Daily Theosophy

There is infinite wisdom behind all.

(87)

(The biology of dying)

The biology of dying: Death as a part of life-sciences.

You will not find many biology books that talk about dying. Still, actually they should. Because dying is an active process of life itself. No creature is ever really dying, but every creature that has a body will leave that body when it is old, and sooner or later build a new one for itself, with the help of parents. The process of dying for human beings like you and me is very interesting. Actually it is quite an experience when it happens naturally, and everyone of us will have that experience one day. I just told you that the life-energy in our bodies is running through tens of thousands of channels to every nook and corner. When the time of withdrawal or rest or death (whatever name you want to give it) has come – when your body is old or has irreparable diseases – life itself takes the initiative to death. Quietly the energies running through all the channels withdraw, and one by one you loose your senses. That seems scary, but it isn’t. Normally t is the same feeling as falling asleep. If you are deep asleep you don’t see, hear, smell, taste or touch anything, and you don’t feel pain. All this may happen in your dream mind, but not through your sense organs like when you are awake. The energies are all withdrawn into the three main energy channels running from bottom to top along your spine. Because this is the beginning of the process of leaving your body, outsiders, who see you dying, see that your body looses its shine, that your limbs become thinner, and that you loose your strength. This may actually start quite some time before your actual day of death, but it is a sign that it is approaching. The same happens when you go to bed late or keep yourself awake when you feel like sleeping, but cannot do that (like at school). Your eyes want to close, you cannot really hear and mentally follow the lesson or the TV program or whatever happens around you. It is like you are already loosening the buttons of your shirt which you want to draw out. And you are very happy when you finally can lay in your bed and let go and fall asleep. You are not really losing your strength, you are not losing your strength of inner consciousness – but your muscles are of no more use after your death. You don’t suffer from it if you know that this is a normal, natural process, bringing you to a new awareness. Because you, who are dying, see inwardly a bluish appearance arise, which is described as ‘like a mirage’ a kind of fata morgana, like seeing water in a desert. It can happen while you are just at the verge of falling asleep also. In Tibetan literature it is described as: ‘It is like the dissolution of water when the light of the sun strikes a desert in the summer.’ The next event is that you lose your body consciousness, like when falling asleep, and you do no longer experience worldly or physical happiness, nor suffering – a great relieve if the dying person had a painful disease! Both pleasure and pain disappear as well as indifferent feelings concerning the world. That also happens when you fall asleep. Your mouth and sweat and other fluids dry out, and that is what people see when you are dying, but you yourself do not notice that. Then you lose your hearing power. No sound from outside is coming into your consciousness. It is not-at-all eerie. It happens every day when you fall asleep. You don’t even notice. But in your mind you have a kind of feeling like puffs of smoke, as the Tibetans express it, and that smoke has kind of a bluish color, as reported by yogis who can see it. After that you lose all mindfulness of people around you. If they would ask you whether you remember their names, you wouldn’t remember. Sometimes this happens with old people long before the day they officially die. There’s nothing really wrong. Don’t try to push such people to pay attention to you or the world, because that is right against nature. It is even cruel. The people around you may be very sad because they see you dying, but if they would stand at your bedside while you are falling asleep, nobody would be sad. Let people die in silence, in quietude, and maintain that quietude after their real death for the rest of the day and the next day at least, or better even three days. Don’t disturb them. Their life-energies and sense-capacities are withdrawing, but that takes time, and when you are talking or crying near a dying or dead person they may still hear it, and feel disturbed by the feelings of the mourners. So rather leave a dying person in silence and, if you are there, have positive thoughts. If you have a religion you can pray. And if you have to say something, say something very positive – like Jesus will receive you (if the person is a Christian), or Buddha, or an angle of Allah, or beings of light who wait to help him upwards to heaven. It does not have to answer to logic or proofed fact or doctrine, but if you refer to something very positive which you know the dying person to have great confidence in, it helps his mind to clear up and to have hope, and to abandon negativities. This is very important for the dying persons future. NEVER talk or even slightly think about the estate, or the practicalities of what to do with the dead body when the person has really died, or about negative character traits the person had – his own heart knows everything. And never say anything that is attractive to the leaving person – like: ‘I cannot miss you’ ‘You are abandoning your duty, or your children.’ Never say something like that. Control yourself, whether you are standing at a bedside, or whether you are yourself the dying person. Let go. The heart and Nature know the path of death. Leave the windows of the room open, and you can burn a candle and some pure (not sensual) incense if you have it (to keep curious invisibles away), or let it do by a trusted priest if that is the habit in your belief system. And leave the dying person alone during that time. People who touch you (better if they don’t!) feel that your body is getting cold. But you yourself are not feeling cold. Nothing to worry, in a short while you won’t need this body anymore, and your mind will be free. One also loses the power of smell, and breathing out becomes longer and stronger than breathing in. It is natural – it’s not like choking or stuffiness. You yourself only experience a feeling like red sparks in the smoke now, ‘like fireflies’ or perhaps like soft and silent fireworks. The energies of the body move to your heart – and people around you may see that your tongue turns thick, and blue at the base. Then you lose your power to taste anything, and finally you lose every ability to feel anything with your body. But what you experience is that you see or feel before you a light like a candle or oil lamp , which sputters and seems to extinguish, but then flares up once more. After all this your mind presents itself more clearly. It has all that your mind had during your life in your body. You can, in your mind, experience desire, attachment, joy, amazement, excitement kissing, pride, enthusiasm, flirtation, angriness, virtue, the wish to speak the truth, or to lie, or your mind thinks that it wants to give away things you have (but which in reality you don’t have anymore of course, but your mind doesn’t realize that) because it is just a mental attitude. You may even experience depression, laziness, doubt – but they only exist in your coarse, still earthly mind if you created them before. There obviously is no reason for any negative feelings, but it happens, only because you have made a habit of them during earth-life. If you have always had – or at least tried to have – positive feelings during your life, the mind will only present these when you are dying and when you are dead. You may see your whole life pass by. But because you are already clearer of mind than when you were still fully connected with your body, you understand automatically why particular things happened, and what mistakes you made or bad and good things you did. These understandings are the bases for your next life on earth. But this phase too passes, and then your mind comes as quiet ‘as a clear autumn sky after the summer rains, and which is free of dust and clouds, while the moon is shining’, as the Tibetans put it. Not literally in the sense that you find yourself laying on the grass or a bed and looking up at the sky – it is just a symbol to express the clarity and quietude of mind you then experience. It is first like a white radiant appearance. Your body is motionless, and for bystanders you are ‘as good as dead.’ But you aren’t – it’s just that they don’t know what you are seeing. Then your breath ceases, and people say: “he is dead,” and perhaps they start crying. No reason though.

(88)

(How it is to be really dead)

How it is to be really dead

Then the mind becomes still clearer and more empty than before