Dream/Reality & Life/Death.

 

The Taoist philosopher Chuang Tzu said, "Once I, Chuang Chou, dreamt that I was a butterfly. Flitting about at ease to my heart’s content. I was indeed a butterfly. Happy and cheerful, I had no consciousness of being Chou. All of a sudden I awoke, and lo, I was Chou. Did Chou dream that he was a butterfly? Or did the butterfly dream that it was Chou? How do I know? There is, however, undeniably a difference between Chou and a butterfly. This situation is what I would call a Transmutation of things."

In the situation described above, Chou and the butterfly have become undistinguishable, each having lost its essential self-identity. And yet he says, "there is undeniably a difference between Chou and a butterfly".

This is the situation of things in the phenomenal world, which man ordinarily calls "Reality". On this level of existence, "man" cannot be "butterfly", and "butterfly" cannot be "man". These two things which are thus definitely different and distinguishable from each other, do lose their distinction at a certain level of human consciousness, and go into the state of undifferentiation.

This was the state of "amma" or the primordial cloud before distinguishable manifestation occurred.

In this sense Reality in the real sense of the word is something totally different from what reason regards as "reality".

In the eye of the one who has experienced the great awakening, all things are One; all things are the Reality itself. At the same time this unique Reality discloses a kaleidoscope view of infinitely various things which are essentially different one from another , and the world of Being, in this respect appears manifold and multiple.

This same Transmutation can be understood as a temporal process too, when applied to the concept of life and death. A thing "a" continues to subsist as "a" for sometime; then when the limit which has been naturally assigned to it comes, it ceases to be "a" and becomes transmuted to another thing ,"b" . From the view-point of supra-temporality, "a" and "b" are metaphysically one and the same thing, the difference being merely a matter of phenomenon. In this sense even before "a" ceases to be "a" , it is "b", and "b" is "a". So as a matter of fact "a" does not become "b" , because "a" and "b" are already one.

According to this view-point the distinction between Life and Death is obliterated. For the ordinary mind Death is a very disquieting problem. The man who overcomes the existential anxiety of being constantly faced by the horror of his end is at the stage of being a "true" man. We live in a fluid sate of things , and we cannot be sure of the self-identity of anything.

The Holy Prophet s.w said that the life of this world is a dream, and you are asleep here. When you die it is as if you have awakened.

The Holy Quran says, Allah "brings the dead out of the living and the living out of the dead".

In the Holy Quran you find references such as , "you cannot make the dead hear". This is certainly not a reference to the physically dead or those who have passed on from this realm, for there is a Hadith in which the Holy Prophet s.w is reported to have stopped by the burial ground of the warriors who had lost their lives in the battle of Badr and had called out by name to them and spoken to them. On being questioned about this by the Sahaba, the Holy Prophet s.w had said "they can hear us just as well as you can hear me".
So what is Life and what is Death?

Speaking of the "true" man , Chuang-Tzu says, "He does not care to know why he lives. Nor does he care to know why he dies. He does not even know which comes first and which comes last. [Life and Death in his mind are undifferentiated from each other, the distinction being insignificant]

This is mnemonic of another Hadith, "Die before death". Dying in life we become alive in death. In other words being dead to phenomenal existence is being present to Reality. 

Chuang –Tzu’s philosophy is not advocating transmigration, but in fact, is pointing out that everything is a phenomenal form of one unique reality which goes on assuming successively different forms of self-manifestation. Besides, this temporal process itself is a phenomenon. On a Real level, all this is taking place on an eternal, a-temporal level. The Real is engaged in Self-Manifestation and Self-Discovery by Itself. The Knower, the Known and the Knowledge are all One.

[Most paragraphs above excerpted from ‘Sufism and Taoism" by Toshihiko Izutsu]

Teachings of Hazrat Inayat Khan:

 

By death of the body is meant dissolution, of course. For
when this physical body is disintegrated, the soul is no
longer a captive to time and space and its life becomes
much more real.

 
In another sense, body means much more than just the
physical body; any body -- earth-body, mind-body or even
heart-body -- seems to exact something from soul so that it
does not fully realize its complete union and unity with God.
 

