That Ultimate Moment

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,

unmoving, is that which existed before the appearance of transient “identities,” and will last after. Thus one has already “foreseen” the death of the body of each “person,” that person’s “self,” that person’s “mind.” Yet, one recognizes something “else” remains. What is the importance of this recognition to the Self-realized? We are all given a hint of what it means to no longer exist as a “person” or a “self”—or even as a “body.” In our deepest stage of nightly sleep, self-awareness is absent; in fact even awareness of being, or having, a body is suspended. The empty awareness which is present, in that condition, is not even aware of the extent of the emptiness of that condition. Body, person, mind, identity: “gone”; the absence is not missed, nor is there even any desire for recurrence.

This is our foreshadowing of obliteration—not only “personally,” but of all existence of which we have ever been aware. Our awareness in deep sleep is entirely empty of a world on this earth, as well as a universal cosmos in which any reality whatsoever exists. All gone. This is our daily “reminder” of the status which is as deathlike as death could possibly be: emptiness, without even an awareness of the totality of emptiness. Not anything left; not even an awareness that you—or even the universe— ever have been: no trace of any existence that was even a possibility, nor even imagined. In the ultimate sense, then, how “meaningful,” how “important” is any “reality,” how seriously ought we to take our life: it is no more significant than a fleeting dream.

It is this awareness which is the conscious state of the thoroughly Self-realized. As a consequence, his attention is merely on the moment, as one is when witnessing the unfolding of a dream. His mind has emptied of substantial content, retaining only what is practical in terms of dayto-day living. Wherever he looks, and whatever he views, he sees only impermanence: emptiness—recognizing that he who sees is no less empty. “His” life, the world, the universe can cease to be—even to ever have been—at any moment. This recognition, this awareness, dictates his every movement—every one of which holds the amusing “importance” of potentially being his last. Therefore, since no moment bears any more importance than any other moment, it matters not to him when that ultimate moment will appear. So, he has, in a sense, “died before one dies,” and his absence, or non-existence, is as much in his conscious awareness as is his momentary presence. This is to be free, and at peace. It is to transcend “the fear of death.” There is only the Endless, for which there is no such reality as “time,” in the moment after “midnight.”

Poised at the pond’s edge the dew drop slips from the leaf stilling the Still pond. — Katherine Holden