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"Master of Nurenberg" by Jenness Cortez Perlmutter ©2007

This may be called the computer age, but it could as aptly be called an age of death. If you honestly examine your own world, you'll observe many ways that death hangs heavy in the air.

The twenty-four hour news business and the mind's lack of detachment and discrimination have combined to make the fear of death and loss a cultural obsession. The media's constant coverage of terrorism, domestic violence, recession, war, disease, natural and man-made calamities, the ineptitude of government and the decrepitude of old age serves up endless, disturbing reminders of our own mortality. Generally, when faced with this relentless barrage, our automatic response is to avoid any thoughtful examination of the issue. Instead, we tend to distract ourselves with some short-term pleasurable experience that consumes our attention. But this diversion from examining the hard facts of life also leaves unintended painful consequences in its wake.

Because death plays a part in so many important relationships in our lives, there is an imperative to confront and examine our notion of what death really means. As response-able individuals we need to consider how we will act when finally we must face the prospect of our own death. Yoga Science does not segregate us from death. Instead, it provides both a science and a philosophy that teach us how to become spiritual warriors. Yoga instructs us how to do battle with the very concept of death, and ultimately, to put death itself to death. In the process, we are rewarded by becoming exquisitely skilled in the art of living.

More than two thousand years ago this noble confrontation with death helped transform Prince Siddhartha Gautama into the Compassionate Buddha. According to legend, Prince Siddhartha was sheltered as a youth in a palace of luxury and pleasure by his father, the king. When Siddhartha, at age 29, ventured out of the palace for the first time with his charioteer Channa, he came upon an old man. When the prince asked about the decrepit condition of this person, Channa replied that aging was something that happened to every human being. For the pampered prince, the sight was thought-provoking.

Siddhartha next came upon a sick person suffering from a disease. The prince was again surprised at the sight. Channa told him that everyone is subject to disease and pain. This second sight further troubled the prince's mind.

Then Siddhartha saw a corpse lying on the side of the road. Channa explained that death is the inevitable fate that comes to everyone. After viewing these sights the young prince grew quiet, sorrowful and contemplative about the sufferings that have to be endured in life.

As he pondered these three sobering sights, Siddhartha encountered an ascetic who had devoted himself to finding a way beyond human suffering. Hearing of such a possibility, the compassionate prince felt an inward call. For Siddhartha the experience of these four sightings was profound. The curtain that had once limited his consciousness was torn open, and as a result, he set out on a quest to discover for himself how a human being can become free from decay and death.

After years of study and experiments with Truth, the answer came to him in the climax of meditation called samadhi. Blessed with clear vision, the Buddha--now a reflection of the Supreme Physician--saw death as a terminal illness of the body, an illness that can be conquered. Through his earnest practice of Yoga Science, he finally knew that death of the body is a process that begins at birth. As Prince Siddhartha, he had suffered from the emotional pain of this terminal illness because of his identification with the body. But he was cured through the practice of meditation. Then, as a teacher relying on personal experience, he could prescribe a treatment for anyone who believes that death of the body is annihilation.

Your own all-consuming desire to conquer death can lead you to experience the great adventure that beckons with the promise: "You were born to put death to death." You don't need to buy or find anything. You don't need to travel to far-off lands. You need only to remove the veil of ignorance that now conceals the real, eternal You.

Death, like birth, the sages say, is simply a habit of the body. For those who have the will to undertake the supreme scientific experiment in the laboratory of their own mind, with their own mind, it is possible to go beyond death--not after physical death, but here and now, in this very lifetime. As the great mystical poet Kabir wrote, "O Friend, know Him and be one with Him while you live. Don't dream that your soul will be united with Him because the body-house is demolished by death. If He is realized now, He is realized then too; if not, you but go to live in the Land of Death."

When the mind is swept away by the media's fear-mongering, we must never forget that the goal of human life is nothing less than the conquest of death. There is no more monstrous superstition on the face of the earth than the belief that, "I am the body; I am the mind." In the Judeo-Christian-Muslim traditions this phenomenon is referred to as The Fall. It is a forgetting and forsaking of the Truth that the "Real I" is immortal and eternal in favor of the delusion that "I am the mortal and separate body that some day must die."

