Published on 12, July, 2020
Sorry if this is an upsetting topic for some (myself included).I really struggle this the "D word" - I find it pre-occupies my mind progressively more so as I get older, and it's always been a topic which I hate / fear - if I overthink it I can get into something of a panic.So I'm interested - how would you describe your relationship with this topic?I'm wondering if its an autistic trait, and whether anyone has been able to develop a healthy outlook on the topic, and if so how.
When I was 17 I read "The Divine Romance". In it Paramahansa Yogananda talks about going out of his body and being somewhere else and, what we call today, bi locating. I was living as a runaway in an attic with a bunch of draft dodgers (Vietnam war) at a Unitarian priests house.
I read there was a chant to clear the way for Perspicacity. I sat and chanted it . After awhile I started to feel the word and the action of the saying it become one and becoming something more: I observed it as apart from my self, an observer.
Then I found I was across the room looking back at myself as I sat chanting. It was for a few moments I saw myself there. but it gave me the gift of knowing, beyond doubt, that the body was not the end of the conscious mind, it was a product of the conscious mind.
After that I was not afraid of dying. To clarify. I don't welcome it but I am not bothered that it will, eventually happen.
It also cured a great deal of FOMO as it dawned on me that I could come back over and over as often as I like to a new baby body to gravitate towards whatever I felt drawn to, without worrying there would not be enough time. I realized life, in the form of sentience, was eternal.
Very interesting, thanks for sharing.
to add to this.. I later, in the late 80s experienced the "Gateway" program from the Monroe Institute that deepened my experiences and led me to many more interesting experiences.