Visitor: Can enlightenment happen at the moment of death?
Ramesh Balsekar: Enlightenment can happen to anyone at any moment. It can happen now, or even at the moment of death. It is not true that enlightenment can only happen to people who sit quietly and meditate.
Visitor: But doesn't enlightenment anyway happen to everybody at the moment of death?
Ramesh: No.
Enlightenment is the understanding that whatever happens is God's Will, and that no individual "me"-entity exists with free will and personal doership. This understanding may or may not happen at the moment of death.
The death of a person can occur without him understanding this truth. There can be death without enlightenment. The occurrence of enlightenment brings about a change in the attitude of a sentient being's life. When the body is dead, there is no question of its attitude to life. Once a body-mind organism in which enlightenment has happened is dead, it is in no way different from an unenlightened, dead body-mind organism.
Visitor: Yes, it doesn't matter to the dead body. Aren't there other levels on which it matters whether one dies enlightened or not?
Ramesh:
In some cases, enlightenment may occur at the moment of death. In others, it might happen now, tomorrow, in a month's time, or after 60 years. But the body-mind organism does not necessarily become enlightened at the moment of death.
Actually, no body-mind organism can be enlightened at any time, now or later. You are thinking in terms of a body-mind organism and an individual person being enlightened. Enlightenment happens in phenomenality. It is a happening.
Visitor: But is enlightenment always there?
Ramesh: No.
Enlightenment is the true understanding and total acceptance that all there is, is Consciousness or God, and that whatever happens is God's Will. The individual "me"-entity, with free will and personal doership, just doesn't exist. Enlightenment is not always there. What is always there is Consciousness. All there is, is Consciousness.
Visitor: Couldn't we say that at the moment of death, enlightenment happens in every single case, because the "me"-entity dissolves with the dissolving of the life force and the disappearance of consciousness?
Ramesh:. No. What disappears? The "me," as a separate entity, disappears. The "me" is not there. The disappearance of the "me," as identification with the body, is not enlightenment. The identification with the body continues even after enlightenment.
How do I use the word enlightenment? Enlightenment is that happening in which the identification with a separate entity as a personal doer is destroyed.
It may be destroyed at the moment of death, yes. But when the body dies, all that remains is that which has always existed: Consciousness. And the body is not concerned with that Consciousness. So, enlightenment is not Consciousness. After everyone's death, the body is finished.
Visitor: The little death, sleep, is not enlightenment either. Going to sleep does not make us enlightened either. Is that correct?
Ramesh: Quite right. Every time you go into deep sleep, you go into death, yes. But not into enlightenment. Death is simply the destruction of that body- mind organism which has been created. Whatever is created will be destroyed. And that has been happening for millions of years. Bodies have been created and have been destroyed.
I repeat, death is not enlightenment. Death means being unaware of yourself as a separate individual, as a separate body-mind organism.
bron:
https://archive.org/details/enlightenme ... 1/mode/2up