that perfume may prevail. 

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