Chapter 20 Choice of Death
Natural death? There are many possible meanings within it. The most obvious is that a person dies for no reason; he simply grows older and then older, and the transition from old age to death is not through illness. Death is simply the final stage of old age—everything in your body and in your mind ceases to function; this is the general meaning of natural death.
But for me, natural death has a deeper meaning: one must live a natural life to achieve a natural death. Natural death is the pinnacle of natural life. Natural life is the pinnacle of uninhibited, unrepressed natural life, living like an animal, a bird, or a tree, without division… letting nature flow through you, without any obstruction from you. It's not that people live life, but that life happens to people; people are secondary, and that pinnacle is natural death. By my definition, only an enlightened person can die naturally; all other deaths are unnatural because life is unnatural.
How can one achieve a natural death if one lives an unnatural life? Death reflects the ultimate culmination of your entire life; it manifests in a condensed form everything you have experienced. Therefore, only a very small number of people in the world achieve a natural death because only a very small number of people are able to live naturally. Our constraints prevent us from being natural. From the very beginning, our constraints have taught us that simply being natural is being an animal; we must be more than nature, we must be supernatural. This sounds perfectly logical; all traditional religions have taught this: man must transcend nature. They have persuaded humanity for centuries to transcend nature. But no one has succeeded in transcending nature. All they have succeeded in is destroying human natural beauty and innocence.
Humans don't need to transcend nature. I'm telling you, humans must realize nature, something other animals can't do; that's the difference between humans and animals.
Various traditions say that animals are natural, while humans must be supernatural. No animal can fast; you can't convince any animal that fasting is important. Animals only know hunger; to them, there's no difference between fasting and hunger. You can't persuade any animal to go against nature.
Humans have turned the whole world into a zoo, with all sorts of anomalies...
Whenever you impose something on yourself, the result doesn't improve things. Many religions attempt to make people transcend nature, but they fail. A person is born a natural being; you cannot transcend yourself. It's like trying to pull yourself up by your feet; you might jump a little, but sooner or later you'll fall to the ground.
That's what people do; they try to elevate themselves above nature, which means elevating themselves above nature. They are inseparable from nature. The concept that "you are not an animal, therefore you must be above nature" applies to the human ego. People even try to prevent animals from behaving like animals; they try to make them slightly transcend nature.
In Victorian England, people would dress their dogs when taking them for walks. The dogs had coats to wear, preventing them from being natural and naked, even though animals are naturally suited to nudity. These people were trying to elevate their dogs to a higher level than animals.
You might be surprised to learn that in Victorian England, even chair legs had to be covered, simply because they were called feet, and feet had to be covered. Bertrand Russell—who lived to be nearly a hundred—recalled his childhood, when seeing a woman's feet was enough to arouse sexual excitement, and their clothes were made so long that they had to completely cover the feet, making them completely invisible.
I also want you to be different from animals, but not to transcend nature, not at all. You can delve deeper into nature; you can be more natural than animals. They are not free; they are in a deep slumber, and everything they do cannot surpass what their ancestors have been doing for millions of years. You can be more natural than any animal; you can enter the depths of nature, you can reach the heights of nature, but in no way can you surpass it. You will become more natural; you will become more natural on multiple levels. To me, a religious person is not someone who transcends nature, but someone who is completely natural, someone who has explored all aspects of nature; there is nothing he has not explored.
It's like a candle burning brightest before it goes out; a natural person, before he dies, lives for a moment at his brightest, embodying all light and all truth. To me, this is natural death, but it must be earned; it's not something nature gives you. Nature gives you the opportunity, but you must explore, you must earn it, you must be worthy of it.
Even just witnessing a real person die, as long as you are near them as they pass away, you will suddenly be filled with a strange joy. Your tears will not be tears of sadness or sorrow, but tears of gratitude and joy, because when a person dies naturally, when they have fully experienced their life, they spread their existence throughout nature, and those who are present and near them will be bathed in… There is a sudden freshness, a gentle breeze, a new fragrance, and a new feeling. Death is not a bad thing, death is not something to be afraid of; death is something you must earn and something you must be worthy of.
