That Ultimate Moment I amused Katherine Holden, my valued assistant, when she said one day, “It appears to me that you must stay up late. What time do you go to bed?” I said, “I always go to bed at midnight…actually, a minute or two after midnight—that way, I know I’ve lived until the ‘next day’!” After considering this, she said to me later that she thought it would be useful if I were to write about what it is like for a Self-realized person (at 79) to be living in what he expects could be the final days of his life. Her suggested title for such a monograph: A Moment After Midnight. To do this, I’d need to situate the matter within a comprehensive framework. With the advent of Self-realization, one has “died” to one’s “personal” identity. While we still answer to our given name, and still use the personal pronoun “I” when practical, we are fully aware that our true nature is That, the immovable presence “which does not come and go,” the timeless Being which experiences neither birth nor death. It is our bodies, and “individual” identity which take form, within this ever-present reality that has no beginning or end. And it is within this ever-present reality that our bodies, and assumed “mind” and “self,” cease to exist as what appear to be independent forms. So, of this much, one is already clearly aware upon Selfrealization: material forms, and all which they “embody,” are impermanent; the only thing which is permanent,
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