Darshan with Swami Krishnananda during 1996

by Swami Krishnananda

44. The Fear of Death

(Darshan given on September 2nd, 1996.)

A visitor: What is the meaning of death?

Swamiji: Birth involves death, and death involves birth. This is the process of evolution. Nothing can grow into a new, improved condition unless the previous, incomplete condition is cast off; otherwise, the incomplete condition will persist. A man who was a monkey, perhaps, once upon a time, will not continue to have a tail even after he becomes a professor in Harvard, so you drop the tail when the time comes.

Becoming a human being is not the final aim of life. There are an endless number of human beings. Everybody who walks with two feet and speaks some language is considered as a human being, but that is not so. There are cannibal human beings. They are also human beings, but they can behave like cannibals. There are others who are not cannibals, but very selfish people. They will see what is good for them, whether or not it is good for you. They are better than cannibals, but they will not care for you. There are still higher people who will do to tit for tat. Whatever you do to me, I will do to you. They are a little more improved type of people. They will not do you harm unnecessarily, unless you try to harm them. Then there are other people who will not do harm at all, even if you behave badly. After that is the saint, after that is the sage, after that is the Godman, after that is God Himself. I have told you everything. Be happy.

Visitor: I work with people with AIDS. Sometimes they are young people who are facing death, and they are very frightened. What is the mantra to remove the fear of death?

Swamiji: Frightened of what?

Visitor: Frightened of dying, Swamiji.

Swamiji: Nobody likes to die, and no mantra can prevent you from dying.

Visitor: Not from dying, Swamiji, but to relieve some of the anxiety.

Swamiji: You mean some mantra to keep your mind prepared for that eventuality without taking it as a kind of surprise? Do you know that any day anyone can go? Do you believe that anyone can go any day?

Visitor: Yes, Swamiji.

Swamiji: No, you don't believe it; otherwise, you cannot sit quiet here for one minute because of the fright. Nobody will accept that today is their last day. Nobody will accept that. Why does this feeling of continuity – I will be here tomorrow or even for another fifty years – how does this idea persist in a person's mind in spite of it being contrary to fact? That persistence of the love for life and a so-called assurance that we are not going to die so easily arises on account of eternity masquerading in yourself. There is eternity working through you. It says you should not die. How can eternity die? What you call the soul or the Atman is another name for eternity. The eternity that is powerfully stationed in you makes you feel that you are not going to die like that. “I will not die for another twenty-five years. I am perfectly okay.” Who tells you that? It is the eternity that tells you. But there is another side, which is your physical psychobiological personality, which tells you every day, “Be careful. So many have gone, and you are not going to be saved.” This is the phenomenal side of your life. The noumenal, eternal side tells you, “Don't be worried about that. You are not going to die so easily. It will take many years. Be comfortable.” But the phenomenal side, which is physical, psychological, says, “Every day people are going. My fate will also come.” So there is a conflict of feeling operating in everyone: It is dangerous to believe we can live long, yet that belief that we shall live long continues. God is playing a magic trick with you by putting two contradictory ideas in your mind. He is a very good magician.

Anyway, if your mind is really, to an appreciable extent, united with God Almighty – I don't say 100%, that is very difficult – if to an appreciable extent at least your soul is really united with the Supreme Being, that great Presence will tell you inside that you are not going to be destroyed, that you are only going to be transformed into a better being. Death is a preparation for a better life. It is not a curse. It is an inviolable necessity of the process of the evolution of the universe, but because of a terrible attachment that the mind has with this body, it believes that death is an annihilation of everything. Annihilation is the worst thing, but death is not an annihilation. It is a transformation, but nobody will accept it because so much of godliness cannot easily enter into people's minds, and perhaps even the so-called pain of death may be diminished to the extent your soul is in union with God; otherwise, it will be agony. People suffer when they die.

So it is incumbent on the part of every person to receive God at any moment of time, which means, in other words, to be prepared to leave this world at any time. The more you belong to God, the less you belong to this world. The more does God want you, the less the world wants you. This is a very important thing. The more the world wants you, perhaps the less God wants you. Be careful. This is a great philosophy, and a great religious and spiritual instruction, and if you are united in your heart of hearts with that universal heart of the whole cosmos, without which you could not even breathe, then it will free you from the fear of death. Okay?

Visitor: Thank you.

Another visitor: Someone lost his wife and child because of eating poisonous mushrooms, and it happened very suddenly. Now a lot of people advocate that one should forget, while in our thoughts we feel that forgetting such a powerful event would be…

Swamiji: You need not forget that powerful event, but you should take it philosophically. I don't say you can forget a thing that you have lost and cannot recover. You cannot forget it, but you should know how to take it. As a person who is well qualified and educated and wise in this world, how you will take it?

Whatever is in our hand, we have to do, and we have to do it to the best of our ability. The rest is left to God because you cannot do more than the best. If you are sure that you have done the best possible, beyond that best how can you do? So there are certain things that are beyond us, and they have to be taken philosophically, as they call it, trusting in the law of the universe. There is an Indian law, American law, social law, political law, all types of law. There is also a universal law. You don't believe in that. The entire history of humanity is controlled by another universal history, of which we have no knowledge at all. The procession of events in the world, which we call human history, are processions of events in the cosmos. These processions in the cosmos sweep empires, and the whole of mankind can be swept by that process of universal procession. Centuries-old strong empires can go to dust in one minute if the wind of the cosmos blows in another direction.

In the Mahabharata there is a wise saying: Our relationships and our bereavement is something like two logs of wood meeting on the surface of the ocean. If the wind blows in one direction, two logs of wood meet together, and immediately they feel very happy; they are friends. They live together, but only on account of a wind that blows in one direction. The wind can blow in another direction and they will be separated, and then there is bereavement. So neither the coming nor the going is in your hand. It is the operation of the wind that blows from the cosmos, into which mystery we have to get initiated one day or the other.

It is not enough if you are a citizen of one country; you have to be a citizen of the whole universe, which is a greater fact than being a national of any particular country. The universe does not care for human nationality. It doesn't exist for it. It has got its own way of thinking. It decides what is to be done, and it will be done in the manner it has decided, whether you like it or not. It is up to you to keep cooperating with it, to understand its ways. It is the way of taking it philosophically; otherwise, it will be like crying over spilt milk. Milk has gone, and you are crying that it has gone. It is necessary that you should live like a world citizen. You are a citizen of the solar system. The sun is your father, the planets are your brothers.

Visitor: Swamiji, twenty years ago I had a very powerful experience, a near-death experience. I had no knowledge about reincarnation, and in that instant I started believing from my gut about what you have said.

Swamiji: You had some inspiration.

Visitor: I had some experience, and I was pushed into the inspiration.

Swamiji: Sometimes nature starts working suddenly, and enlightens you in her own way. If you do not voluntarily try to understand, you will be forced to understand another way of thinking.