I teach you the art of living, but it can also be called the art of dying; they are the same thing.
The experience you have when someone is about to pass away is always possible; all that's needed is a little awareness. The person about to pass away is very aware, and having this experience doesn't require much awareness.
As you approach death, your physical body and your soul (the eternal self within the body) will begin to separate. Normally, they are deeply intertwined, so you don't feel their separation. But as you approach death, just before it occurs, these two entities will begin to disidentify with each other. As a result, their paths will diverge. The physical body will become material elements, while the soul (the eternal self within the body) will continue its journey toward a new birth, a new form, a new womb.
If that person is even slightly aware, they can see it themselves when they are about to die, because you tell them that the healthier body is them, and the sick and dying body is not them... At that time, it is very easy to trust, because it is happening right before their eyes. They cannot identify with the body that is collapsing; they can immediately recognize that they are the healthier, deeper one.
But you can help that person even more. You've done a good job, but it's not enough. Even that person's experience—not identifying with the physical body—immediately changes the energy of the room; it becomes very quiet and peaceful. But if you've learned the art of helping a dying person, you won't stop where you are. You desperately need to tell him the second thing, because he's in a state of trust, a state everyone is in when they're dying.
Life raises questions, doubts, and delays; death doesn't allow for such delays. The person can't say, "I'll try to see," or "I'll see tomorrow." He must do it now, in this very moment, because even the next moment is uncertain; he might not survive. What loss would trust be to him? In any case, death will take everything away, so the fear of trust is nonexistent, and there's no time to ponder it further. Clearly, the physical body will become increasingly distant, further and further away.
If you tell that person, “Very good, you have taken the first step. You have left the physical body, but now you identify with the mental body. You are not that mental body either. You are just awareness. You are pure consciousness. You are a kind of receptivity…” If you can help that person understand that he is neither this body nor that body, but some kind of intangible, formless, pure consciousness, then his death will be a completely different phenomenon.
You have already witnessed the change in energy; you could have seen another change in energy, the arrival of energy, music, a dancing energy, and a fragrance filling the entire space. That person's face could then reveal a new phenomenon—an atmosphere of light. If he takes the second step, then his death will be the final death, what they call the "Great Death" in the practice of "Ba Dou," because in this way, he will not be reborn into another form, he will not enter another imprisonment, and thus he can remain in eternity, in that ocean-like consciousness that fills the entire universe.
So remember this: it might happen to many of you. You might have the opportunity to be with a friend, a relative, or your parents as they pass away, helping them understand two things: First, they are not a physical body, something a dying person can easily recognize. Second, this is more difficult, but if that person can recognize the first, then they can also recognize the second—they are not a second entity; they transcend both entities, they are pure freedom and pure consciousness.
If he had taken the second step, you would have seen a miracle happen around him, something more alive than stillness, something eternal and immortal, and all those present would have felt immense gratitude, knowing that this death was not a moment of mourning, but a moment of celebration.
If you can transform death into a moment of celebration, then you have helped your friends, your mother, your father, your brother, your wife, or your husband. You have given them the greatest gift possible in existence. It is easy to do this when death is near. Children don't worry about life and death; they are unconcerned. Young people are too involved in the biological games, ambitions, money, power, and fame; they have no time to contemplate eternal questions. But at the moment of death, just before death occurs, you have no ambition, it doesn't matter if you are rich or poor, whether you are a saint or a criminal; death leads you beyond all the discrimination of life, beyond all the foolish games of life.
But instead of taking this opportunity to help them, people destroy that precious moment, the most precious moment of a person's life. Even if he lives to be a hundred, it will still be the most precious moment, but people will start crying and showing their sympathy by saying, "This really is not the right time, it shouldn't have happened." Or they will start comforting the person by saying, "Don't worry, the doctor said you will definitely be saved."