‘What do you leave behind?’ and ‘What do you take with you?’ An essay by S D Anugyan
I’m known for my forays into the esoterics of other planes beyond our mortal selves, yet this is of limited interest to most people, I find. Thus, it remains a highly personal thing. Recent events have persuaded me to look at death of the physical body in ways that are perhaps more easily relatable for others.
I was told an insight from the Castaneda series that ‘death takes many warning swipes first, before really coming for you.’ Certainly I’ve had numerous swipes in recent years, often in water – swimming with sharks, being caught in a rip tide and stopping breathing in the middle of a lake – and most recently with a hospital interlude. I have no doubt that were it not for the intervention of the National Health Service, my physical self would be well on its way back to the elements of earth.
The swipe this time, because it was long and drawn out, enabled me to look pragmatically at the death of my body. When I looked at the legal consequences, I realised there was only so much one could control, and that letting go was a huge part of the process. A will can guide events but not control them. Even without a will, I understood, things would fall into place, at least in my situation. Still, it prompted me to get a form and look more closely at how I could be creative with the end of my life. I’m now building a ‘Life Beyond Life’ folder, including everything from a last will and testament, medical records and a wish list for others to read. This is turning into a fun project!
It relates to the practical question, ‘What do we leave behind?’ – our legacy. Having limited material assets, I always felt my writing to be what I would like to give the world. In that respect, although there are numerous unpublished and also unwritten books, I feel what is out there, now, will do nicely. (Though I would like to get Quality Time in physical print rather than just digital before I go.)
The question goes further though and yes, with some of these deathly swipes, I have seen segments of my life flashing past; and what I have realised is that my life is not about grand gestures so much as it is the little things. Random acts of kindness, as they say. For example, I remember clearly a woman who gave me food in London after I had gone two days without. She won’t remember, but her act of kindness is unforgettable as far as I am concerned – she made a difference. It’s the minutiae of daily encounters that seem to matter in the long run.
Henry James is quoted as saying that, ‘Three things in human life are important: the first is to be kind; the second is to be kind; and the third is to be kind.’ The sentiment reminds me of the archaic word ‘gentilesse’, at the root of being a ‘gentle man, or woman’, and in medieval times had huge implications of how to treat people well. I feel acutely the lack of gentilesse in the world today and do endeavour to employ it in my day-to-day encounters.
Running counter to this, I found for myself, was – again, not the big things – but the moments of unawareness, where I acted stupidly and unconsciously. This is the hell we are in danger of taking with us if we are not careful. While I have done my best most of my life to be loving and aware, even with momentary encounters, I have, as is to be expected, not always succeeded. I am haunted by incidents like the time when I told someone what they wanted to hear rather than what my whole being told me I should be telling them; or when I took the last slice of pizza; or when I accidentally pushed ahead in a queue… It’s a long long list. Not only that, I am also haunted by other people’s unconscious behaviour towards me: like the waitress at Camden Market shouting sarcastically at a group of us as we left for not leaving her a tip, when we had done. Other false accusations abound. This is where the lines from Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar make sense:
The evil that men do lives after them;
The good is oft interred with their bones.
As is often acknowledged, a major part of the dying process is letting go of that which is holding us back. Forgiveness – of oneself, and of others – is key. Intrinsic to that forgiveness is an acknowledgement of the imperfection that abounds in the physical world, and particularly in ourselves. Obviously, we don’t always get it right.
As I write this, I have been moving into a new apartment. This is an opportunity to assess what I want and need of my physical possessions, and what I wish to let go of. I keep coming across gifts – books, paintings etc. – from a close friend of mine. It’s strange seeing them, because she and I had a strained relationship due mostly to poor communication between us. Yet as I come across these gifts, I realise the love remained constant, her goodness and purity of heart were always there, and endure. I can only trust that this is true from her perspective as well. This understanding, I find, extends to others in my life with whom I have had difficulties – an underlying constant current of love beneath the noise and nonsense on the surface.
Thus, once the backlog of dross imperfection is ‘cleared’, we may be left with our true legacy, other than the material. In my case, eventually, it was not so much the individual encounters where I made a difference, but an overall sense of all of them. A parent may get this from simply having managed to raise a child, an achievement in itself. As a teacher for twenty years, I get a warm sense of something positive having been given when I did manage to get it right. There is something eternal transmitted, beyond my ego, much as I feel about my books who now have to make it in the world without me.
When I was in hospital, the doctor had a discussion with me about my wishes on resuscitation. I think he was a bit surprised, perhaps pleasantly so, at my ease, that I didn’t mind either way. He informed me that apart from the issue that had put me in hospital, I was in good health, and he would advise for resuscitation, but he was glad we had the discussion.
Of course, he wasn’t to know that I spend so much time out of my physical body, I hadn’t a huge compulsion to staying around longer than necessary. But the conversation brought back to me the second question I have regarding death, ‘What do we take with us?’
This following from Osho has haunted me because of its succinctness, and is often quoted:
Remember, only that which you can take with you when you leave the body is important. That means, except meditation, nothing is important. Except awareness, nothing is important, because only awareness cannot be taken away by death. Everything else will be snatched away, because everything else comes from without. Only awareness wells up within; that cannot be taken away. And the shadows of awareness – compassion, love – they cannot be taken away; they are intrinsic parts of awareness.
Osho, The Book of Wisdom, Ch 21
I went to see a close friend who had had a stroke earlier this year. She didn’t remember my name, but when she saw me her face lit up. ‘You’re that funny guy,’ she beamed. She remembered the humour, the laughs, the joy, also connections with people. Regarding one person close to both of us, she recalled going to a dance class with her, and the actual moves they were taught. This was an extraordinary meeting for me, because I realised that when the mind doesn’t function, something essential is retained from life even if it’s not obvious, ‘the shadows of awareness’.
Where I have arrived with all this, is that I may have studied Books of the Dead, messages from beyond, and experienced countless other-dimensional encounters; I may even feel I have various mutable maps of the afterlife that I can use for navigation; but actually, the twin shores of Life and Death are demanding only I answer those two simple questions:
What do you leave behind?
and
What do you take with you?
The answers are ongoing.
My diagnosis is of a rare condition called Myasthenia gravis. It’s unpredictable, and means I could have decades ahead of me or days. But then that’s the human condition in a nutshell. What it has given me, as well as a chance to evaluate my life, is a pragmatic attitude in alignment with those questions.
What does bode well, from my perspective as a creative writer, is that I have just started something of an epic novel that is going to take years to write. The ideas and words pour into me at all times, waking me up in the middle of the night, and insisting on me getting on with it. The reason this bodes well is that in my experience so far, the universe has always supported me completing my novels and getting them in print no matter what the odds. We appear to be in a partnership of sorts.
Yet still that sword dangles over me, suspended by a single thread, reminding me that no matter how far away a goal may be, it is indeed this very moment that counts.
Featured image by Максим Степаненко on Unsplash
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