[FairfieldLife] Re: Different experience of dying ignorant or enlightened

[maskedzebra]

--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "authfriend" <jstein@...> wrote:
>
> --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, maskedzebra <no_reply@> wrote:
> <snip>
>
>Re: Different experience of dying ignorant or enlightened

--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, maskedzebra <no_reply@...> wrote:
<snip>
> If, as Maharishi says, one can dispense with the agony of
> death through getting identified with transcendental
> consciousness, why should it not be conceivable in principle
> to do the same thing when one is getting born—assuming that
> one has—potentially—access to the memory of doing TM in a
> previous life?

Minor quibble: If transcending makes death easier because
one has "practiced" separation of mind/soul from body,
wouldn't birth be the opposite--mind/soul coming together
with body? And wouldn't that be the equivalent, not of
transcending, but of stress release--which, as we know,
can be unpleasant?

Judy,

I think I understand you perfectly here, and I yield to you on this point (as 
you have interpreted me).

I would say, however, that I had originally wanted to compare death to 
*conception*, because this (we are speaking about a reality which none of us 
knows anything about: death, conception) circumstance has everything to do with 
the person we are going to be. Conception is where God is determining who we 
are going to be; so, in this sense, he is nearest us. (As well has forming the 
person we are, he also *starts to make us exist*.)

Same with death: as I see, intuit it, it we come face-to- with the Person who 
first created us—and gave us the free will to make of ourselves what we would 
(I go along with Aquinas here and believe God has a perfect knowledge of not 
only the determined future, but the contingent future (what might or might not 
happen—especially as this concerns our free will—and therefore he already knows 
what we will do with our free will).

We, as it were, come into the presence of the author of the very self that we 
are (that omnisubjectivity I have referred to: the sense of being an "I" that 
reflects the internal reality of God himself, who, in my way of thinking about 
it, is very much an "I"—and a person). This will be an unspeakable, 
inexpressible reality, because imagine meeting the person who designed your 
innermost sense of who you are. Well, that's what I believe happens at death: 
you meet the Person who created you.

Now things are different in what I have deemed a post-Catholic universe: I 
doubt there is the same Judgment thing going on; nevertheless I don't doubt the 
actual circumstance is the same, viz. you will meet the person who created the 
person that you are, and the person that you are in seeing and knowing God for 
the first time.

Intimate: that doesn't even begin to describe it. 

So, then, Judy, if I could somewhere compare death to conception, I would have 
done this, but it seemed a more intelligible and accessible idea to compare 
death to birth.

But, as I say, I tend to go along with you, although I think the "mind/soul 
coming together with body" had already happened. What is traumatic and powerful 
is going from the womb into the physical universe. We may, none of us, have 
ever completely got over *that* even if we do not, evidently, have the capacity 
to remember it.