Death and Life

Coming to Terms

The Absolute

No mind, no form, I only exist;

Now ceased all will and thought;

The final end of Nature's dance,

I am it whom I have sought.

A realm of Bliss bare, ultimate;

Beyond both knower and known;

A rest immense I enjoy at last;

I face the One alone.

I have crossed the secret ways of life,

I have become the Goal.

The Truth immutable is revealed;

I am the way, the God Soul.

My spirit aware of all the heights,

I am mute in the core of the Sun.

I barter nothing with time and deeds;

My cosmic play is done.

- Sri Chinmoy

Not an easy task.

The next afternoon found me sitting on our sofa. (Yes, I was still thinking about everything in the apartment in terms of 'our' and 'we'.) I was watching another one of the countless near-death videos on YouTube on Dipavajan's laptop, while having a meager lunch.

My appetite still had not returned.

I had chosen the Swiss channel 'Empirische Jenseitsforschung', which posted a new interview almost every fortnight. (Most of it with English subtitles, by the way.)

Funny. I would never have thought that the Swiss of all people would be so open to that topic, as they'd always appeared to me as being very grounded and reserved. (Even though I was happy to have been blessed with quite a few delightful Swiss friends.) On the other hand, one of the most famous pioneers in that field, Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, had hailed from that country...

As the first scene from the video flashed across the screen I couldn't help a smile, in anticipation of the comforting content that I was soon going watch. I was truly grateful for this age of the internet and the opportunity it offered to us all to communicate and research interesting topics.

(I've very slightly modified the wording of the following conversation in a few places, for better reading.)

Interviewer: Ms. Pfeifer, at the age of 26 you had a near death experience. How did it come about?

Ms. Pfeifer: At that time I was with my former boyfriend on holiday on the Sinai Peninsulas. We were living in a cottage on the beach and all was very well.

Then, on the third day of our stay, I ate something wrong and got food poisoning. But at that time I did not think too much about it.

The symptoms appeared at noon, but they became really bad when everybody, including my boyfriend, was sleeping. And it was only then that I realized that something was not quite right.