The great value of this human life is that it provides both the capacity and the means to end our suffering. We no longer have to remain victims of the pernicious superstition that "I am the body; when the body dies, I die." Right now we have a human body, mind and discriminative faculty--all the requisites for making the transition from the mortal to the immortal. The sages promise that we can be free from death in this very lifetime. Further, they urge us not to postpone the endeavor. "Enlightenment," Swami Rama of the Himalayas said, "is our birth right--a state free from pains, miseries and bondages. It is not something to be acquired or something new. It is already within us." Each of us can realize this eternal state by becoming spiritual warriors, bravely transforming our habits and purifying our personalities. Providence has granted us this rare opportunity to make ourselves fit to receive our full inheritance. This is our primary challenge as human beings.

To be free from all limitations--including death--and to fulfill the purpose of your life, you must recognize that you are a citizen of two worlds. Clearly, you are a citizen of the ever-changing material world of animal, vegetable and mineral matter. In this familiar environment, the body is your vehicle for action and the mind is your most powerful instrument. For every action your body-mind-sense complex takes, a consequence results that can lead us toward happiness and security or toward unhappiness and insecurity.

You are also a citizen of the distinctly non-material, yet profoundly real world of consciousness. Within this subtle world exists an intuitive library of knowledge that unerringly identifies which of your possible actions will lead you to victory over death, and to peace, happiness and freedom from fear in life.

When, as a citizen of the material world, your outer actions reflect the perfection of your inner, quantum wisdom, you will be led for your highest and greatest good. The choice to base your outer action on your own inner wisdom is the essence of all forms of Yoga Science. Yoga means union, and the heart and science of Yoga provides a reliable blueprint for building a trustworthy, ever-accessible bridge to the super conscious portion of the mind. As you rely more completely on your own inner wisdom, you enhance your confidence and skill in dealing with common, everyday situations and effectively remove death's sword of mortality that now dangles over your head.

Contemplating "Who am I?" 

Your present desire for unbounded peace and security--even through the great transition of death--can be fulfilled if you earnestly contemplate the question "Who am I?" This inquiry, called vichara in ancient yogic texts, has been esteemed for thousands of years as a reliable method of knowing the true Self. If you are sincere and persistent in posing this question to yourself, the answer will come. And, as the truth of that answer motivates you to steward the energy of your innumerable desires, large and small, you will begin to experience freedom from your fear, anger, anxiety and dis-ease.

This process occurs differently for each human being. Guided by the teachings of Yoga Science, you will begin to follow your own distinct path to Self-realization and freedom from death. Each of us has been born with a unique body-mind-sense complex, and through this vehicle each of us experiences a different reality. Yet, through that ephemeral individuality, each human being has the capacity to know union with the Eternal.

Absolute peace is the fruit of earnestly seeking the answer to the profound question "Who am I?" The contemplation of this question begins the systematic, step-by-step procedure that focuses your mind. With this focus, you can transcend the indiscriminate call of the senses and the ego's fascination with the past or future. Then, as your mind becomes ever more focused, you will enter a timeless state as you become present to the joyful and creative oneness of your own true nature.

Begin this practice by repeatedly asking yourself the question: Who am I? During the contemplation, remember this: I have a body. I am aware of the body, but I am not the body. I have a mind. I am aware of the mind, but I am not the mind. I have thoughts. I am aware of thoughts, but I am not the thoughts. I have desires. I am aware of desires, but I am not the desires. I have emotions. I am aware of emotions, but I am not the emotions. Who, then, is aware of the body? Who is aware of the mind? Who is aware of the thoughts, desires and emotions? Who is the thinker of every thought? Who is the experiencer of every experience? Who is asking these questions? Who am I?

Beginning today, and for the rest of your life, contemplate the question "Who am I?" If you are earnest in your effort--allowing consciousness to observe consciousness--the wordless answer will appear, because the question and the answer are two sides of the same coin.

If you find consternation in your mind, you are reacting from the limited perspective of the personality. It's a clear indication that the ego--not the Eternal You--has its hands on the wheel of the bus. When thoughts, desires and emotions arise in your awareness, do not automatically pursue them with your attention, but rather, inquire: "To whom did this thought arise?" It doesn't matter how many thoughts arise. As each thought arises, inquire with diligence: "To whom has this thought arisen?" The answer that will emerge is: "To me." If you earnestly inquire "Who am I?" at this point, the mind will go deeper to consider its Source, and the thought that arose will become less seductive. Seeking the answer to the question "Who am I?" will eventually give rise to the realization that within you dwells an Eternal Witness which is the Supreme Reality.

