Death Makes Life Possible

When you are a grandparent, you will no longer be a baby, a teenager, or a young adult. So when it comes time to go to heaven, which of these people is going to show up?

The person you are today isn’t the same person you were when you were 10 years old. Certainly your body has changed completely from that of the 10-year-old. None of the molecules in your cells is the same, and neither is your mind. You certainly don’t think like a child.

In essence, the 10-year-old you once were is dead. From a 10-year-old’s perspective, the 2-year-old you once were is also dead. The reason that life seems so continuous is that you have memories and desires that tie you to the past, but these too are ever shifting.

Just as your body comes and goes, so does the mind with its fleeting thoughts and emotions. When you are aware of being yourself without being attached to any particular age, you’ve found the mysterious observer within who doesn’t come and go.

Only witnessing awareness qualifies as that observer–it remains the same while everything else changes. It would be futile to hold on to who you are at this moment in terms of body and mind.

You are dying at every moment so that you can keep creating yourself.

You are not in the world; the world is in you. This, the main tenet of the one reality, also means that you are not in your body; your body is in you. You are not in your mind; your mind is in you. There is no place in the brain where a person can be found.

So when we say that the soul leaves a person’s body at the moment of death, it would be more correct to say that the body leaves the soul. The body is already coming and going; now it leaves without coming back.

Adapted from The Book of Secrets, by Deepak Chopra (Harmony Books, 2004).

Read more: Deepak Chopra's Tips, Spirit, body, death, dying, memories, observer

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are solely those of the author and may not reflect those of
Care2, Inc., its employees or advertisers.

Genoveva M.

2:40AM PDT on May 15, 2013

I am not affraid of death as much as the moment of dying, the fact that nobody knows what is really like at that moment makes me feel affraid.
Also we are all dying from the moment we are born, it is just a matter of time, just different for each of us.

May 15
send a green star

Norma B.

2:02PM PDT on Oct 15, 2012

I have had these kind of thoughts for many years and have actually struggled with myself trying to "feel" like my body, "feel" like my age. Often being aware of observing myself. I think I will give up the struggle now after reading this. Thankyou Mr. Chopra