Again, death of body may mean death of influence of body.
This is a most wonderful process. When one has completely
realized God while in the physical body, when one has
attained to liberation, the form of the body remains --
one still has a chemical body but there is a marvelous
change in it.
 

 
The old physical atoms fall away and are displaced by finer
particles. These are more attenuated and are filled with the
life-force which flows forth from the heart -- not with the
blood so much as around the blood like magnetism flows
around an electric wire. This living magnetism produces a
living light and sometimes this light can manifest. Thus
Jesus Christ has said, "Let your light shine before men."
 

This light was also seen in Moses when the Glory of God
shone upon him and it is called "Kevod" by the Hebrews. This
is the living breath and life of God. It manifested
in Mohammed s.w whose inner light was so great that he
cast no shadow. It was this attainment that gave him the
right to be called Mohammed. By Sufis this light is called
"Nuri Mohammed".

This spiritual physical body is called by the Buddhists
"Nirmanakaya" or body of transformation. It can be dissolved
instantly at so-called death, which certainly was true in
the historical cases of Elijah, Jesus Christ, Kabir
and many others. There is not always instantaneous
dissolution because if the body is kept whole or parts
remain, they help to sanctify the earth. So Mohammed s.w was
placed in a tomb and the remains of Buddha placed in stupas.

The soul is our real being, through which we realize and are
conscious of our life. When the body, owing to loss of strength and
magnetism, has lost its grip upon the mind, the seeming death comes;
that which everybody calls death. Then the soul's experience of life
remains only with one vehicle, that is the mind, which contains
within itself a world of its own, photographed from one's experience
on earth on the physical plane. This is heaven if it is full of joy,
and it is hell if it is filled with sorrow. Feebleness of mind, when
it loses its grip on the soul, is purgatory. When the mind has lost
its grip, that is the end of the world for that soul. But the soul is
alive. It is the spirit of the eternal Being, and it has no death. It
is everlasting.

Death, in point of fact, does not belong to the soul, and so it does not belong to the person. Death comes to what the person knows, not to the person himself. Life lives, death dies. But the mind which has not probed the depths of the secret of life becomes perplexed and unhappy over the idea of death. A person once went to a Sufi and asked him what happened after death. He said, "Ask this question of someone who will die, of some mortal being, which I am not."

The mistake is that man wishes to live through the mortal part of his
being; that is what brings disappointment.

Hardly one among thousands realizes that life lives and
death dies. That which lives cannot die, what dies will not live.

Death is nothing but the taking off of one garb and giving it back to
the plane from which it was borrowed, for the condition is this: one
cannot take the garb of the lower plane to the higher plane. The soul
is only released when it is willing – or compelled – to give its garb
to the plane it has taken it from. It is this which releases the soul
to go on in its travel. And as it proceeds to a higher plane, after
its stay there it must again give its garb back and be purified from
it in order to go further.

As to the subject of perfect assimilation, . . . the soul passing
through the different planes has borrowed from each of them things
that belong to that plane: qualities, tendencies, ideas, thoughts,
feelings, impressions, flesh, skin, bone and blood. That which the
soul has borrowed he must give back when it has done its work; it was
borrowed for a certain time and for a certain purpose. When the
purpose is fulfilled, when the time is finished, then every plane
asks for that which the soul has borrowed from it, and one cannot
help but give it back to that plane. It is this process which is
called assimilation.

Assimilation therefore is to give back the physical matter which one
has used on this physical plane – to give it back to the earth. It
becomes assimilated by the earth and the soul becomes free of that
burden which it once carried. It begins to experience a greater
liberty and a greater ease, for going beyond is only releasing the
soul of limitation and of a great captivity.
 

Life in the world of the genius is longer compared with life on the
physical plane. It is this life which may be called the life in the
hereafter. But there comes a time when all that was borrowed from the
plane of the genius has to be given back to that plane too, for it
did not belong to the soul.

 

So no one can carry the substance of another plane beyond. Each
substance has its own plane and must be returned to that plane. This
is the only way the soul can be freed from that plane in order to
rise above it.

When the soul soars higher it must also give up the angelic
qualities. They will be assimilated in the angelic plane before the
soul can dissolve into the great Ocean, the supreme Spirit: that
dissolving which is called merging into the real Self.
- - -