By: Roya Monajem, Tehran
royamonajem@yahoo.com
Meeting Azrael
The Archangel of Death
If you allow me to seduce you to the end, you donıt need to be scared of the title! As according to a Persian proverb, "Shahnameh (one of the greatest epical works of the world) has a happy ending!"
Death is a reality and escaping the reality (by relegating it to oblivion), not only would not help us, it would waste our life. And in a way we cannot afford losing life as it is the only irreplaceable phenomenon of the world. Forgetting about death implies becoming oblivious of life as well. And what lies in the arms of oblivion, in a way does not exist. Like our dreams!
And if we donıt deal with the fear of death now - that after September 11 the whole world is feeling the ghost of war hovering over our earth more than it normally did or to be more exact we are made to be more conscious of its existence - when are we going to deal with it?
We have one single source of energy in our bodies that is used for all our different functions including our emotional operations. And our emotional operations are triggered by our two basic feelings: Love and Fear. As there is only a single feeding source for both, then if we use the energy of that source for one, there is less left for the activity of the other. And everybody agrees that without love, life is not worth living. And in these critical moments of our history, it is the only power that might save our planet. As love is our individual, national and international crossing point. And let us remember that the slogan against the war in Vietnam was "Make love, not war." It proved its effectiveness, did it not? It proved its point, did it not? However, Anti-war-ism was one of the main goals of the above slogan. There were other factors that gave rise to it in that form, with those words and concepts, the most salient one being freedom from sexual taboo.ı The taboo of considering the sexual relationship as a sin. That taboo is now almost completely over in the West and is getting transcended in the East too. Even its greatest restraining force, religion is proving insufficient to keep it alive, as the experience of Islamic Republic of Iran shows. The news of establishment of "Whore Houses" or as Islamic Clergy have named it "Chastity Houses" is the proof of it. (Perhaps a more honorable act was to revive the Indian tradition of asking the participants of these houses to devote their life to a shrine! Revival of Traditions, hasnıt this been the main goal of Iranian Ecclesiastic Islamic movement?)
Thus from this aspect, the above slogan Make love, not war" has been quite successful too. But it belongs to the past and thus cannot be appropriate for the present circumstances. Again Islamic Republic proved that what is obsolete cannot be revived. Or better to say, what has no longer any survival value cannot be maintained, no matter how hard we try and what means of intimidation we use.
So what may be the appropriate anti-war slogan of today?
If we agree that Love and Fear are fed by a single source of energy and each thrives at the expense of the other, and if we agree that in case a war starts it will endanger the life of not only the living creatures of specific parts of the earth, but the whole earth as a planet, then perhaps a more appropriate slogan for our days would be Love life, do not fear!ı
Love life, as it is a blessing, it is a gift bestowed to us only once (as far as our secular knowledge tells us). It is a miracle that looking at it from our conventional conception of Time, no moments of it can be replaced, repeated or regained. Thatıs why watching any scene related to birthı is so invigorating, resurrecting, en-livening and the scene, air, smell of deathı destructionı warı is so nauseating, depressing, de-livening. And in order to have the energy to love life, we have to overcome our fears, including our fear of death.
There are several ways that one can overcome this fear to a great extent. One way, as our ancestors have advised us in many different ways, is to constantly "feel the shadow of death on our right or left shoulder." (We can call this the synthesis, or matrimony of the two opposites: life and death.) Putting it simply, it is thought that the awareness of our impending death can be an effective way to love life and appreciate its precious value as we love and value any other precious gifts. Nevertheless, the thought of deathı can be quite terrifying. It appears as a bridge that we cannot see where it leads to. And nobody has ever returned from this bridge to tell us for sure about what lies on the other side of this bridge and although there is now ample amount of literature on the talesı told by people who believe that they have crossed over this bridge and have actually experienced death, with the emphasis that it was nothing terrifying, but rather blissful, nevertheless there is still a lack of convincing scientificı evidence for the approval of these personal observations, as scientists do not consider laymenıs observation scientific, even though their number may be statistically quite valid for this purpose. However, the result of the most recent scientific research on the activity of the brain in the process of death reveals a story similar to those folk tales.ı Now the point of argument remaining between the two is apparently whether there is a life after death or not. We will talk about this later.
So whether death is actually a blissful experience or not, constant awareness of its existence can help us to love life, even if the thought of it is still terrifying. But perhaps that is why it is effective. Remember when facing a terrifying experience the biological mechanism of fight or flyı comes automatically into play. So in order to escape this fear we would appeal to, take refugee and allow ourselves to be totally absorbed in life. In this way, the available source of energy is used more on life and living it fully and less remains to be wasted on fear. Let us call this the way of Mystics.
