A Dream of Death – How to Prepare for Death
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Themes – Existential, spiritual, death
“I wonder if I should be afraid of death, or of the fact that I feel no fear of it.”
It had already been 3 months of practicing meditation — at least for 30-45 minutes a day. The goals of every session were different. Sometimes it was to focus on my breath, sometimes on the chanting and sometimes just to try to sit and let go of trying anything — even letting go of the effort to meditate.
But perhaps the scariest and most triggering of all was to think of death and meditate on how would it feel to witness death — a state where the sounds of the loved ones would be fading away, when their memories will be diminishing to darkness and in the end, there would be no brain to know anything at all. Perhaps that would be the last thing to witness.
But it was almost impossible to get to that phase, hence the question remained — why is death a promised part of life? And if it’s the end, then what’s the point of all the feelings, wisdom and compassion that we experience after breaking and getting on our feet, again and again.
It was kind of a permanent question, imprinted in my soul, seeking its answer, at least before I die. And I don’t know if I got a glimpse of it or the true answer to my seeking — through a dream of death.
I was in a plane, and the moment came when it started stalling, taking a deep dive towards the ground. I knew there was no escape, and it was perhaps the moment leading to death. The fear piled up, bringing thoughts that everything is going to end, and the crash, the fire would burn and hurt like hell. I was afraid. But the faith in God, that only he could help, started to take shape, and I started chanting his name — Shiva, Shiva, Shiva, Shiva.
I wanted him to take my pain. Slowly as I kept chanting his name, the sound of his name tried getting all my attention, taking it away from the plane that was crashing down, and from my body, which was soon going to be burnt into ashes. All I could sense was myself as a bubble of air, getting compressed into a smaller and smaller bubble, where the sound of his name — Shiva, was echoing. To my knowledge or awareness, there was only the sound of his name and nothing else. And then the plane did crash, perhaps in slow motion, with no pain in my body, as there was perhaps no knowledge of my own body, but only of a compressed, tiny point-like self. Somehow his name smoothly turned into sound — Ram, and it wasn’t me who chose the name.
I didn’t feel a pinch of pain, and hence I couldn’t figure out if death had already happened.
I woke up with this, perhaps with an answer, that this is what I need to do as death approaches and demands all that I have known about the world, my relationships, my love — of which the reference point of all was myself.
It has been around a year to this, but I have encountered another similar dream, where something within me, of which my brain, which is again me, is still unaware — but in dreams it has guided me through death.
I don’t know if that’s the answer to my question, that is how to prepare for death — but this is the only convincing answer that I have got, through the dream of my death.
