POSICIONAMIENTO

Obviously the subject of death and demise would require an entire book. However for the practical purpose of living one's life, we can retain the following elements which stem from the above: "I" am an emanation of the "Life-process" and my life began neither at birth nor even at the moment of conception. Regardless of my religious faith or lack thereof, Tantra teaches that death is not the end, for the life process extends beyond the dissolution of my ego.

As a continuous process, I evolve within other processes that are infinitely greater, those of life, those of the cosmos! As a minute, yet gigantic atom, I embody the organizing dynamic force of the species as well as the conscious and creative power of universal Life.

In short, terrestrial Life as a whole is a tremendous single organism constantly devouring itself thanks to which it has proliferated ever increasingly, while diversifying to the extreme.

Powerful words? Perhaps... But beyond mere words, a powerful reality.

You might reply, and rightly so, that all of the above boils down to mere philosophical considerations, theory, and fails to solve the prob-lem of my own death whose time will inevitably come: what does Tantra have in store for me and how can I prepare myself concretely?

Tantra's response to death is imbued with total serenity. Earlier I touched on the throes of senile decrepitude and its ills which we think necessarily accompany the dusk of our life. These days people feel that dying from a disease is the "normal" end of human life. And yet we know that for Tantra such suffering was not planned by Mother Nature and is escapable. Consequently, a Tantrist w h o is aware of h i s / h e r duties vis-a-vis the cellular republic, notably the duty to ensure its integrity, to lead a healthy yogic lifestyle, i.e., a long and happy one, thus prepares a natural and gentle death.

As regards dying proper, a Tantrist cultivates the awareness of his/her own mortality while at the same time, paradoxically, not wor-rying about it. Why? Because the dying behavior which has been pro-grammed in my genes, will begin when the time comes without my

80 The Tantric Outlook

having to worry about it. My body has always known how to die, even if

"I" am unaware of it.

And that is actually what we did in our mother's womb, unknow-ingly, of course. Just think of the trials and tribulations of an infant worrying about its own birth, wondering how it is going to get out of its cozy uterine "prison": what a time h e / s h e might have squeezing through the vaginal gate! Fortunately h e / s h e doesn't worry his/her pretty little head about that! And unknowingly still, the baby trusts the body's Intelligence which, of course, already knows what to do. At the right time, the "program" will start and the child is informed of what it must do. It takes two to be born: the mother's body's Higher Intelligence dictates to her her "delivery behavior" to which responds the baby's "birth behavior," programmed and "run in" over the pass-ing millions of years.

In the same way, our "dying behavior" pre-exists within us, in each one of us, and our intellect should not be concerned about it nor try to anticipate it: it will take place naturally, without our having to think about it. All I need to "do" is let go and give in to the instinctive behav-ior that will be revealed to me as the dying process takes place. I don't have to think about it beforehand. Most people already have such an attitude, you might say: they know they are going to die but they try to forget about it and when faced with the idea, they repress it. Tantrists do not try to obliterate the fact of death and they prepare for it by abid-ing by, as closely as possible, the natural and foreseen end of their lives. In the meantime, they let death lighten up their existence, not darken it, without pre-empting the dying process that they entrust to the body's Higher Wisdom which is that of Life.

No Dying

The following sign should be posted in hospital lobbies: "No dying."

For medical science, "losing" a patient is experienced as a failure, almost an affront to the Medical Establishment. Doctors try to keep patients alive as long as possible, at whatever cost: they don't let peo-ple die any more. It is true to say that gentle, natural death has become an incongruous anomaly in a society where it is felt that you have to die of something, in other words, where it is inconceivable that one may die in good health, simply because the time has come.

Moreover, physicians try to eliminate or at least alleviate as much as possible their patients' suffering and no one blames them. But the peculiar corollary is that when the battle is eventually lost, the M. D.

will administer strong medication to the patient so that h e / s h e slips into death unawares. This ultimate mercy, as it is perceived to be, actu-ally deprives the patient of h i s / h e r right to "enter into death with your eyes wide open," to quote Marguerite Yourcenar.

Nowadays, the normal, almost decent thing to do is to die in an anonymous, almost clandestine way at the hospital. Yet, current evi-dence on near-death experiences confirms the fact that the transition, i.e., death, is an elating experience filled with light, thus confirming what people in the East have always asserted, notably the Yogis.

All of this is gaining wider acceptance in medical circles, I'm not denying it. A physician friend of mine confided in me that at the time of the great departure he would ask to be taken home to die among his nearest and dearest, like it used to be. That's what all Tantrists wish for as well, while at the same time knowing that the best way to pre-pare for one's own death is to live as long as possible and in good health!

I would like to close this chapter in repeating that as stated at the outset, only the "biological" side of death has been dealt with. The question of what happens after death was not raised in this chapter for it is the purview of religion. It is up to each and every one of us to decide where we stand on this matter, on the basis of our own beliefs.

Moreover, an in-depth review of such a subject would require at least an entire book.

Woman: