Conversations with Death.
What I would like to share with you this afternoon are thoughts behind a body of work that I am developing called Conversations with Death which is based on my own experience of death and complex illness in the last seven years.
The starting points for this project are numerous but there were three main pointers to beginning this work:
The first was that medically I was continually told I should not be here. As one of my professors said the odds on me pulling through were infinitesimal.
The second was the spiritual name that my guru gave me three years into my journey.
The third ,which pulled the project together ,was reading the poem -On Death By Kahlil Gibranand in particular the following lines:
Then Almitra spoke, saying, We would ask now of death.
And he said:
You would know the secret of death. But how shall you find it unless you seek it in the health of life?
The more I read and meditated on these words I wanted to see, if I had, prior to the cancer, indeed sought death in life. And this is how Discussions with Death began.
Three years after my illness I wrote a very short 8 line thank you note to my guru summing up what had happened and he sent me back my spiritual name – Atma Shakti –which is a physical manifestation of where my spirit had been in those early months of illness.This short reading from the Vedic cannon captures beautifully what I experienced:
Vedic thought emphasizes that the light is within you.
You are not the body, you are effulgent spirit.
Some call this spirit God, some atman, some paramatma.
It is indestructible.
When the house called body falls apart, the spirit that resides in it goes elsewhere.
The spirit is not the house, it lives in the house.
It looks after the house for it lives in it, but it is not the house.
You are separate from your body.
So, reach into your spirit and you will find all.
Two other comments - I did not read anything about my cancer for four years because I trusted my body to know what it needed to do intuitively.
I had written a journal of 32 thousand words whilst in hospital.
Looking back I have been immensely fortunate in the way in which I encountered death and complex illness. Not knowing I was ill meant that I had no foreknowledge of how seriously ill I was to become or for that matter of my death. This strangely helped me in all that ensued. In secret service parlance I was a clean skin.I thought for a long time that I had started on this life-changing journey – unprepared. As I began to review what had happened to me I could see that in actual fact there were a number of key markers in this journey:
I chose my cancer and hospital well. The hospital has one of the leading Haematology and Intensive Care teams in Europe.
Teach a style of yoga that works with the proprioceptive senses – the 6/7th inner senses where time does not exist.
A deep long standing spiritual practice.
Iwent back to my journal and picked out the key moments in the first ten days of my illness from an eventual 11-month stay in hospital over an 18-month period.This is my take on what happened. The joy is that each of us will die as we are born in our own particular way. No-one else can do it for us – we each own our death. These are my steps towards death.
1. Surrendering
Just before I walked into A/E seven years ago I said silently to myself – “ Let go/ surrender to what ever is happening”. I had no idea what was happening to me but I was viscerally aware that this was something I alone would not be able to handle.
I could barely put one foot in front of the other and was having trouble either understanding or stringing more than three words together and was happy to have my eyes closed.
On that late sunny August afternoon I walked into A/E, unbeknown to me, with acute septicemia/acute pneumonia and acute cellulitis. Twelve hours later I was diagnosed with acute myeloidleukemia and three days later went into full organ failure.
Through all the medical interventions my body underwent – just prior to each procedure I would gently surrender my body to the medical teams and then I / my spirit would go off to the land of Anaconda.
2.The Breath/ Pause
Three days later in my own hospital room – hallucinating –frightened – alone- lying on my right side –I stopped breathing and slowly saw my body disintegrate into many layers.
Oh God I thought so this is it. The end
I did not want to go and realized that I could not go anywhere even if I wanted to. There was no –one around to ask- mounting terror…Still no breath…
I rummaged around in my very drug infused brain and remembered the pause between the breath – along with the resting of my awareness in the reptilian brain at the base of the brain stem – utilizing the 6/7 proprioceptive senses where there is no time and space is endless.
So this was a very long pause and then the words of one of my teacher’s -find the space within the body.
I waited part of me still fascinated with the many layers of my body- rather like a mille feuille
And after a while an inhale flowed in
And then a very long pause
And then an exhale
And then a very long pause.
After a while the rhythm of my breath balanced.
The mille feuille compressed
I came back into body
I heard the door of my room open and someone came and leant over me – not caring but livid. Said nothing and left banging the door. This was one of a number of specters that were eager for my death.
