From Avikal’s series, Reporting from the Great Doubt
Warning: Do not try this at home!
In the past few years a lot of my friends have lost one or both their parents. My mum also passed a couple of years ago. I see and feel the pain, regrets, at times despair that those deaths bring. Or the avoidance, the resistance, the closing off. Only a few of us really take the time to mourn consciously.
Yes, there is a period of grief for sure, a kind of energetic shock in the system. For some it’s like a tsunami, for others just a trembling. This seems to be a completely energetic phenomenon, unpredictable in its length and form. Waves that at times overwhelm us and at times gently envelop us in unexpected moments.
Mourning, on the other hand, is different, as it involves conscious participation. The willingness to remember, feel, recognize, accept, honor, celebrate and then finally let go of attachments. And it can be a very long, unpredictable journey that can reveal our relationship with our darkness and help us to love it. Often, darkness reveals much deeper parts, of ourselves and of reality, in a way light cannot. Light often blinds us and pushes us to focus on the objects rather on the subject, the one who is experiencing it all.
Death has been with me almost continuously since the day, as a child, I nearly died. I was three years old and had started eating soil, in the garden, from flower pots, wherever I could find it. I got a strong colon infection that made me vomit and shit continuously, and not absorb any food. It was then that our old family doctor proposed penicillin (which was in 1953 Italy not yet easily available), and raw red meat. My mum told me later of the struggle she and my brother had to hold me down tight to make me swallow the horribly-bitter powder that saved my life. It took four months, though.
Certainly for years death was not a conscious presence, but after my grandfather’s passing, when I was 12 years old, it was. In my thoughts, in my feelings, in my ways of perceiving reality, death has been my companion and stimulus and object of curiosity.
When I became acquainted with Castaneda’s Don Juan first, and Osho later, I began to consciously question myself. And I approached death often, sometimes fully aware.
In Bali, in 1977, after doing a couple of days of magic mushrooms at doses much higher than recommended (70 at a time, instead of 10 or 15) and having touched incredible and amazing moments, I decided it was time to enter death. I did this, following Don Juan’s advice. So, sitting on a small chair on the porch of the boarding house where I was staying, this time sober, I began to let go of my life-force, and soon it began to come out of the tips of my fingers and toes, the top of my head and the hara, exactly as Don Juan and Osho had described.
At a certain point I felt that I was getting very close. So I called my friend Beppe, who was hanging around, and told him that I wanted him to be close to me and be a witness to my death. Of course he was frightened, and he insisted I take a shower in the garden. As soon as the water ran over me, I fell down and “lost consciousness”. Inside, though, I saw my life – just as they say – flow by very fast, and I knew I was dying.
At the same time, something inside told me that it was not my time yet. It was then that I saw luminous filaments moving towards me and I recognized them as Beppe’s love for me. At that moment I also knew that if I attached myself to them, I could return to life. That’s what I did, and I felt completely and perfectly reborn.
As I was hard-headed and looking for personal power and mastery, the following day I decided to do it all over again, and see if I could return without the help of others, by using a technique that Don Juan had recommended. For coming back into the body: just shift the focus onto doing something we love.
Everything repeated itself like the day before. Only this time, instead of calling Beppe when I felt I was crossing the threshold of no return, I shifted my attention to what I loved – and started writing.
And here I am!
There are many other episodes – near-drowning, guns in my face, etc., but after that experience my fear of death went away. And later on, through the work with the Essence, in particular with the Black Essence: Peace, Silence, Death and Power, many understandings also found their place.
I steadily continue to keep death to my left as an advisor. I feel it with respect and surrender every time I leave home in Australia and travel the world alone. Every time I close my eyes in meditation. It is here every time, death, the black womb of existence opening up and calling me, inviting me: Let go, let go.
Related articles
- Follow the whole series: Reporting from the Great Doubt
Featured image: photo by the author
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