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Devotee: “How long is the practice to continue?”
Sri Ramana Maharshi replied: “Till success is achieved and until yoga - liberation becomes permanent. Success begets success.
If one distraction is conquered the next is conquered and so on, until all are finally conquered.
The process is like reducing an enemy’s fort by slaying its manpower - one by one, as each issues out.” (Talks #28)
The above title caption was written around a year ago and I did not know where to start with the topic, and as a consequence the Letter remained a blank. Little did I know that death would shortly focus my attention after collapsing with jaundice and being admitted to Intensive Care at a hospital. The jaundice was followed by pancreatitis contracted when doctors did a procedure to relive the accumulated bile in my liver and gall bladder. The pancreatitis threatened to terminate my life and for the next three weeks though apparently, I was talking on occasion, I have no memory of that time while heavily sedated. My dream life was full of nightmares of being tied up, a helpless prisoner without any understanding of why I was in such a perilous state, and powerful insights into the world I had unconsciously created throughout my life. After I finally awoke to normal consciousness one morning with senses more or less intact after yet another horrible dream, I began to reflect on this mysterious force, we call death. My memory powers were seriously compromised and I lived in the present, prone on the hospital bed with tubes galore connected to the body.
Doctors during this period discovered that I had bile duct cancer which probably contributed to the bile blockage. They had given me some six months to live. According to them, it could be only days or weeks if I am unfortunate. As the familiar quote attributed to Samuel Johnson states, the prospect of death wonderfully concentrates one’s attention. It is now over eight months since the chief surgeon gave his prognosis.
Later they shifted me to the general ward since there was nothing further the doctors could do as an operation was deemed too dangerous given my condition and radiation therapy and chemotherapy were considered only a temporary respite from the inevitability of death. It was there where luckily a book came into my hands. It was titled Radical Remission about alternative methods to overcome cancer. It mentioned Tibetan medicine and there was an immediate resounding ‘yes!’. That is it! Eventually, after four and a half months in hospital they discharged me and I was able to search for a Tibetan doctor in the hope of a cure from a cancer that was killing me.
But returning to the shock of being told that inevitable death would occur soon. After the chief surgeon delivered his verdict at my bedside about the bile duct cancer, I thought ‘so here it is, finally’ as he walked away. There was no fear but a certain level of surprise and relief that it would soon be all over. In my earlier years I was terrified of death but now it appeared more as a friend. A little later, there was a moment when death did come like a calming, unobtrusive flow of sensed but invisible gossamer mist. It did not stimulate fear but rather it was a friendly feeling.
My body’s muscles and nerves relaxed and began to prepare for its acceptance. It was astonishingly sweet. Then my mind swung into action and I remembered those who were dearest to me, the work that I had left pending, and other consequences of my possible death. It was not the time to leave this world and that immediately put a break on the enveloping serene haze. The next months in hospital with nothing to do as I lay prone, weak with exhaustion, unable to stand let alone walk, there began a slow but steady investigation into the ramifications of my predicament.
After the experience of death’s encroachment, I happened upon an article on the internet about William Radice, the noted translator of Bengal literature. In the article there was an extensive quotation from a famous Rabindranath Tagore poem Maran Milan (Death Wedding), which much to my amazement encapsulated how I encountered death. Here are the first two stanzas of the long poem.
Why do you speak so softly, Death, Death,
Creep upon me, watch me so stealthily?
This is not how a lover should behave.
When evening flowers droop upon their tired
Stems, when cattle are brought in from the fields
After a day’s grazing, you, Death,
Death, approach me with such gentle steps,
Settle yourself immovably by my side.
I cannot understand the things you say.
Alas, will this be how you will take me, Death,
Death? Like a thief, laying heavy sleep
On my eyes as you descend to my heart?
Will you thus let your tread be a slow beat
In my sleep-numbed blood, your jingling ankle-bells
A drowsy rumble in my ear? Will you, Death,
Death, wrap me, finally, in your cold
Arms and carry me away while I dream?
I do not know why you thus come and go……
The months in hospital were an opportunity to see who I was and what I could become. Helpless both in body and mind there began a sustained automatic probing that eviscerated many of my known and previously unknown vasanas (tendencies) and samskaras (deeply ingrained patterns and actions). There were two nights in ICU when I awoke with a jolt as the awareness of a black ball much like a billiard ball that was centered in the pit of my stomach. I began to cry and cry; the tears were overwhelming. There was no rational explanation for the crisis, rather it was a catharsis, a purging of accumulated negative samskaras over perhaps a lifetime. On the second occasion, the night doctor happened to be in the ward and came and knelt by my bed and held my hand. I cannot thank him enough for the patience and compassion he displayed.
Why did this happen? Why did the hidden ‘stuff’ now rise to the surface? Reflecting upon this question, all one can say is that all the previous years of meditation and efforts to resolve inner conflicts in the light of Sri Ramana Maharshi’s teachings, they finally triggered the purification of body, heart and mind. When one watches a raging flood, one does not catalogue the various bits of debris floating in it with any degree of detail. Events happen too fast for that but what one does experience is the tremendous feeling of turmoil as rubbish is discarded. So too when the time is right, the cleansing has its own momentum and it is not necessary to classify everything, after all it is junk and with its disappearance a new clarity and lightness takes its place. The old self has died so what need to disinter it? The past is past and a new dawn may arise if one is willing to surrender to the process.
This process may happen in small waves such as a fever, an accident, a debilitating but temporary medical condition or a close death experience. Anyone who seriously practices mediation will encounter these circumstances every so often on the path. It is normal as the body/mind complex expunges negativities.
In this case, the depth of chaos which erupted was radical and life defining. The whole experience was hell, but there was nothing I could do about it but keep faith in Ramana Maharshi’s grace that all would be well. And this proved to be true.
Letter #22 -- The Fear of Death Revisited
