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" Live out of your imagination

not your history "

Stephen R. Covey

Dying into the Cosmos

September 1st, 2011

Yesterday a friend said to me “Of course we all die alone.” In that moment, rather than accepting this familiar idea, I found myself saying “I don’t believe that. I believe quite the contrary: that when we die, we die with everyone, we are not alone at all at that moment, but are united with every living being – we die into the Cosmos.”  I realized in this conversation that I choose to believe that it is at the moment of death that we finally give up our sense of isolation as separate beings – that it is precisely at death that the illusion of aloneness, of separation, disappears!

Of course we can never know what exactly happens until we actually take the journey ourselves, but we also know that our belief in outcomes influences enormously our current state – physical, mental and emotional. For this reason our beliefs about what happens at death are important. I thank my friend for such a stimulating discussion!

15 Responses to “Dying into the Cosmos”

  1. This is an amazing subject! A play with words can be used here. We die All one.
    As a past life regression hypnotist and medium I have witnessed people under hypnosis ‘dying’ in a past life. We forget everything when we come here, of course, but our unconscious knows everything. There is always Divine Love surrounding us…… is that being alone? Alone could mean separation, which is the great illusion, What dies? Only the body anyway! We are NEVER separated from that which created us. So what is alone….all one?

  2. The timing of this post is very appropriate for me. My 35yr old cousin has just suffered a heart attack which he wont recover from. Today he was taken off life support and now it’s a matter of waiting for him to pass. I found reading the above very comforting. Thankyou for sharing.

  3. Curious how that verbalises what I’ve been vaguely aware of for a long time. Curiouser how a thought fails to coalesce perhaps because of previous contrary verbalisations, like the sense that we all die alone.

    Tony

  4. Maybe what is also to be realised, is the illusiion of ‘I’, that separate sense of self is finally given up in that most intimate moment of marriage with the beloved. Is it not the very sense of ‘I’ that creates the belief of so called aloneness, as has been murmured ” to know the self is to forget the self, to forget the self is to be illuminated by all things’! And there’s no need to wait for death to realise this, it is this very illumination which shines in luminous with clarity in every moment….

  5. i reckon a dissolution of boundaries, both temporal, spatial, & in terms of the sense of separateness of self. Oddly to describe this I’m having to deliniate that which I reckon would dissolve!
    & Tony, I agree, I feel its often true that previous experiences create barriers to other notions or experience.
    Thanks for this’un Philip : D

  6. Maybe this is part of where notions of ‘heaven’ & afterlifes come from, people feeling they’ll be reunited with all their mates & (literally) everything?
    I find the sense/feeling of merging back together with the world simultaneuosly comforting & exhilarating, in a kitten snuggled to mummy kind of way- safe, encompassed & wonderful!

  7. Great comments – and nice to see old friends Alice and Bill here! And of course as Huw says: we don’t have to wait until we die to shake off that feeling of separateness!

  8. “Slow down my beating heart, slowly love, slowly love, and this hurt won’t hurt no more, I’ll be home soon”
    My favourite song of U2.

  9. Philip, I love the sentiment you express here. Mirrors our ancestors’ belief that this life is only one in a long journey and the shamanic perspective of the all things being interconnected in a multiverse and that we are continually born into new worlds. 🙂

  10. Thank you. I love the idea of dying into the Cosmos. The House of many Mansions ? But I do not think we are alone “here” either. We are connected to everyone and everything, wether manifest or unmanifest. Thoughts and feelings do not remain private. They go out ” there “. The pebble thrown in the pond ripple effect. Of course we do not see all this. Black Elk said ” any human, man or woman or child, when they are going to die, in their last hours, they can See.” Whatever the rigors of death, I feel the Spirit, even the Cosmos, are full of mercy. Blessings, Virginia

  11. Friend speaks my mind.

    Also, just to say that I bought ‘Sacred Nature’ yesterday, after listening to your discussion about it with Damh on Druidcast. Having experienced ‘Clothed in Flowers’ during the day, I was very enthusiastic about getting Other Half out of his post-work funk by sharing ‘The Island of Moy Mell’. He hasn’t done any real meditation for a long, long time, and I’ve worried about him not allowing himself the spiritual nourishment he needs. Afterwards, he opened his eyes and said, “That was really, really good. You know, I’d like to do this 3 or 4 times a week.”

    I want to thank you and the rest of the ‘Sacred Nature’ team for the wonderful gift you’ve given us.

  12. Huw sums it up very well. The idea of the ‘I’ can die at any time, regardless of what the ‘I’ thinks happens at the physical death of the body – the ‘I’ being only a concept believed by something that thinks it is an ‘I’ doing the thinking.

    It is only this ‘I’ thought which keeps us as separate entities who were once born and will one day die. Once this thought is allowed to drop away, then death is not possible, whether you be alone, falling back into the cosmos or going to see all your mates again.

    If all of the above is disregarded however, its no problem – our beliefs about what happens to us at death are irrelevant, whether we chose to realise that there is actually no ‘I’ to which these beliefs can possibly affect or not.

    There is only this moment 😉

  13. That it is just Illusion doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt. I for one, at this stage, am not going to see death as more real than living. And perhaps in my hour of dying it will be true, and I wil be in communion what all and everthing; only time I can be certain, will be that moment.

  14. I love the idea. I am reminded about CS Lewis saying we love to know we are not alone. I also look forward to being with my ancestors, which I am now connected to, since my Ovate work. Thanks again for all you do.

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