This dialogue requires attentive introspection. Be sensitive and patient as you consider your feelings and thoughts. Be gentle with yourself, as you would with any good friend. Don't condemn yourself or be judgmental, and you will begin to trust your inner Self and realize that there is a constantly faithful companion and guide residing within.

Twentieth century sage Eknath Easwaran referred to the ancient Katha Upanishad as "the perfect medical manual of immunology against death." In this scripture the King of Death himself provides us the instruction to begin the conquest of death. "You are neither the body nor the mind, which are subject to change and death,"?he says. "Both are given to you for the purpose of discovering the seed of immortality which is in you--which is the Real You--having a human experience."

For the man or woman who puts death to death, all the debilitating limitations of age, race, gender, family, tribe, religion, country and species lose their power. You are neither elated by good fortune nor depressed by bad. You are grateful for support but are not fearful or agitated when you encounter opposition. You do not allow your vital energy to be sapped or misdirected by stress, anxiety, doubt, greed, guilt, depression, fear or anger. Such is the spiritual warrior.

When you accept the challenge of putting death to death through the daily practice of Yoga Science as mind-body medicine, you receive immense motivation to keep the mind and body healthy, happy, free and active so that both can serve skillfully and lovingly in every relationship. When you have slain the dragon of death, you, like St. Francis of Assisi, spontaneously sow love where there is hatred, pardon where there is injury, faith where there is doubt, hope where there is despair, light where there is darkness and joy where there is sadness. In medical terms, your life becomes a living testament to the fact that "death" is a disease against which we can all build up immunity.

Finally, after a life of sacrificing attachments and of selfless service, the man or woman who has conquered death can gracefully pass from this world into the next. At the time of that great transition the spiritual warrior can depart with a gentle exhalation--free of attachment and fear. At that auspicious moment, without the slightest break in consciousness, you will know that as life's mission in the world of time and death has been completed, the Supreme Reality remains within--eternally.

Here is the way Sufi mystic Al-Ghazali explained his impending death to his students nine hundred years ago: "Say to my brethren when they see me dead and weep for me, lamenting in sadness: 'Do you really think I am this corpse you are about to bury? I swear by God, this dead body is not I. Know that when I walked with you, this body merely served as my garment that I wore for a while.'"

Speaking as the Lord, Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita reminds us that time is the destroyer of all. Everything manifest in the material world will, at some time, pass away. Time is death. It pursues each of us from the moment we are born. As we grow older and watch family and friends pass away, we can no longer deny that life and death are two sides of the same coin. And every death we experience reminds us of our own inevitable passing. As seventeenth century writer John Donne wrote, "Ask not for whom the bell tolls. It tolls for thee."

If you are among those who are sensitive to this Truth, it means that Grace has already provided you the infinitely powerful motivation to become the spiritual warrior who is destined to compassionately put death to death. Are you ready to fulfill your destiny?

Leonard is a philosopher, educator, author and founder of the American Meditation Institute.  
To arrange a workshop or speaking engagement call (518) 674-8714.

"Death is a habit of the soul," Swami Rama often told us. "Just as you change your clothing each day, your soul also changes its garment. The body is subject to disease, death and decay. But the inner dweller is an ancient traveler who continues on its way."

Swami Rama should know. He was one of the greatest yogis of the 20th century, a full fledged mahasiddha (highest caliber adept) who was rumored to leave his body at will to check up on students on the other side of the planet. I'm not normally a credulous person, but I'm inclined to believe those tall-sounding tales. I myself have observed Swami Rama in advanced yogic states, where he sat motionless for hours, incredibly without any perceptible sign of breathing.

"All of the body is in the mind, but not all of the mind is in the body," he explained to us. After years of intense spiritual practice, yogis like him learned to put their bodies into a death-like state of suspended animation. In one notorious true episode, Swami Rama left his body in the house of a devotee who promised to look after it. While the devotee was at work however, a relative stumbled across the apparently lifeless body. Swamiji actually woke up in the morgue!

All this talk about the physical body simply being a garment is very consoling. We're not really going to die. We'll just discard the body like a worn out pantsuit but we, the real inner person, will be fine. We may in fact soon find ourselves reincarnating in a new physical form, perhaps a healthier or better looking one. Death will be as easy as trading in our old car for a new model. Whether we trade up to a Lexus or down to Chevy two-door, the driver at the steering wheel remains the same.

