The Time of Your Life!

Our Swamiji often said: No one came to earth with a one way ticket; each of us comes with a guaranteed round-trip ticket. For me and you, friends, even though we know the dates we arrived and began living here, the date of the return ticket is still open. At birth each of us embarks on a journey in time. The interval between arrival and departure is the lifetime spent here on earth. Before these molecules were associated into the body I have at this moment they already existed somewhere else as solid, liquid, air and energy they werent suddenly and specially created only for me. And after leaving this structure of mine they will go back to the earth, to the water, to the sky, and later most certainly spend time as part of someone else. Earth is a vast recycling plant for atoms and molecules to be used over and over in different combinations. The Sufi Poet Rumi stated: Let the One that brought me here come and take me home. How beautifully put: he proclaims the truth of Nature that One has brought him here, and acknowledges that same One will take him back home. Our Swamiji put us in the understanding of Space as the body of Nature that vast, immense Space that is everywhere, permeating everything, in every bit of the room where I sit and everywhere all around and beyond it that Space made us and put us here and is the One to reabsorb us in time. Truly that Space is Home and we are visiting while in this earthly life. Can you seriously say the structure where you presently reside is your real home? You live in some flat or house acquired by payment either recently or long ago; you didnt build it or design it. That goes for your body too. Residing in the body is just like going on vacation and staying in a hotel we didnt build or design, paying for the privilege of using it. Each of us now stays in a body on long lease and until the lease is up we pay for it by keeping it fit or will suffer when it begins to fall apart and deteriorate. Even though none knows when the time will come to wind up this visit on earth and start on the return journey, it might be a good thing if we at least keep it in mind. We often tend to think that if we live a good life then death will come softly and peacefully and we leave it at that. But where is the guarantee of peace at the moment of death? As Swamiji used to say, no one has come back to tell us about their experience. So anything said about death and its aftermath is a story made up by someone living, that cannot possibly be based on evidence. Out of a sense of fear and dread we dont prepare our minds at all for the inevitable event; actually, we rather tend to ignore it as much as possible. But why? If there is a journey coming up in your life, even though its months in advance and youre not sure youll enjoy it, dont you think of it once in a while? It is there in your mind now and then and you keep track of the time as it nears and make preparations as it comes close. We know the usual attitude of individuality, the basic egoic view that feels I am differentiated from everything else around. But by meditation we also have discovered

the Space we can be in without the feeling of differentiation, where all is perceived as one whole comprising substance, power and consciousness. If we can be in this mood of wholeness at death, will it not make it easier? If I feel myself as an individual that exists separated from everything else, wont it be terrifying and horrible to feel all alone at death? No matter who else is there to care for me, if I feel I am going on the journey all alone, leaving all I have known for so many years, it will be utterly frightening. But if I can keep to the attitude, the feeling, of oneness with everything, the feeling of all existence as one continuum, its only an absorption and adjustment from one situation into another, all within the One. In truth, not the substance, nor the power, nor the consciousness that I am can be affected by my death; only time will stop running for me personally, as an integrated system. Human beings are basically distinguished from all other life-forms by a vastly extended time sense that creates our identity: moment to moment we carry a long history and a map of the assumed future. We should not get misled into believing that this timeline is the self it is only the stage where a drama of sequential changes is played out. Let each of us daily remember this: only my personal sense of time will cease one day when the function of the physical organs stops; what I am -- substance, power and consciousness are not affected by birth or death. Let us identify with that supreme undivided, indivisible One wherein nothing is lost, ever the One that brought me here and takes me back.