Then there is the way of Martyrs for overcoming the fear of death which is through beliefı or faithı in a higher goal, such as the desire to attain the eternal life in Heaven or to found heaven on earth as the communists (and other humanitarian materialists) believed (and believe). And beliefı is usually the result of a passionate love, love of a goal, an ideal, an aspiration, a dream. What happens here is in a way opposite to what happens in the aforementioned solution, but with the same results. The source of energy is consciously used on love, with no thought of fear of death. This can also be called the way of Devotee.
And what may be the way of Skepticı for transcending this fear, if not once for all, at least most of the time? And let us remember that we need to overcome this fear as not to waste the energy that can be used for staying in love with life which includes love of our planet earth and caring for its survival as much as we care for anything else that we love.
After all, if we could have enough energy to maintain ourselves in the state of love, there is one thing that we can be sure that we will thereby achieve in this very life: true joy and happiness. And a joyful, loving individual emanates the same air to his/her environment. He/she creates a joyful loving atmosphere that everybody would love to be in as one feels always safe in such an atmosphere. And when one feels safe, it means one has overcome a great deal of oneıs fear even if temporarily and unconsciously. Thus one would have a greater energy available for love, thereby a positive viciousı circle would be created.
The truth is that we donıt know what is after death, but as mentioned before according to a neurological study, the brain shows a definite pattern of activation during the process of dying that produces the same states of beingı as recounted by those who claim to have gone through the experience of death, and that is remembering oneıs whole past in a flash of time, going through a dark passageway with a point of light shinning at the end and once reaching that light feeling million times more blissful than we might have ever experienced on Earth and in our worldly life (and what is our common experience of bliss here on this earth? Isnıt it love?). So if we can trust scientific research, then there is nothing terrifying at least in the process of dying. And there is so much that we need to learn and know and feel and experience and enjoy on this earth and in this life that really leaves no place for worrying about something that at least with our present level of technological knowledge, we cannot know. As long as we are told by experts that the bridgeı is safe, we can keep our attention focused on this side of the bridge, instead of speculating about the other side.
So what about our slogan of Love life, do not fear? Does it sound life-saving enough?
And as in addition to death, we have two other major fears, let us try to have a brief look at them and find a panaceaı or antipode for them too.
The two other major fears that we share are fear of poverty and malady. I love the person who wrote the word disease as dis-ease and made me aware of its root. It shows its true nature and hints at the way to get immune against it. There is a verse by the great Iranian poet Hafez that putting it in simple terms it would mean something like this: "Take things easy as the world makes it difficult for hard-working people."
The key word for mental vaccination against dis-eases is forgivenessı of ourselves for our mistakes (which simultaneously means forgiving everybody for their mistakes in relation to us). If we forgive ourselves then we would not be angry, anxious and full of stress, that is, the three unquestionable mental causes of diseases as our scientific studies show. Let us do not forget that one of the main qualities of our species in addition to intelligence or reasonı is our everlasting ignorance.ı If we do not forgive ourselves, we would constantly suffer from guilt feeling. And we have been conditioned- historically, religiously, socially and to such a considerable extent that we can even say, existentially - to expect punishment when we feel guilty. And as any mistakes we commit involve at least two sides, the guilt feeling thus felt is usually accompanied by conscious or unconscious revengeful feeling. And when one falls sick, one not only revenges and punishes oneself, but unconsciously revenges and punishes all those who love one. No doubt that here as a Persian proverb says, dry and wet things burn together.ı Thus there would be some victimsı in this process as well and we know that and thus we feel an additional guilt for producing a source of suffering for them because of our diseased state and this produces further stress, anger and anxiety and
Maladies can be regarded as "Messages of life" and if we bother to unfold these messages we will most probably find a way to heal ourselves. These messages always hint at some sick physical, emotional and mental pattern of living. Correction of that pattern would almost guarantee cure.
And finally in relation to our fear of poverty including loss, there are two effective mantrası for it. One is that every loss is accompanied by a gain, and the other is the Chinese proverb that says, if something truly belongs to us, nobody can take it away from us and if not, no matter how hard we try, we will not succeed in acquiring and maintaining it.ı And let us not forget that fear of poverty is perhaps the main force that counteracts that human inclination toward laziness, irresponsibility and passivity. It drives us to work, develop our gifts and talents and thus acquire richness which does not necessarily mean wealth. And we have been advised enough to cultivate our inner richness rather than try to acquire outer wealth that can be lost in a blink of an eye, with just a little bomb that is exploded!
Love life, do not fear! Our beautiful planet is in real danger. There is no time for hesitation.
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