But then Swami Rama would continue, "At the time of death, the body, breath and conscious mind fall away." What? That can't be right! But I am my conscious mind! If my conscious self perishes, in what sense do I even continue to exist? Many of us raised in the West believe that "I," the personality I am now, will continue on forever in some higher world (heaven hopefully). Though we'll be disembodied, we'll still recognize our family members and friends when they join us on the other side. We'll be able to shake Elvis Presley's hand and tell him how much we loved his music. We may even be able to ask John Kennedy who he thinks really shot him. (It might be even more interesting to ask Lee Harvey Oswald, but most of us doubt he'll be living in our neighborhood.)

We may even be able to follow current events in newspapers printed back on Earth. After all, the obituary sections contain loving messages to departed relations, as if the dead check the paper every year on their birthday to see if there's a picture of them with a note from those left behind, assuring them they still think of them and miss them."At death, the conscious mind passes away and the unconscious mind comes forward," Swamiji went on, confusingly. I didn't like the sound of that. Aren't we supposed to simply "go into the light" and live happily ever after?

As he explained further, I began to understand a little better. Much of what we think of as waking consciousness is in fact the activity of the manas, one function of the mind. Manas sorts and coordinates the massive amount of sensory data input downloading into our nervous system every moment, and determines what to call to our attention. As we step into the street we note that an oncoming truck will hit us if it doesn't slow down or if we don't speed up. Manas gives lower priority to the florist shop two blocks from the corner. We may walk through this neighborhood hundreds of times and never even notice the shop.

Manas is our work-a-day practical awareness, operating almost instinctively. Sometimes it seems as if we're sleepwalking through life, driving to work, doing our job, going home and making supper, all on automatic, without necessarily being lucidly aware of what we're doing. Manas is regulating this entire process. We have to be intensely alert in order to learn to drive, but once we're comfortable driving, manas takes over so that we can turn our attention to gossiping on the cell phone as we commute. It controls sensory and motor function, two functions we no longer need when we pass away.

At death, Swamiji was saying, this work-a-day level of consciousness, so intimately tied into the wiring of our brain, becomes useless and dissolves with the body. Now another level of our being, which we may be less familiar with, comes to the forefront of our awareness. As we lose our ability interact with the external world, or even perceive it, we enter the inner universe of chitta, the unconscious mind.

This is a sobering thought. You know the Viking in the TV commercial who demands, "What's in your wallet?" A more pertinent question is, "What's in your unconscious?" As you move into the after-death state, what images from the unconscious will command the field of your awareness? Images of ghosts and ghouls from horror movies you used to enjoy? Images of people you hate so intensely, you couldn't stop obsessing about them in life? All the hurt and pain you weren't able to let go of? Or beautiful memories of those you love, or images of saints and angels from your childhood?

Shockingly, Swami Rama insisted there is no heaven or hell but the one we carry around inside ourselves. Without the distraction of the external world provided by our physical senses, the dream-like world of the unconscious will fill the screen of our awareness in the disembodied state. That's when it will really matter whether we used our meditation time to distinguish between the silent inner witness and the vast field of mental content within it. Were we able to defuse the bombs in our unconscious by maintaining a serene state of mental balance and calmly letting go of inner imagery that disturbed, frightened, angered or saddened us? We all have thoughts and memories we wouldn't want to meet alone in a dark alley, or in the state after death.

Fascinatingly, in some ancient cultures people practiced their death in advance, in hopes of making the actual experience less onerous. In Egypt people learned complex formulas and detailed visualizations involving familiar deities. During the destabilizing process of leaving the body, they would call these visualizations to mind and inwardly chant hymns they had carefully memorized. This created a stable mental world in the out-of-body state.

Today we plunge fearfully into death as if we were being thrown into the deep end of the pool without having first learned how to swim. Buddhists initiated in texts like the Tibetan Book of the Dead were ready for what comes after. Hindu aspirants also visualized elaborate yantras peopled by caring deities; this is what their unconscious was conditioned to project for them after death.

Swami Rama constantly insisted that our mantra is the only friend that will accompany us through the after-death experience. If we have made it a prominent feature of our spiritual life, it acts as a sounding beacon after death to call us back to our meditative center-this is especially useful when scary or upsetting images emerge from the chitta. The mantra becomes an anchor to stabilize our awareness in the choppy seas of subconscious imagery.

