Death, space, and time have so far been unsolvable riddles for many thinkers, but death has many times opened her golden vents for me to peep into the secret of eternal life. Do you mean to say that when you die you cease to live? That is absolutely incorrect. You live and live, for the life force is one, eternal, and all-pervading.

Death has for ages been the source of fear, misery, and pain because people have never pondered over the realities and travails of life. Oh! Ye who suffer and fear the approach of death should learn to hear the music of the eternal silence, where the Deathless resides in its timeless repose.

I have been waiting for that day when every man and woman will strive to secure the light of truth and live simply and wisely for the common good. There will be absolute freedom from bondage of karma, and no one will suffer the pangs and sorrows that are brought by the visit of death. One has simply to learn to tune the chords of one’s being and make them move in harmony with the music of the cosmos. Then death will become the sweet music of a lullaby.

All existence constitutes the one organism of the entire cosmos, emanating love as the highest manifestation of its vital energy and having consciousness as the center of the spiritual galaxy. To comprehend this, the heart of man need simply be transformed to enable it to discover the harmony in the universe. Then it will spontaneously attune itself to the music of all spheres and will find peace on this earth. I believe that man is till an unfinished being, but when love finds its abode in all things, then the discovery of love will lead him to its highest peaks, and the entire humanity will bind itself into a solid frame of joy, and man will be complete.

Through compassion alone mankind will attain knowledge and wisdom to behold the light of truth, freedom, and happiness. Mere fancies, fantasies, and vain illusions will disappear. To learn this philosophy, one will have to become a student of life. Then philosophy will surmount all obstacles, and the blessed one will ascend to the summit of the mountain of completion and perceive the grand vista of valleys and plains below. Then the purifying festival celebrated by merciful death will no longer remain a source of sorrowful misery. Joy, joy, joy! You will hear death whispering the secret of life here and hereafter.

The secrets of birth and death are revealed to the fortunate few only. Long are the arms that embrace the whole, the arms of love. Those who learn to love and lived according to the law of self-surrender and giving know not the fear of death.

O man, you were never born, therefore you never die. The stream of life flows perennially from eternity to eternity. Those who believe in death suffer by the terrible fear created by the pangs of death.

Editor’s note

This is an excerpt from Love Whispers by Swami Rama, Himalayan International Institute of Yoga Science and Philosophy of the U.S.A., 1986, pages 41 and 42.