Svarüpa of the Ätmä
Lord Yama then describes the svarüpa of the Ätmä,
Tr. – That is not comprehensible by sound, touch, is form-less, un-decaying, tasteless, not subject to time, odourless, beginning less and without end. It is distinct from Mahat and is ever constant. Knowing this one becomes free from the jaws of death. (I.3.15)
-Katha Upanishad, Chapter 1, Verse 3.15
The physician’s duty is not to stave off death or return patients to their old lives, but to take into our arms a patient and family whose lives have disintegrated and work until they can stand back up and face, and make sense of, their own existence.
―Paul Kalanithi, When Breath Becomes Air
O Earth, my mother! O Wind, my father! O Fire, my friend! O Water, my good relative! O sky, my brother! Here is my last salutation to you with clasped hands! Having cast away infatuation with its wonderful power, by means of an amplitude of pure knowledge resplendent with merits developed through my association with you all, I now merge in Supreme Brahman.
-Verse 100, Vairagya Shatak
When your time comes to die, be not like those whose hearts are filled with fear of death, so that when their time comes they weep and pray for a little more time to live their lives over again in a different way. Sing your death song, and die like a hero going home.
―Tecumseh
Birth is not the beginning of life – only of an individual awareness.
Change into another state is not death – only the ending of this awareness.
Most people are ignorant of the Truth, and therefore afraid of death, believing it to be the greatest of all evils. But death is only the dissolution of a worn out body.
Our term of service as guardians of the world is ended when we are freed from the bonds of this mortal frame and restored, cleansed, and purified, to the primal condition of our higher nature.
Hermes Trismegistus
