Death experience

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Dear parekh;

I happened to see your request regarding " near death experience " . What

I am giving below may not exactly suit your purpose.But it is a

significant experience which resulted in the advent of one of the

gtretest sages who illumined the world with their spiritual radiance.

 

 

.. It was about the middle of the year 1896; Venkataraman was seventeen

then. One day he was sitting up alone on the first floor of his uncle's

house. He was in his usual health. There was nothing wrong with it. But

a sudden and unmistakable fear of death took hold of him. He felt he was

going to die. Why this feeling should have come to him he did not know.

The feeling of impending death, however, did not unnerve him. He calmly

thought about what he should do. He said to himself, " Now, death has

come. What does it mean? What is it that is dying? This body dies. "

Immediately thereafter he lay down stretching his limbs out and holding

them stiff as though rigor mortis had set in. He held his breath and

kept his lips tightly closed, so that to all outward appearance his body

resembled a corpse. Now, what would happen? This was what he thought :

" Well, this body is now dead. It will be carried to the burning ground

and there burnt and reduced to ashes. But with the death, of this body

am I dead? Is the body I? This body is silent and inert. But I feel the

full force of my personality and even the voice of the 'I' within me,

apart from it. So I am the Spirit transcending the body. The body dies

but the Spirit that transcends it cannot be touched by death. That means

I am the deathless Spirit " . As Bhagavan Sri Ramana narrated this

experience later on for the benefit of his devotees it looked as though

this was a process of reasoning. But he took care to explain that this

was not so. The realization came to him in a flash. He perceived the

truth directly. 'I' was something very real, the only real thing. Fear

of death had vanished once and for all. From then on, 'I' continued like

the fundamental sruti note that underlies and blends with all the other

notes. Thus young Venkataraman found himself on the peak of spirituality

without any arduous or prolonged sadhana. The ego was lost in the flood

of Self-awareness. All on a sudden the boy that used to be called

Venkataraman had flowered into a sage and saint.

 

The Venkataraman, memtioned above, is none other than Bhagavan Sri

Ramana Maharshi.

 

For more details you may visit <http://www.ramana-maharshi.org>

 

Ramana sarma