On Death

Death is our common mystery. Like birth and love, it is a bond that unites us all. Yet none of us can know for certain what it contains or what it portends.

We have glimpses from those who have experienced clinical death and returned to tell us what they saw. We have promises from all faiths and religions. However, we all must meet death alone, so it remains the great private preparation for each of us.

Many years ago I was present at a total eclipse of the sun.

I climbed to the crown of a high hill and sat down facing the growing morning light. Birds were singing. Cows and horses grazed on the hillside. As the moment came, and the moon began to carve away the sun, the earth became inexpressibly still. The cows sank to their knees and the horses bowed their heads. Soon only the ghostly corona of the hidden sun remained to cast a fragile light on the dark and silent earth.

In that moment, something momentous happened. I lost my fear of death. The light of the sun had been taken from me and the world I knew had been cast into a great darkness. But there was no sense of terror; no sense of fear. The self was annihilated, but it was an annihilation into oneness.

I can't put a name to what was shown me in that moment. It was too far beyond the human for me to understand. But I do know that it had to do with death, and that I was swept up into the greatest peace that I have ever known, a peace that surpassed all understanding. I accepted it like the tranquil embrace of a long-sought sleep.

If that moment on the hillside contained truth -- and I think it did -- we do death no justice by measuring it against ourselves. We are too small; it is too great. What we fear is only the loss of self, and the self knows eternity like a shadow knows the sun.

So, fear dying if you must. It takes from us the only life we know, and that is a worthy loss to mourn. But do not fear death. It is something too great to celebrate, too great to fear. Either it brings us to judgment, so it is ours to control by the kind of life we live, or it annihilates us into the great rhythm of nature, and we join the eternal peace of the revolving heavens.

In the brief moment when I stood on that hill while the earth's light went out, I felt no indifference and no sense of loss. Instead I felt an unutterable sense of gain, a shattering of all my own boundaries into an overwhelming sense of peace. I was part of a great harmony.

We should embrace our dying as a momentary passage into that harmony. Perhaps we cannot hear that harmony now. Perhaps we even hear it as a vast and empty silence. But that vastness is not empty; it is a presence. Even in the greatest places, the silence has a sound.

by Kent Nerburn
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