3.Sound/Vac
By day three I had been moved to my own room in Intensive Care with my own nurse 24/7.I could only breath for 8 secs without an oxygen mask. The oxygen mask in question was full faced and made a noise like a road drill and in its own way allowed me to develop the next stage of my conversation with death. I desperately wanted to sleep but the sound of the mask kept me awake. So again digging now into my morphine muddled brain I started to silently chant Om. Which I continued to chant, silently, for the duration of my illness. There are three forms of chanting – spoken – whispered and silent. Silent is the most powerful. Om represents the primordial voice of the universe in its awakening manifestation.
In my readings I came across this sutra from the Mandukya Upanishad, which expresses beautifully what I was experiencing:
The Mandukya Upanishad (2.2 verses 4-6)
4.Pranave (Om) is the bow, the Atman is the arrow and Brahman is called its aim. It is to be hit by a woman who is self-collected/with concentration and then as the arrow becomes one with the target, she will become one with Brahmin.
5. In Him the heaven, the earth, the sky, the mind with the Pranas /senses are centres. Know him alone as the Atman of all and leave off all other speech; this is the bridge to immortality.
6. He moves about becoming manifold within the heart where the nerves meet, like spokes fastened to the nave of a wheel; meditate on Om as the Self. Hail to you, that you may go to the other side beyond darkness.
Along with Om I introduced So Ham to still the mind. So with the inhalation ,Ham with the exhalation. With continuous repetition the words become permuted into Hamas, which means a swan and which, is a symbol of immortality.
4). Stillness/ Balance
I was in a deep sleep trying to negotiate a rebalancing of my left / right brain hemisphere which was of paramount importance so that I regain a sense of stillness and balance.
I heard voices miles away – I ignored them intent on this very special work of balancing. The voices intruded more and more – with care, compassion and concern- but somehow I knew that they would have to wait until I had rebalanced left – right.
5). The Final Moments. / Space
Friends and family had been informed that medically there was nothing more could be done for me. I was slipping away fast. The sun shone through into the room. My nurse was to the left of me. I was propped up, a sheet across me. Exhausted beyond exhaustion. But cared for, safe and comfortable. Professor Singer opened the door. Just him, none of the team, stood by the end of the bed and asked me with such compassion what I wanted to do. I raised my hands and placed them together, tipped my head to one side and indicated I wanted to sleep. I closed my eyes.
He did not expect me to wake up.
By the time this day had dawned in Critical Care I was ready to slip away. The days before when I had been petrified of going were gone and looking back I had been able to give myself time to find the pause between the breath/space/stillness/had allowed mantra to not only quieten my mind but had become a bridge to the other side.
As I closed my eyes that day I had no expectation.
I was tired I was at peace - I just let go.
Our first breath and sound is preparation for our last breath and sound. The breath, sound and silence are the threebridges thatfacilitate our moving from this life to death. We move from left into right brain. The physical world dissolves and you expand joyfully into unconditional love, timeless unlimited space and silence.
The Buddha says:
To the mind that is still the whole universe surrenders
And it does.
What I realized was I had prepared for death in life with all the myriad of spiritual practices over the years. When they were most needed they came to the fore – not in an intellectual sense but in a deeply intuitive sense.
Each one of our spiritual practices is preparations for our hour of death. Thus whilst in life we can daily prepare for a gentle and joyous death.
I will finish with On Death By Kahlil Gibran
Then Almitra spoke, saying, We would ask now of death.
And he said:
You would know the secret of death. But how shall you find it unless you seek it in the health of life? The owl whose night-bound eyes are blind unto the day cannot unveil the mystery of light. If you would indeed behold the spirit of death, open your heart wide unto the body of life. For life and death are one, even as the river and sea are one.
In the depth of your hopes and desires lies your silent knowledge of the beyond; and like seeds dreaming beneath the snow your heart dreams of spring. Trust the dreams, for in them is hidden the gate to eternity.
Your fear of death is but the trembling of the shepherd when he stands before the king whose hand is to be laid upon him in honour. Is the shepherd not joyful beneath his trembling, that he shall wear the mark of the king? Yet is he not more mindful of his trembling?
For what is it to die but to stand naked in the wind and to melt into the sun? And what is it to cease breathing, but to free the breath from its restless tides, that it may rise and expand and seek God unencumbered?
Only when you drink from the river of silence shall you indeed sing. And when you have reached the mountaintop, then you shall begin to climb. And when the earth shall claim your limbs, then shall you truly dance
Oct2014 Gilly Angell
1