Are you afraid of death?

[Nicholas]

If not then please let us know your reasons.

We are all doomed to die, Ashim, that is inevitable. A reasonably educated mind would surely recognise this.

My first experience with death was when I was 12. I was in the bath tub and wanted to time how long I could hold my breath under water. I started my stop watch, took a deep breath and submerged myself. I lasted for 1:24 minutes before I gasped for air. The notable thing about that experience was that I came back up for air because I did not want to die. I had learned that if you calmed your mind and practised deep breathing you could slow your heart's rhythm down. A few seconds before I thrust my head out of the bath water, I had expelled all the air from my lungs, and I felt a deep, momentary sensation of peace. It was a moment of treasure, but then I realised that I would die if I did not come up for air, and so I thrust my head out of the water. I was mildly shocked because I did not instinctually come up for air. It was a conscious decision. I had slowly blown all the air from my lungs and felt really peaceful for a few moments. This was my first experience with death.

The second occasion was when I was 24 years old and I had a mental breakdown, a pretty full on kind of breakdown. The psychiatric nurse said I was "pretty bad". I simply wanted to die because I could no longer live with myself. The experience I had then is similar to what Eckhert Tolle had. I was truly tired of living by this point and the self diagnosed contempt and angst reached a critical point. Anything but living with my own thoughts was a better deal to me. The memory of that sense of peace, 12 years previous made the desire to walk into the sea (a 5 minute walk away) very much easier. At that time I had lost my girlfriend, who was diagnosed with schizophrenia and we were separated due to our co-dependency. I blamed myself for the situation, she was only 16, and I could not reconcile in my head why she had become insane instead of me. I was the drug addict, not her. Oh why her! Anybody but her!! I had always tried to control her drug use and we argued over it many times. But she was soo sensitive and I had no idea at all what the consequences were. Death turned from a curiosity to an open door and my cry for help resulted in me hitting myself with a pint glass. And so, while in shock, I stopped smoking dope and stopped my weekend behaviour of amphetamine, coke and methylenedioxy-n-methylamphetamine. That's when I became psychotic, and heart broken.

What is "death"?

You know the answer to that, Ashim. Remember that film you shared on bring4th several years ago? "Defending Your Life"? That's a pretty cool analogy! Descriptively speaking though, Ra say it best...

104.26 - We leave you in appreciation of the circumstances of the great illusion in which you now choose to play the pipe and timbrel and move in rhythm. We are also players upon a stage. The stage changes. The acts ring down. The lights come up once again. And throughout the grand illusion and the following and the following there is the undergirding majesty of the One Infinite Creator. All is well. Nothing is lost

Back when I was 24 I had realised that all was well and nothing was lost. For some reason my mental breakdown resulted in a type of satori. I guess I needed a pick me up, because to kill myself at the time was the only noble action I could think of. Whenever somebody cries, or feels sad in some way, it all comes flooding back to me, and I can relate to that type of sorrow. The emotional type of not wanting to be here.

So from my experience, death is a liberation, a release from the pain. Looking back on that part of my history, death is equal to freedom

How can it be seen as positive in the grand picture of things?

Well, you simply detach yourself from the not so grand picture. It happened to me, I did not consciously decide it, but there was no where else to go. I did not want to be here and death had a sense of peace to it. Like I said, when I was 12 and realised there was a warm feeling in dying. Ra literally spoke my own thoughts when they said there is no ending to who we are. That was really comforting to me, at the time that I read it. I still have my fears, they certainly do exist! But at the same time I only have to remind myself of that time when everything melted away and I found peace in my heart, without having to kill myself.

I guess that is part of my mission. Please do not kill yourself, stick at it, I am still here and I can share with you how painful it was for me to remain here, I would love to go, right now, but it's a long queue to return, because we have to wait for others to say yes to life and procreate it. We are a long time dead in that regard.