Meditation on death

"All of Man's problems stem from his inability to sit quietly with himself"~ Pascal

I would go one step further. Man's problems in continuous true living stem from his inability to die once in a while to himself. 

"The unwillingess to think of death is itself a kind of death, for the poignancy of life is inseparable from the knowledge of its decay." Philip Kapleau

Even at times when all seems to be fine, life is beautiful, though the mind of course still feels all the atrocities and sees the all the madness of this age, but somehow there is an underlying peace in knowing that everything is a process of energy, we are in the way of evolving, darkness is as necessary as light, merely a downward curve of the whole circle-there is positivism, there is love.... yet day after day the peace slowly loses a certain energy, the middle way dulls the blissful feeling of life slowly but surely. Unless we are fully enlightened then slowly but surely the mundane, the adversities with some aspects of the mirror that this society is- start to erode the joy and start to seed in habitual feelings of reaction, of unease. The peace slowly erodes into chaos, the largeness of our body shrinks into ego in difficult moments, the mountain once again becomes the idea of a mountain. This is the time to reaffirm life, to rejuvenate that feeling of joy from it, that feeling of utter being in the moment with all of ones soul. It is much said that we need the opposite to get back to life, we need to feel death, cause the feeling of life is connected to the feeling of death. You cannot really know one side without knowing both. Death meditations are wonderful tools, here's what Osho said about it-

[A sannyasin, who is leaving, says: Would you say something about dying? I’m very much engaged with that. I awoke last night and suddenly I saw how absolute it was. I’ve never seen it before like that – I could hardly get any air. In response to Osho’s query she says she likes Kundalini meditation best.]

Osho - So continue Kundalini in the morning, and in the night before going to sleep, start a death meditation. 

Just lie down, put the light off, and start feeling that you are dying. Relax the body and feel that you are dying, so you cannot even move the body – even if you want to move the hand, you cannot. Just go on feeling that you are dying – a four or five-minute feeling that you are dying, dying, and that the body is dead. And through this five-minute experience of dying you will feel a totally different quality of life. The body is almost dead – it is a corpse – but you are more alive than ever! And when the body is dead, the mind by and by stops thinking – because all thinking is associated with life. When you are dying, the mind starts dropping. After two or three months you will be able to die within five minutes. The body will be dead and you will have just a pure awareness, a luminous awareness. Just something like a blue light, that’s all. You will feel a blue light just near the third-eye centre, just a small blue flame. That is the purest form of life. And when that blue flame starts being felt there, just fall asleep.

So your whole night will be transformed into a death meditation, and in the morning you will feel so alive, more than you have ever felt – so young, so fresh, and so full of juice that you can give to the whole world. You will feel so blessed that you can bless the whole world.

And this death meditation will make you aware that death is an illusion. It does not really happen – nobody has ever died and nobody can really die. Because we are too much attached to the body, it seems like death; because we think the body is our life, we think it is terrible. And this is one of the greatest preparations for death. One day death will come: before it comes, you will be ready, you will be ready to die!

When buddha was dying, he asked permission from his disciples. He said, ’Now I am ready to die. Within a few minutes I will disappear into myself. If you have to ask something, you can ask it.’ They had nothing to ask, because for the whole life he had been talking to them. And this was no time to ask anything – even if they had many questions, this was no time to ask them. They started crying and weeping. He said, ’Don’t cry and weep – because my whole message for the whole of my life has been this, that nothing dies. I’m simply going home... I am turning in.’

Then he sat in his posture, closed his eyes, and it is said that people could see that his body started dying. They could see that the body was becoming a corpse – and he was alive! The body turns into a corpse: that is the first phase, buddhists say, of death. In the second phase, his thoughts started disappearing. Those who were very very aware, those disciples who were real meditators, could see his thoughts disappearing, falling from his head just like old leaves falling from a tree. They could see that the thoughts had been renounced: the second stage was fulfilled.Then the third stage: his heart, his feelings, started disappearing. They could see the smoke arising and the cloud arising, and everything was gone. And then the fourth stage: he disappeared into the unknown. Those who were enlightened amongst his disciples could see even that, that his drop had fallen into the ocean. 

These four stages: first start a simple meditation of five minutes of dying. Then just watching for the blue light to appear at the third eye. Then go to sleep. By and by, you will be able to see all these four stages. Slowly, slowly, you will become aware – and that will be the greatest preparation. And then you can really die!

Source: " For Madmen Only (Price of Admission: Your Mind) " -  Osho