4.3.1.2 In what way are birth, death and time illusory?

Up to this point of beginning the meditation on the non-reality of birth, death and time, you have lived your life like a prisoner cast into a dark cell. The stark reality of your life is that you have spent your time stumbling about in the gloom, getting by as best you could. In the ignorance and obscuring darkness of mind in its unenlightened state you have been incapable of understanding the true nature of the experiences conveyed to you by your five senses.

Yet, in your darkness, ignorance and isolation, you have progressed with unwavering determination in your daily practice of meditation. This practice has served to develop and strengthen your sixth sense, your inherent powers of intuitive insight into the nature of reality. You do not yet realise it, but the key has already been turned in the cell door; you have awakened the transcendent aspect of mind and you are free to leave the cell of conditioned existence.

Once out of the cell, you will have to travel the corridors of the prison until you reach the exit. You must be careful as you travel towards enlightenment and freedom; karma is still functioning to test your detachment from, and serenity in the face of, life’s experiences.

You have earned the right to leave behind your darkness and ignorance. These teachings will guide you out of the confining prison of ignorance of reality. Come, gather your determination and courage: as you travel along the corridors of space and time, mind and matter, life and death, you will discover that they exist only in the materialised and illusorily objective thought process of that, and being that in your true nature you transcend all of this.

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Firstly, become aware of your limitations. You have only travelled just over half way along the path to the final stage of enlightenment. Although you will soon be capable of intuitively grasping the nature of the illusion, it will only be transcended when you attain the final stage of enlightenment.

Be clear: at no time will your daily life dissolve away to reveal the reality beyond time and space. Any such experiences are simply an extension of the illusion, a function of the mind’s illusory and conditioned activities. Your daily life is unreal and illusory when experienced from the unenlightened viewpoint, and the real expression of the perfection of that when experienced from the enlightened viewpoint.

The illusion, obscuring true and direct intuitive experience of the nature of reality, lies in the mistaken interpretation of sensual experience which leads you to think, ‘I live, I age and one day I will die’. The reality is that what ages and dies is the body. The reality is that it is not ‘I’ who lives, but that which lives us.

Only that, which transcends, embraces and is conditioned existence is not subject to the conditions of time and space. With your newly awakened capacity to witness this with the silent, serene and transcendental awareness of that, meditate on the true nature of time. Be still, witness the one-pointed meditation process and know the truth through direct intuitive experience.

From the viewpoint of the individual, birth, ageing, suffering and death are inevitable. From the transcendental viewpoint of that, individuality is only relatively real, and so, too, are birth, ageing, suffering and death. That, in its absolute nature, is unborn and not subject to birth, ageing, suffering and death.

Time holds sway over the thought process of that. That is to say, your body and your individuality, being conditioned constructs of that, are subject to time, life and death. The reality is that in your own nature you are that, and only that.

Just as you are witnessing your one-pointed meditation with a serene awareness transcending thought, so that witnesses this. The gap between your mind’s conditioned activity and the serenity of transcendental awareness is the pulse, the duration, of one thought. This comes into and goes out of existence thought by thought.

The gap between existence conditioned by time and unconditioned awareness transcending time is the pulse of one thought. The measure of the gap between the eternal incarnate cycle of birth and death, and being transcending incarnation, is the duration of one thought. Duration through time is immersion in, and attachment to, the thought process of that.