The Death Experience Proves Existence Of Self
Reflecting on life Adi Shankracharya in Bhajagovindam asserts, ‘One
is interested in play when he is a child, in women when he is young and,
when he grows old, he is lost in thoughts. No one is interested in
inquiring into what is truly real’. The ‘truly real’ is that which is
non-transitory and therefore permanent.
The real is not external but internal to human beings. Since ‘we are created with the sense organs facing outward’ we have to make a conscious, continuous and diligent effort to look inwards. Someone who is wise, desiring immortality, sees the inner Self, by turning his gaze inwards and asking the question ‘Who am I’?
Ramana Maharshi learnt this during his two ‘death experiences’ in 1886 and 1912. The first experience was as a sixteen-year-old and the second was when he was 33 years of age.
In the first experience he, without any physical or psychological reason, suddenly felt the violent fear of death that drove his mind inwards and he said to himself, ‘Now death has come; what does it mean? What is it that is dying? This body dies’.
The question arose in his mind ‘with the death of the body, am I dead? Is the body I? Body is silent and inert, but i feel the full force of my personality and even the voice of I within me’. So I am the Spirit transcending the body. The body dies but the spirit transcending it cannot be touched by death. That means I am the deathless Spirit’.
The second death experience was felt in quick succession thrice. He felt as if a white curtain was drawn and darkness and faintness descended on his vision. His skin turned blue. His breathing and blood circulation stopped.
He says, ‘I could distinctly see the gradual process. There was a stage when I could still see a part of the landscape clearly while the rest was covered by the advancing curtain. It was just like drawing a slide across one's view in a stereoscope’.
About the second and third stages he says, ‘When darkness and faintness came over me a second time I leaned against a rock until it cleared. The third time it happened I felt it safer to sit, so I sat down near the rock. Then the bright white curtain completely shut off my vision, my head was swimming and my circulation and breathing stopped. The skin turned a vivid blue. It was the regular death hue and it got darker and darker’.
Though the body manifested all signs of death, Ramana says, ‘My usual current of awareness still continued in that state also. I was not in the least afraid and felt no sickness at the condition of the body. . . . This state continued for some ten or fifteen minutes. Then a shock passed suddenly through the body and circulation revived with enormous force and breathing as well, while the body perspired from every pore. The colour of life reappeared on the skin’.
Ramana was conscious throughout the period he was undergoing this ‘death experience’ for he says he could distinctly hear and understand the words of his companion. He admits that ‘I also saw the discolouration of my skin and felt the stoppage of my circulation and breathing and the increased chilliness of the extremities of my body. My usual current of awareness still continued in that state also. I was not in the least afraid and felt no sadness at the condition of the body’.
The real is not external but internal to human beings. Since ‘we are created with the sense organs facing outward’ we have to make a conscious, continuous and diligent effort to look inwards. Someone who is wise, desiring immortality, sees the inner Self, by turning his gaze inwards and asking the question ‘Who am I’?
Ramana Maharshi learnt this during his two ‘death experiences’ in 1886 and 1912. The first experience was as a sixteen-year-old and the second was when he was 33 years of age.
In the first experience he, without any physical or psychological reason, suddenly felt the violent fear of death that drove his mind inwards and he said to himself, ‘Now death has come; what does it mean? What is it that is dying? This body dies’.
The question arose in his mind ‘with the death of the body, am I dead? Is the body I? Body is silent and inert, but i feel the full force of my personality and even the voice of I within me’. So I am the Spirit transcending the body. The body dies but the spirit transcending it cannot be touched by death. That means I am the deathless Spirit’.
The second death experience was felt in quick succession thrice. He felt as if a white curtain was drawn and darkness and faintness descended on his vision. His skin turned blue. His breathing and blood circulation stopped.
He says, ‘I could distinctly see the gradual process. There was a stage when I could still see a part of the landscape clearly while the rest was covered by the advancing curtain. It was just like drawing a slide across one's view in a stereoscope’.
About the second and third stages he says, ‘When darkness and faintness came over me a second time I leaned against a rock until it cleared. The third time it happened I felt it safer to sit, so I sat down near the rock. Then the bright white curtain completely shut off my vision, my head was swimming and my circulation and breathing stopped. The skin turned a vivid blue. It was the regular death hue and it got darker and darker’.
Though the body manifested all signs of death, Ramana says, ‘My usual current of awareness still continued in that state also. I was not in the least afraid and felt no sickness at the condition of the body. . . . This state continued for some ten or fifteen minutes. Then a shock passed suddenly through the body and circulation revived with enormous force and breathing as well, while the body perspired from every pore. The colour of life reappeared on the skin’.
Ramana was conscious throughout the period he was undergoing this ‘death experience’ for he says he could distinctly hear and understand the words of his companion. He admits that ‘I also saw the discolouration of my skin and felt the stoppage of my circulation and breathing and the increased chilliness of the extremities of my body. My usual current of awareness still continued in that state also. I was not in the least afraid and felt no sadness at the condition of the body’.
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