At one time or another, most of us have probably heard the phrase that serves as the title of this article: “That will be the death of me.” It implies that a stressful situation or challenging task will spell our end. What I propose in this article is that such is impossible. This basically means that you can never—”not”—be. Why? Because the true “Self” doesn’t die. This stance, although certainly contrary to common belief, isn’t new. It’s in alignment with the following quote attributed to Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj in I Am That:

“The real does not die; the unreal never lived.”

I’m not denying that body-minds (persons) die; for the daily news is filled with proof: an earthquake results in the deaths of several hundred persons; an armed gunman enters a mall and kills twenty-five innocent bystanders; a multi-vehicle pileup on the freeway leads to the death of eight persons. Why, then, do I state that we don’t die? The answer is related to the inscription that was engraved on the frontispiece of the Temple of Apollo, in Delphi, Greece:

“Know Thyself”

If you believe that all there is to “you” is the body-mind that’s apparently reading this article, you will have little choice but to scoff at its content. And who could blame you? But, if you’re eager to investigate a deeper dimension of Being that’s beyond name and form, you may be tempted to continue reading.

We get a taste of our essential nature through meditation; for when we become still, it’s possible to realize that Awareness is prior to mind. We are the Silent Witness of all sensations, images, feelings, and thoughts. When we re-cognize true Self, we know through direct experience that we couldn’t possibly be a name; nor could we be a body, which is exchanging approximately three-hundred million cells per minute. Our essential nature is That; the changeless Source of all that is changeful.

In The Power of Now, Eckhart Tolle (a famous spiritual teacher and author) shares an event that happened to him at the age of twenty-nine: “I woke up in the early hours with a feeling of absolute dread.” He had experienced similar occurrences many times previously, having suffered from anxiety for several years. Suddenly, he was caught off guard by the following repetitive thought:

“I can’t live with myself any longer.”

Eckhart Tolle then became increasingly aware that the sentence implied two: the “I” and the “myself,” which was the cause of all of his suffering. As his puzzlement deepened, he began to wonder if only one of them was real. It would be the night of his awakening to true Self; which basically means liberation from identification with the false self. Humankinds’ confusion about death occurs because the majority of beings remain asleep to a deeper dimension that transcends name and form. In short, we erroneously believe that consciousness is personal; when, in fact, Consciousness is impersonal and Universal—the Foundation of all that is. This knowledge may help to explain the following passage from Psalm 23:4 and its use of the specific word shadow:

“Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil;

for thou art with me; they rod and thy staff they comfort me.”

To merely believe the information that I’m sharing in this article is pointless; for such means next to nothing when the rubber meets the road, so to speak. To know it as reality, we must be willing to set aside our assumptions related to identity and directly investigate our true nature. Can you really be Jane or John Doe? Please contemplate this deeply. Can letters strung together in the form of words (which are merely symbols that refer to things) actually “be” you? No; of course not. It’s why the noted author and speaker Alan Watts stated that you can’t get wet from the word water. If you can acknowledge that a word is only a symbol for that to which it refers, you’ll easily apply the same logic to your name. It’s what William Shakespeare meant when he penned the following famous line from Romeo and Juliet:

“A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.”

Although persons might accept that a name cannot possibly be their identity, most will struggle to accept that they’re not their body-mind. We’ve been conditioned since infancy to believe that we are the person; thus, that deep belief is completely understandable. However, it may help us dive deeper into the nature of our Being if we understand that all effects (including our person) are rendered by the mind. In The Law of Success, Paramahansa Yogananda stated the following:

“Mind is the creator of everything.”

Consciousness, not a supposedly material world made of “matter,” is the substance of every form and experience. We could not, indeed, have any experience in the absence of consciousness. This also helps us understand why the following, attributed to Jesus, is stated in Luke 17:21: “Neither shall they say, lo here! or, lo there! for behold the kingdom of God is within you.” He meant that Consciousness cannot be located in time and space as an object. Contrary to popular belief, our body-mind is actually a function of mind; not an independently-existing entity. Our true identity is Spirit, aka Consciousness. Could all of this, as Edgar Allen Poe penned, actually just be a dream within a dream? Most definitely.

Dare to dream (and care for one another).

With heartfelt regards,

Art

Copyright © – 2021 – R. Arthur Russell

P.S. Please share this article if you enjoyed it. If you’d like to view my latest book (This Taste of Flesh and Bones), press here. My YouTube videos can be found at Think2wice@I-Am-Aware. May the content of either or both help you along your spiritual journey. “Thank You” & “Note to Publishers” 🙏🏻🧡