Bodies die, but you don’t…  Meaning, “you” as Consciousness.
 
 
The Universal Deathless One

One evening, after visiting a friend and client in his 80’s — I was helping them write a book:  his “swan song” project as it were — a thought came to me, a phrase. It was one of those very quiet, certain, self-obvious thoughts: “the universal deathless one”.
Emphasis on “One”.

It’s interesting how religions have distorted things, or the prophets were misinterpreted – when they said one could be immortal. It’s true, but not for the body and not for the mind. For example, in the Gospel of Thomas, the first Logion:

(1) And he said, “Whoever finds the interpretation of these sayings will not experience death.”

And Logion 18:

(18). The disciples said to Jesus, “Tell us how our end will be.”
Jesus said, “Have you discovered, then, the beginning, that you look for the end? For where the beginning is, there will the end be. Blessed is he who will take his place in the beginning; he will know the end and will not experience death.”

He was not talking about the beginning of the universe, the body or a mind. And he was not talking about a soul. He was pointing to the origin of experience itself, and the fact there is no beginning to This, what I Am, what is Consciousness, or God (the Father) in theistic language, right now. Eternally now.
 
There is a difficulty for my mystic, or prophet, or sage, or writer, or anyone trying to communicate a fundamental truth in a language that is dualistic. More fundamental though, is the how the audience will interpret it. They will only be able to hear it according to their understanding (unless they have a sudden insight).
 

The reader or hearer will have assumptions in their outlook from the beginning, that start with the belief and feeling to be a  a separate entity, a local consciousness looking out from a body, from a mind, and to identify with those things, and be very attached to them. Divesting oneself of those illusions is the whole journey. The adventure. The unfolding. The infinite flowering.
  

No Soul, But a Big Heart

Interpreted by the mind of separation, of attachment, of ownership, “The Universal Deathless One” will seem to suggest that one will survive a future death of the body as an individual separate entity somehow, as in a soul, or as in reincarnation. 

Lao Tzu, the first section of chapter 52 in the Tao Te Ching:

52

The beginning of the universe

Is the mother of all things.

Knowing the mother, one also knows the sons.

Knowing the sons, yet remaining in touch with the mother,

Brings freedom from the fear of death.

 

Did this actually mean the universe, as in the tangible universe of time and space and things, borne in time? Of appearances? No, of course not. It was pointing to the totality, to That what you are, now, silently, in the eternal present, that was never in time in the first place. He was not pointing to this “dream life”.  He was pointing to the same thing Plato’s cave story was pointing to, the Sun, when one climbs up out of the cave into the light of the open infinity, where there is no separation from any point to any other point. The infinite expansion. Where birds sing freely on their branches.
 
The trick is to die before you die. So to speak…
 
Not an “ego death” as they say – an ego death for whom? – but a realization. A realization that there was no one to die in the first place, never has been. It was all a lie. A tale told by an idiot, to no one.   They call it “liberation” but it’s all nonsense, unless there is no one to be liberated in the first place, since a liberated human being is a joke. There is no such thing as enlightenment (for a human being). 

How could the game characters in a computer game be liberated from the game, or the dream characters in a night dream be liberated into the daytime awakened state? They are at different “levels of reality” or levels of description of reality. 

This is It. The One. There is no other. It may be a dream, but it’s a real dream, for the Dreamer. 

Knowing the Dreamer, the One that dreams, is liberation from the dream, even if the glimpse is small. That tiny mustard seed is very valuable. 

(20) The disciples said to Jesus, “Tell us what the kingdom of heaven is like.”
He said to them, “It is like a mustard seed. It is the smallest of all seeds. But when it falls on tilled soil, it produces a great plant and becomes a shelter for birds of the sky.”

Or it is like the most valuable of fish.

(8) And he said, “The man is like a wise fisherman who cast his net into the sea and drew it up from the sea full of small fish. Among them the wise fisherman found a fine large fish. He threw all the small fish back into the sea and chose the large fish without difficulty. Whoever has ears to hear, let him hear.”

☯︎

The Fruit of the Tree

One can be fearless in life. The body has its reactions to protect itself if an immediate threat occurs, such as if you step into the street and a big truck is seen bearing down on you, the body steps out of the way. That is natural and functional. But psychological fear is not natural, it is learned, kept maintained, carried forward unnaturally.

Psychological fear is about the future and past, and involves imagination, or judgement, or fear and aggression stored as patterns in the body, and other mental “add ons”… and is an irrational and a strange affliction, unique to humans among the animals (as far as I know). A dog will shake off its energetic response, and go on as if nothing has happened, but humans often do not shake it off, and it gets stored up. 

When you start shedding these stored reaction patterns, as well as the fundamental error of perception about what one really Is, via a timeless glimpse of True Nature, one starts to  live more naturally and freely, enjoying what is presented in the moment, such a “stranger”, a new human being appearance, and enjoy the fantastic interaction.
  

 

☯︎

I’m going to end with a quote, because I love it, and even when feeling a little lost, one can re-orient to what matters. It’s from The Little Prince, by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry:

 

And now here is my secret, a very simple secret: It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.