What Is Death?
Culturally, we perceive death to be ‘the end’. This fear of non-existence is the root of all fear. But what is death? And if we found that death wasn’t what culture has told us, would we live our lives differently? Perhaps we have it wrong to think life and death are opposites.
Nature
If we turn to nature, our most prominent teacher and Truth made manifest; we see death and rebirth taking place in cycles. Take trees, for example; they bloom in the spring, they’re in a state of aliveness in the summer. Come Autumn, they begin to ‘die’ by shedding their leaves, and in the winter, they’re bare, waiting for the spring bloom once again.
Of course, this is an elementary example. But knowing nature is our greatest teacher, what can we learn about the metaphysical nature of death?
Physical death
What happens at the point of physical death can’t be proven for obvious reasons (in modern scientific exploration, at least).
Atheists would declare, ‘that’s it… lights out’. Of course, this point of view is usually aligned with the materialist’s paradigm of scientism. Not always, but often.
Monotheistic religions would declare ‘you’re going to heaven or hell’. Perhaps this has been the most extensive control mechanism of the last 2000 years. The clergy tell everyone how they need to live – if they do it well, they go to heaven. If they don’t, they go to hell.
Ancient wisdom keepers would say something very different to both of them – although the content may be different, the context stays the same. They’d say something along the lines of ‘your spirit lives on in a different spiritual realm’. If we go to the authentic shaman or read the Egyptians and Tibetans’ ancient spiritual texts, we see this as common knowledge. Scoffing at such information by ‘modern science’ is doing a disservice to Humanity. These people are/were far more in tune with the reality of existence than we are today.
I agree with the ancients. Not because I want it to be that way, but because after years of study and deep meditation, I know that life is a never-ending process. Life, birth and death are eternal. A single point in consciousness (a human and its perception)
Spiritual Renewal
It is common in the Christian faith for one to be ‘born again’. This is a metaphoric phrase to say that a person’s old way of living has come to an end, and they’ve been spiritually ‘upgraded’. (It gets its name from the ‘rebirth’ of Christ, which is an allegorical story of spiritual evolution. Not physical death and physical rebirth. Most Christians refuse this – but the information is there for all who have eyes who want to see and an open mind)
I think that ‘spiritual death’ and the consequential evolution that follows are how best to describe death. Death is the seed for a re-birthing to a higher level of being. I don’t think that physical death is any different.
I suggest listening to Hugh Jackman talking about this topic (along with others) in this video.