In a very real sense, our meditation practice is a dress rehearsal for death. We slow down our breath (yogis stop theirs almost completely), withdraw our awareness from our limbs, from our energy state, from our usual mental preoccupations, and calmly abide in the witnessing consciousness that adepts tell us survives both death and birth.

This insistence that we ourselves are responsible for our state after death is very different from the New Age view where, like Patrick Swayze in Ghost, we say a temporary goodbye to the people we love and then walk into the light. Swami Rama told us this inner light really exists; when yogis withdraw their awareness through the anandamaya kosha (the subtlemost sheath of the soul), they too see that light. Numbers of people who've had near-death experiences report seeing a light that beams at them with unconditional love and wisdom. They want to merge in the light, but then remember unfinished business on Earth and return to their bodies.

We assume everyone else simply enters the light. Not so, according to the yogis. The vast majority of people have unfinished business-it's just that their body is no longer viable so they need to be reborn in order to fulfill their desires and learn the lessons they need to learn. They never do enter the light-not till they're ready to freely and completely let go of everything below. Early Christian literature exhaustively described this transition, as we see from the many ancient Christian texts discovered at Nag Hammadi in Egypt in 1945. Modern religion rarely focuses on this aspect of spiritual life anymore, nor surprisingly does the New Age movement.

Sometimes people who survive a potentially fatal experience report they saw their entire life flash in front of their eyes in a second. Suddenly everything came together-they understood how the pieces all fit, what they were being taught, where they were being led. In the Indian tradition it's said that at the moment of enlightenment all our past lives flash in front of our eyes. Suddenly even the tragedies, even the injustice, all makes sense. The enlightened one learns, and lets go.

Today though, we're carefully shielded from the reality of death. Cosmeticians in funeral homes make our loved ones look as if they're "only sleeping," so we the survivors are partially spared the grim starkness of decay and death. People who once refused to eat food with preservatives are now pumped full of preservatives themselves, packed in a box, and stored in the root cellar of the Earth.

In the Katha Upanishad, a young boy approaches the King of Death, determined to both understand and master the process of immortality. Perhaps we modern yoga students too should look to the lesson of our mortality with a similar innocent and eager sense of inquiry. The ancient traveler within us is not our work-a-day conscious mind, nor is it the vast churning sea of our unconscious. Beyond the waking, dreaming, and deep sleep states, beyond embodied life and disembodied being, lies the true Self Swami Rama encouraged us all to get to know.

Linda Johnsen, M.S., is a regular contributor to Transformation and author of eight books, including Lost Masters: The Sages of Ancient Greece, which describes the amazingly Yoga-like teachings of many ancient Western spiritual teachers like Empedocles and Plotinus.

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Sacred Journey
Living Purposefully and Dying Gracefully

by Swami Rama of the Himalayas

In spite of all the wealth and ease of modern life, people are not content. They are not happy because of their attitude toward the objects of the world and toward their relationships with others. Throughout their lives they uphold the notion that they must have more and more possessions. They have a similar notion about relationships and maintain that something is to be received from a relationship rather than given. Instead of simply enjoying the objects and people in their lives, they cling to them, own them, and fear losing them.

Over the course of a lifetime of needing, having and clinging, the fear of death grows and hovers, creating a spiral of more need, greater fear and inescapable pain. In this way life cannot be lived effectively and is merely squandered. Death is feared, denied, and pushed as far away from consciousness as possible instead of being accepted as a natural and inevitable part of human experience. Thus, no one is prepared for death.

To understand death, a person must try to understand the purpose of life and the relationship between life and death. The two are partners, each providing a context for the other. Death is not a period, but merely a pause on a long journey. When life and death are accepted as having real meaning and purpose, and death is understood and accepted as part of the human journey, then the fear of death disappears and life can be lived fully.

Out of the tumult of human life eventually comes the decision to look for lasting peace and joy within. This real treasure, the Eternal Witness (Atman), is buried under layers of ego, desires, emotions, habits and other imbedded thought patterns.

But peeling away the layers of ego, emotions and habit patterns is not so easy. All that is heaped over the buried treasure must be removed. The decision to look for the treasure is only the beginning of the hunt. The debris that covers the treasure is identified as the illusion called maya. On account of the attraction and charms of the world, one is not conscious of the Real Eternal Self. To experience that truth the seeker must begin the digging in earnest.

