Dolf's Blog
Integral thoughts about development, humanity, spirituality
And Death shall have no dominion
6 December 2006
All my life I have had some special relationship with Death.
I remember having had some sort of fascination with it when I was
young, wanting to know about spiritism, near-death experiences, etc.
Quite recently, I realised that this relationship had changed
considerably. It was during an intervision session I had with my
fellow counselers, dealing with certain issues I had experienced due
to a client's problems and my own reaction with his fate. After some
good questions from my fellow counselers, I realised what was at the
core of my issues with Death. It was not anymore related to the
former fascination, not anymore related to my sister's death 18
years ago (which was the start of a second phase in my relationship
with Death). It turned out that the fascination with Death had
turned into an indignance with it. The core of my issue with Death
is, that it does not allow you to finish life. That may sound
strange, by the way, as the whole definition of Death is that it
does finish life. What I meant, though, was that I was not ready to
die yet, because there was still so much that I wanted to do in life,
so much to complete, so much to achieve, so much to discover and
enjoy. In fact, this may well be related to my sister's death after
all, as she died at age 25 and was not ready living either.
So now I realise what my relationship to Death is, it has
become sweeter. I can now relax with the feelings that I have
towards it, as I understand what it is that triggers me when people
that are close to me are dying. It's being cut off from
opportunities that life brings, cut off from opportunities to
develop, cut off from opportunities to fulfill one's mission.
At the same time, I know that my understanding of Death is
not complete yet. Before I came to the conclusion above, I said that
I could tell all kinds of transpersonal stories about Death that
should appease my feelings towards it, but that it just didn't feel
like that. “Feeling” means that something goes deeper, so that's how
I got to the discovery mentioned above. But it leaves open the
question what Death itself really is. I believe that the only level
that can give a reasonable answer to this question is the non-dual
one. No Formal, Post-formal, Integral or Holistic level of
development can adequately explain Death. For the only way to
neutralise Death and explain it such that it does not hurt so much
anymore is to recognise that Death is not so much different from
life. For, if in essence we are a field of consciousness in which
all phenomena arise, after this physical life we should re-join that
same field of consciousness, only in a different form (or rather:
without form). Consciousness as a whole remains the same, for it is
the universal field that everyone is part of. Then life and death
only differ as much as that life is consciousness in the form of a
living being and death is formless consciousness. That's where all
difference is. Consciousness creating form out of pure Love for it,
using its creativity paired with Love to have life forms spring from
it and return to it, only to start the whole game over and over
again. The dying is not the end of life, it is the start of a new
life driven by the same mission, which is Love.
Though lovers be lost, Love shall not. And Death shall have no dominion. (Dylan Thomas)
