How To Die Consciously (Four Things to Consider)

Pluto rules the underworld, the place one goes after death, and in order to pass the border, a price is agreed upon. Something is given to pay for the new wealth, the gain in psychological and spiritual knowledge.

Why do I have to die?
That’s the million-dollar question that many of us will ask at least once during our life. If not when we’re still fit and healthy, then usually as we’re sliding further down the slippery slope towards our apparent annihilation.

We used to know how to die well, consciously preparing for each step along the way. It wasn’t until the late eighteenth century, that the process of dying and death changed from being a part of the life-death continuum, to something abhorrent and fearful.

With the development of modern scientific medicine in the early nineteenth century, death was relegated to the ‘things that shouldn’t happen to us anymore’ pile, along with plague, smallpox and polio.

So how did we manage to die well, before our modern reductionist bio-medical model of disease encouraged us to see our life as a purely physical-molecular phenomenon?

The Tibetan art of conscious dying is called Pho-Wa which is the art of separating from the dying body. The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying gives advice on how to prepare for a conscious death. The trick is to live a conscious life. And whether or not you believe in an afterlife makes no difference to your experiences after death.

In the West, Christians were guided in ways to have a good death by Ars moriendi (The Art of Dying). This book was a response by the Roman Catholic Church to conditions brought about by the Black Death.

These ancient texts differ in form but agree on content: the way we live our life, the daily thoughts and acts, the nice or nasty things we say and do, are all laid down on our life’s canvas. And that is the document used to determine how we’ll experience our last breath and beyond.

“You’re looking better today,” we tell our dying loved one even as they lay gasping, connected to beeping machines like a bionic lab rat. Family and friends try to keep their loved one with them here in the light of the known, for the fear of the unknown is too great to bear. With no guides to show us the way, few of us are ready to face the apparent abyss and darkness of death.

Here are four steps to consider when next brave enough to open the conversation around death and dying.

Step 1: Find Out Where You’re Going
If you want to build a ship, don’t herd people together to collect wood and don’t assign them tasks and work but rather, teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.
Antoine de Saint-Exupery

If you believe there’s only blackness after death, that’s fine. If you believe you’ll meet up with your loved ones who’ve died before you, lovely. If you believe you’ll burn in hell, oh well. And if you believe you’ll go onto to do other work in other places and return to another incarnation on earth, okay great.

No matter what we believe, no one can say for sure. But according to the ancient texts, the first step in preparing for death is to decide what lies beyond the door. When we’ve chosen what our new journey will be like, even if it’s nothingness, at least we’ve become conscious that the door will one day open to us.

Step 2: What Do You Need To Do Before The Day Arrives?
People living deeply have no fear of death. Anais Nin

James Bymes, confident of Franklin Roosevelt and one of the most powerful men in American domestic and foreign policy in the mid-1940s said, “Too many people are thinking of security instead of opportunity. They seem to be more afraid of life than death.”

It sounds simple – live life everyday as if there’s no death. How? By living as if we’re part of something much greater than ourselves, as if we’re unique and precious with a valuable contribution to make to this thing called Life. And so logically, to treat everyone else as if they too are unique and precious.

Step 3: When The Day Arrives
We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience.  Pierre Teilhard de Chardin.

If we like this hanged-man way of looking at life, then we can also consider the ancient texts take on life after death.

They suggest that we retain a self-consciousness when our body is dead (like during a near death experience), and that while we’re busy living our life, we would be wise to also be preparing for the next journey of death.

How can death be a great adventure when all we know and love is being taken from us? Turning to the ancient texts again we are advised to live well. How? Ironically, by first journeying deeply and fully into life and then by turning and starting the outward journey towards detachment and dispassion from our bodies. As the Sufi’s say, “Be in this world, but not of it”.

Step 4: Why Not Use This Death As An Opportunity To Transform?

I think if one were asked what was the most common mental state in which the majority of people arrive in the spirit world, I should be disposed to reply from a fairly extensive experience, that they arrive in a state of bewilderment and complete ignorance of the fact that they have passed from the earth world. Anthony Borgia, spiritualist psychic.

The Buddha gave the formula for liberation: know the mind, govern the mind, perfect the mind.

We have mastered the art of living well and we’re feeling ready to consciously traverse the dying landscape when we arrive there. But have we really embraced death as an adventure?

Alice Bailey tells us that the elimination of disease is not the way to overcome death. Instead she suggests we develop a continuity of consciousness. When we sleep and dream it’s like dying except that the link with our life force remains. So to practice dying we can try and keep our consciousness as high as possible – to see the light in our head – as we fall asleep. We can follow the light and it will show us the way. Our body dies but our consciousness continues.

“Death…is one of our most practised activities,” says Bailey. But as long as we identify with our body, we’ll fear death. As soon as we know we are our consciousness (soul, spirit, higher self), then we know that when we die, we’re only going to the place we’ve been every night as we sleep.

Here’s Hoping
With no better alternative, the prospect of being in control and conscious during a natural death seems infinitely more attractive than drugs and machines ruling the day. Granted palliative care is valuable and pain relief often a must, but these can be used to enhance rather than dull that moment when we look out over the vast expanse of the ocean of being and finally know who we really are.

For detailed information on the art of conscious dying see the references below.

Bailey, A. (1998) Death: The Great Adventure, (3rd ed). London. Lucis Trust

Capra, F. The Turning Point. Retrieved September 9, 2009 from
wplus.net/pp/Julia/Capra

Goble, D. (2009) Beginner’s Guide to Conscious Dying. Oregon. Cosmic Creativity.

Griffin, J. Practice Dying Retrieved September 4, 2009 from www.worldu.net

Life Positive. Islam – The Sufi’s Whirl of Love. Retrieved November 29, 2009.

http://www.lifepositive.com/Spirit/world-religions/sufism/sufi.asp

Reyes, B. (1990) The Practice Of Conscious Dying: Off-Ramp to Liberation and Freeway to Conscious immortality. California. World University.

Rinpoche, S. (2002). The Tibetan Book of Living & Dying. Rigpa Fellowship.