This excavation process is the reason for worldly human existence. Knowing which tools to use and when to use them is the art of living. This work is life, and it is a magnificent adventure with our true Eternal Self as the treasure and goal.

We learn as we gradually dig, scrape, and peel off the layers of what is not our real and permanent nature, until finally the work is done and we know who our true Self is. This is why we come to this world, why we create it and why we compose the dramas that are enacted across the globe.

The goal of life is not the drama being played, but the lessons that it offers. Every human being is the playwright of her or his own drama. Unfortunately, they fail to remember that the drama of life is just that, a play that is momentarily being acted out for the desired result of Self-realization. Instead of understanding life as a play, they take life to be the ultimate. Then the lessons promised by the drama are missed and a great deal of pain and sorrow is experienced.

But finally the day dawns when we turn our attention inward to create a stage, a laboratory and a drama that can penetrate the barriers and dis-cover our eternal Self. In that process death itself is defeated.

Reprinted from "Sacred Journey, Living Purposefully and Dying Gracefully" by Swami Rama, ©1996, Himalayan International Institute, India. 
This book is available through the AMI bookstore or www.swamiramasociety.org.

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Bhagavad Gita Commentary

Even dearer are the devotees who seek Me with faith and love as life's goal.
They go beyond death to eternal life. -- Chapter 12, Verse 20 of the Bhagavad Gita

by Eknath Easwaran

In the Rig Veda, one of the most ancient of the Indian scriptures, there is a prayer that must still find a response in every heart: Lead me from the unreal to the real. Lead me from darkness to light. Lead me from death to immortality.

This is the central theme of mysticism in all religions: the quest for deathlessness, for everlasting life.

Until I took to the practice of meditation, it never occurred to me that immortality could be any more than a figure of speech--a rhetorical device that can strengthen and inspire us, but nothing that could be literally true. It was only by observing my Granny's attitude towards death that I began to understand that the quest for deathlessness was real-a living search that any person with drive and enthusiasm could undertake, not after death but in this very life. In both East and West there have been rare men and women who have been able to transcend the conditioning of time, place, and the physical body. For people like this, there is no death. The body dies, of course; but there is no interruption of consciousness when the body falls away, because their identification with the body has already been severed.

In deep meditation, when consciousness is withdrawn from the body and senses, there actually come a few moments when you go beyond the body and you are able to rest in your real Eternal Nature. That is a taste of immortality right on earth, and there is such joy in it, such a deep sense of peacefulness and rest, that afterwards you will be willing to give everything to extend those moments into the full twenty-four hours of the day.

When that is done, the ties of identification with the body are severed once and for all. You know at the deepest level that you are not the body but the Self, and when death comes, it is simply a matter of hanging up this particular body-jacket for the last time. As al-Ghazzali asks, where is the cause for grief in this? Is consciousness ruptured when you take off your shirt at night?

There are no words to describe this state, but the mystics of all religions say quietly, "It's like waking up." Before Self-realization, we are living in our sleep-dreaming that we are separate fragments of life, small enough to be satisfied with wisps of experience that come and go. Aren't the experiences of a dream real while we are dreaming? Yet when we wake up, the dream falls away. And the mystics ask a very simple question: when you have been dreaming that you are Marco Polo, and you wake up, are you a different person? Do you grieve that Marco Polo is gone? He isn't gone: you were dreaming that you were he; now you wake up, the dream is forgotten, and you remember who you really are.

In the Katha Upanishad, there is a daring teenager named Nachiketa who goes straight to the King of Death for the secret of immortality. "I have heard," he tells Death, "from the illumined sages that there is a kingdom where one lives free from death in everlasting joy." There is such a kingdom, but it is not outside us. In the early part of our lives, most of us are off on an external journey, looking for Shangri-la in the lands of the senses. But to those who are sensitive, there comes more and more insistently a sense of homesickness, of being wanderers on the earth; and finally there comes a point where we throw aside all the travel brochures of the sense-world and turn inwards to find our real home. Then the quest for deathlessness begins in earnest.

Reprinted from "Like a Thousand Suns," Petaluma, California by Eknath Easwaran,  ©1979, Nilgiri Press.  www.easwaran.org 
Available at the AMI bookstore.

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