The Great Death

Due to recent circumstances and posts, a friend of mine sent me a link to an Adyashanti talk from 2002 called The Great Death. While the title is a reference to awakening, much of the talk focused on death.

The talk is summarized like this:
Speaking on such topics as the inseparability of life and death, time and timelessness, suicide, and the death of illusion, Adyashanti’s outstanding talk from the 2002 audiotape album “The Great Death,” leads to the place where “everyone runs out of excuses for barricading their hearts.”

I made a few notes, some of which you may enjoy. They are not exact quotes.

How utterly simple it is. When we have enough contact with reality. Death is a certain type of reality… all finalities are… impregnated with reality.

It either brings out truth or it brings out a tremendous amount of fear.

They’re both going on simultaneously. Life & death. Living & dying.

…and they surrender to that. It’s such a beautiful experience to be with people like that.  The peace that comes over them. And the peace. And the love, Simply because they surrendered to this non-negotiable fact. (death)

…die while you’re alive and be set free.

We will die pretty much the way we live.

Every time when you go to bed at night, you get a dress rehearsal for dying.
The only difference is that for most people when the go to sleep, they lose consciousness.

Human beings think we go to sleep to rest our bodies. Bodies don’t need it. Your bodies not really resting… You need to return to your true nature. If you’ve ever stayed awake while you’re asleep, you’ll know what I mean.

That’s why sages…define the enlightened state, it’s like being in deep sleep, but fully awake.

…since eternity is abundantly creative…then we start to do this thing called dreaming.

Usually for most people it’s the subconscious that’s creating.

It’s also what happens to people when they die. You’re no longer caught in time, so what ever you think is, just like that.

Where am I going to go? Exactly where you think yourself. …until you think a different one.

the same thing is happening for everyone all the time. It’s just a little more sluggish [when alive]

We are experiencing our own minds. Even in this moment, that’s what you are experiencing. .. an amazing combination of a collective mind and an individual mind. Both are creating this very moment. The way we are experiencing this moment is entirely dependent on the quality of your dreaming right now.

People aren’t aware of their own freedom. People don’t know that they could change their experience in the snap of a finger if they were conscious enough. And easily.

Awakening is a death. But it isn’t really a death. A paradox. A gateless gate – its only gateless once you’ve gone through it.

The only thing that can ever be lost is an illusion.

[awakening] But its the kind of death that in the moment can seem very real. And then in retrospect you look over your shoulder and go “yes, but nothing died”… yes a death definitely occurred but nothing died.

In life, at death, after life. It’s always the same question. How many illusions am I willing to let go of? this is % free.

Stripped
A female Buddhist sage, per Adyashanti said:

The truths job is to strip you. No matter where you find yourself, in the greatest heaven or the greatest hell, you will always find the cosmic Buddha (truth) undoing your buttons on the front of your shirt. … you’ll always find that the cosmic Buddha will be taking off your garments.

No matter what clothes your wear, the great compassion of the truth will always be stripping you.

The Great Death is the willingness to be totally stripped. The final liberation. Including stripped of our own awakening and our own enlightenment…

You can’t even want to hold to something that’s ultimately real.
If you want to hold on to it, you know that’s not it. (truth, reality)

Nothing really dies. It just changes form. How can you want what already is?

Somebody that has a belief, (in heaven, etc.) at the end of their life, they’re going to be very afraid. At the time of death, our belief (about death) isn’t worth very much.

Death is an experience. And all experience is an illusion. But only by measuring the truth by what is eternally always present. All this experience is nothing but a display of our true nature… is temporary.

Suicide
Someone is suicidal – Adyashantis first response is “Great, there’s a lot of it going around.”  He then asks “What wants to die?” The illusion is “i want to die” but what actually wants to die. Maybe its time for that to die. Because there is a fear, a stigma around the impulse, its difficult for people to speak of it.

He also said that if they really want the experience of killing themselves, then that’s the experience they’re going to have. But they probably don’t know what it is that actually wants to die.

There’s no way out of suffering, only through.

It takes a lot of courage to get old. And a lot of surrender.

You can’t know his suffering. The only suffering you can know is yours.

To hear the entire talk, click here.
http://www.adyashanti.org/cafedharma/index.php?file=library_audio
search Great Death in the upper right. It’s a free download.
46 MB. About 98 min.