Die now, and you'll never die
Our whole life is practice for dying well. But we can’t die well if we don’t know how to live...
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I once knew a man, an accomplished medical doctor—one of the finest in town. He lived licentiously, chasing women and wealth. Always angry. Filled with hatred. He spat at anything spiritual. Calling it a waste of time.
He laughed when I attended church. He mocked me for praying at meals.
An atheist without calling himself one.
He thought the spiritual life was for idiots who were weak and couldn’t face the world. Only fools stuck in a bygone world believed in God. These dimwits think praying, meditating, fasting, exercising virtues matter.
Then, a few years ago, on his deathbed, he turned to God. Regretting many of his decisions in life.
This man is not unique. He’s the norm. Many of us are like him in more ways than we want to admit.
Our hearts carry hatred, lust and unforgiveness. We deceive ourselves thinking these make us stronger, antifragile. Like Nietzsche, we believe only the weak cling to God and practice virtue. So, we must reject anything spiritual.
I’ve noticed something. The more learned a person is, the more they scorn the spiritual life. Professors, doctors, lawyers, tech execs tell me: “You think spirituality matters. I don’t. I believe in science and reason.”
But there’s a place where rationality can never climb. It’s the most important mountain. The mountain of paradox.
When the paradoxes of life reveal themselves to us: suffering and bliss, death and life, mortal and immortal, no advanced degrees, wealth, fame, or power can reconcile the paradoxes. Only one thing can.
When the inevitable strikes—terminal cancer, a spouse’s death, a child’s tragic loss—we instinctively turn to the spiritual life. Regretting we hadn’t done so sooner.
The truth is: hate, anger, and unforgiveness only make us fragile and trapped. Without the spiritual life, a life lived in love, we’re stuck in this cycle of samsara—the endless cycle of rebirth and death. And samsara takes place in our own mind. For this reason, we read:
Let one therefore keep the mind pure, for what a man thinks that he becomes: this is a mystery of Eternity.1
I’m writing this because you and I will die. It could be tomorrow, in 25 years or 50 years. No matter what the Silicon Valley CEOs tell you.2 There’s no cure for death.
Our whole life is practice for dying well. But we can’t die well if we don’t know how to live, my friend.
Only the spiritual life teaches us how to die.
And in learning how to die, we learn how to live. In learning how to live, we gain immortality.
You see, there is no immortality without death.
This is why it's so important not to ignore your spiritual life.
The spiritual life is dying to our false self every day. In the realisation that our neighbour is ourselves. Even the one we despise.
As Jesus Christ taught:
Love your neighbour as yourself.3
But to do this, we must first love God with all our mind, heart and soul. In so doing, we participate in the Divine. By participating, we realise the eternal truth. That our existence, the very existence of this cosmos, is here and now because God is in all things.
We read in Colossians:
And He is before all things, and in Him all things consist.4
Uddalaka Aruni taught his son, Svetakatu, this truth.
Svetakatu returned home filled with egoic pride after 12 years studying the Vedas. Aruni saw his arrogance:
Svetaketu, my boy, you seem to have a great opinion of yourself, you think you are learned, and you are proud. Have you asked for that knowledge whereby what is not heard is heard, what is not thought is thought, and what is not known is known?5
He’s asking Svetakatu if he attained that wisdom whereby knowing this one Truth, all things are known? Just as by knowing a piece of gold all that is gold is known. Or by knowing a piece of clay all that is clay is known.
Through nine parables, Uddalaka showed him the eternal truth:
Believe me, my son, an invisible and subtle essence is the Spirit of the whole universe. That is Reality. That is Atman. Thou Art That.6
Svetakatu finally learns this eternal wisdom. That multiplicities are contained in the One. That our lives are the microcosm of the macrocosm. That the cosmos exists out of the fullness of Love, and our lives are to mirror this great Love.
Our spiritual life is our path to immortality. And we walk this path through love. Ignore it, and we’ll lie on our deathbed like the doctor whispering regrets.
Don’t wait, my friend. Die now, and you will never die.
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Gospel of Matthew, Gospel of Mark.
ibid.