Are we able to conquer the Fear of
Death?
Death is not a direct
experience but a concept deducted from our observation of what is
happening in the external world. The conquest of death is the
overcoming of this concept, but it cannot be achieved by our
intellect even though it is the originator of such conceptual
thought. Our individual existence and ignorance of the non
existence of an individual self creates the impression of a
permanent ego. In reality, neither death nor ego can be experience
directly. If death is real, it should be something that each of us
would be able to experience. But as long as we are able to
experience anything, we are not dead. On the question of our Ego;
we have unquestionably a feeling of our personal identity, our own
self, which accompanies every state of our consciousness. When we
perceive something and at the same time have a nice feeling about
it, this is the feeling of the condition of our Ego.
If we are able to observe the
process of dying or the moment of death, then we may be able to
prove that death does not destroy the experiencing subject. If it
cannot be experienced itself, why should we be afraid of it anyway?
Needless to said, we all fear death and this go to prove how much
we are under the dominance of our intellect. Intellect is necessary
and justified as long as we are dealing with objects or things, but
it fails us when it come to the question concerning the very
essence of man and the meaning of individual existence. The only
way out of this dilemma is to replace this intellectual attitude
with a subjective experience.
We can only speak of the
cessation of bodily functions and the decay of the physical body.
What happens to the forces that built and maintained it when it is
alive is quite another question. The conquest of death is, but
purely subjective that can only be solved by a direct inner
experience. We need to become conscious of it by turning our
attention inward to solve the problem. Ego arises with the notion
of a self. By recognizing the illusion of a separate and unchanging
ego and accepting that everything is interdependent and ever
changing as the very nature of life, we can destroy this
presupposition on which the concept of death is based. The
annihilation of the ego illusion made it possible to see beyond the
limit of the impermanence self and recognized the connection
between passed and possible future form of life.
But of course, realistically
most of us would unlikely to reach this state of realization to get
pass the fear of death. In that respect, the description on the
process of dying in the Tibetan well-known funeral text, the Bardo
Thodol, commonly referred to as the ‘Tibetan Book of the Dead’
should give most of us, the less enlightened folks, some degree of
comfort on what one can expect in the process of dying and allay
some of the fear in us on the subject of death. The Book describe
the process of the dissolution of our various sense consciousness
including finally the mind consciousness and the process in which
how finally this subtle consciousness leave the physical body,
taking on the body of an intermediate state being before seeking
out another ‘body’ to be reborn into. Where this intermediate being
will be reborn is uncontrolled and is propelled more by one’s own
past actions.
Man is mortal and is subject to
death as long as he tries to hang on to his present state of mind
and body, as long as he does not try to rise above his present
condition and continue to live in a state of ignorance. Immortality
does not consist in the preservation of our ego. It is in the
awareness that in reality our present is nothing more than just a
fleeting moment. In that knowledge, lies the liberation from death
leading to the experience of immortality.
