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Eternity
When all images have disappeared at the subtle level, the dying person arrives at eternity. Eternity is the source of the soul. The rishis say that at last illusions have ended and reality begins.
The fact that we can’t see eternity while we’re alive, as it extends in all directions around us, is a limitation the rishis strove to overcome.
The more boundless your vision, the more real you are.
As inspiring as this sounds, it also makes us uneasy, for we are used to living inside boundaries. As you get closer to eternity, you won’t experience being dead or alive. You won’t be male or female. A moment will be the same as a century, and before will merge with after.
Eternity gives you more freedom than the mind can conceive. The absence of images means you don’t need images anymore. The absence of loved ones means you don’t need relationships anymore. You are back at your source, but with a difference. You’ve experienced it all. Creation has shown you everything.
The mind we possess now may recoil, thinking that this must be the ultimate nightmare. But the rishis, who called this stage Moksha, or liberation, celebrated it. Only the liberated soul can choose anything. There is no tug up or down, and the whole mechanism of pleasure and pain grinds to a halt.
What would it feel like to find yourself free? Boundless? Nameless? If you try to apply any word to the eternal soul – good, holy, loving, truthful – the rishis respond with “netti,” the Sanskrit word for “not that.”
In fact, in some schools of Vedanta, the spiritual path is called “netti, netti,” by which you keep repeating “not this, not this,” until by a process of stripping away you arrive at essence. That’s also what the afterlife journey is about. The dying person realizes, step-by-step, “This used to be me, but it’s not anymore.”
Adapted from Life After Death: The Burden of Proof, by Deepak Chopra (Harmony Books, 2006).
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5 comments
add your comment »Maybe what we lose is all our judgements based on inaccuret assumptions. I suggest that if we 'need to be right' and do so by making everybody else wrong, then we are acting as if our viewpoint is who we are. Our viewpoint is only a focus, and focus is a result of a brain mechenism that allows us to differentiate ourself from others. We are the energy that flows thru that focusing mechinism and gets stuck in a viewpoint. The energy itself is what exists in the field of Oneness. I suspect this is why people tend to want to make everyone conform to their viewpoint. They are trying to 'get back' to the Oneness and they don't realize that all they need do is withdraw their attention from their viewpoint, and PLOP, they're back home. And wow, wasn't that an intersting experience! Now what?
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Go with the flow. I have been reading Deepak Chopra's books since the early 90's and they have been lessons for life. I have learned more from reading Deepak Chopra's books and attending his seminars than any education I have had. His work has given me the essence of spiritual life and the importance of creating my future by taking responsibility for my thoughts and actions. I encourage people, whenever I have the opportunity, to read his books and attend his classes so that they can experience his beautiful energy and ingest his wisdom.
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Like Rays of Light, express their color, form expresses their identity. To expire form doesn't expire light. And, the expressions of light unseen by the naked human eye as well as currents of electricity and polarization. Therefore, if the universe, is ever expanding, like cells in a and as you teach, our cells are dying and reborn, but contained in our individual universes of physical form, do you think Dr. Chopra it is plausible that individual identity can remain in tact, in eternal bliss, where primary instinct of ego is removed but recognition of relationoships goes on?
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Of course, we could just be totally deluding ourselves that there is anything 'after'. In fact, the whole concept of eternity could just be that we are alive for 70 years (give or take)which is effectively zero in the light of infinity. Before life (unconscious) merges with after life (unconscious) and in neither are we aware of life (briefly conscious and unremembered). There is something very peaceful and appealing about the idea of no more struggle, no more hurt, no more pain. Ahhhh!
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I sometimes wonder how it can be that the Mind contained in a human form can dance around in eternity so freely without having some "anchoring" or grounding within it's own boundaries? It would seem to me that some grounding is necessary while we are in such a small container in order to function. Once we are done with the body, grounding wouldn't seem to be useful at all.
:)
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