Ahead of death for most is a mystery and at best, a speculation. However, the scriptures clearly mention life after death, so it’s an individual’s choice to believe or not believe in life after death. But belief has never been a foundation stone and nor will it ever be, thus experience of life after death is the only way to create a certainty about it. Life after death experiences are rare occurrences and although there are ways to induce this experience through deep meditation, people may be afraid to try it.
Behind death is what an individual leaves behind. Fear is caused through attachment, because when one is attached there is a fear it will one day end and cause pain. Attachment includes family, friends, relationships, circumstances, material possessions and even the body. Therefore, herein lies a key to escape the fear of death – to become non-attached.
Although non-attachment is arguably not an easy feat to accomplish, it is something which is available to everyone. When a person can honestly say they are not afraid tomorrow, or even today, they have let go of all their attachments and the fear of death is vanquished – even without experiencing life after death. This is called liberation.
However, even after this state has been achieved, one fear of death will still remain and that is the fear of dying in unforeseen circumstances. If a person knows they will certainly die one day and accepts this, it is only part of the solution to conquering the fear of death. What a person must also know is how they will die.
In order to know how you will die you must know the future, in order to know the future you need intuition, in order to develop intuition you must learn to listen, in order to learn to listen you must meditate regularly, in to meditate regularly you must be disciplined, in order to be disciplined you need a teacher to discipline you, in order to find a teacher you need to be fortunate, in order to be fortunate you need to pray for it. And so from one simple prayer lies the final key in conquering the fear of death. Once the intuition is fully developed and a person can learn to use their intuition during unforeseen circumstances – the fear of death shall be no more. Then one becomes fearless and courageous.
Started 12/06/2009. Completed by Guru’s Grace June/July 2009
Where does any fear come from? How can all fear be overcome?
ReplyDeleteWhat about the fear of life? Consciously living, requires great fearlessness, courage and a strong belief in ones actions.
Hmm...I'm not sure fear can be overcome in the sense of getting rid of it forever because its produced by the mind's limitation of continually wanting to project into the future about what could happen, or about the past as to what has happened - instead of staying in the present as to what IS happening. And you're right there's many kinds of fears - life can be just as big a fear as death.
ReplyDeleteI think it comes down to learning to process the emotion of fear in different situations - then one understands how to MANAGE fear in different situations and therefore learn to control fear before fear controls you.
The key to this article was that we can learn to manage fears of life because we can experience the things that cause them in reality, but fear of death stretches beyond this reality to the next reality which is not reachable by ordinary means - so we must resort to extraordinary means to transcend fear of death.