The Book of Secrets - Deepak Chopra [75]
Now begin to assist the person in the shift from passively facing death to actively creating the experience. Hear yourself talking in a normal voice; there’s no need for solemnity. Be comforting and reassuring, but focus primarily on shifting the person’s awareness from “this is happening to me” to “I am doing this.” Here are the main themes to talk about (I’ve put them in the second person, as if confiding in a close friend):
I think you’ve had a beautiful life. Let’s talk about the best things you remember.
You can be proud of having turned out to be a good person.
You have created a lot of love and respect.
Where would you like to go from here?
Tell me how you feel about what’s happening. How would you change it if you could?
If you have any regrets, tell me about them. I’ll help you let go of them.
You have no more need for sorrow. I’ll help you let go of any that you still feel.
You deserve to be at peace. You have run your race well, and now that it’s finished, I’ll help you home.
You won’t believe this, but I envy you. You are about to see what’s behind the curtain.
Is there anything you want for your journey?
You can, of course, bring the same themes to the bedside of someone who is truly dying. But having an imaginary conversation is a good way to reach down into yourself. The process shouldn’t be a once-over-lightly. Each topic could last an hour. To be really engaged, you’ll need to feel that you are giving yourself ample attention. This exercise should bring up very mixed feelings, since we all harbor fear and sorrow at the prospect of death. If you have someone in your life who died before you were able to bid them a complete farewell, imagine talking to the person about the themes I just listed. The domain where life and death merge is always here with us, and by paying attention to it you connect yourself to a precious aspect of awareness. Dying in full awareness is completely natural if you have lived in full awareness.
Secret #11
THE UNIVERSE THINKS
THROUGH YOU
I RECENTLY HAD A SMALL ENCOUNTER with destiny—so small that I could have ignored it entirely. A man came to visit me who had devoted his entire life to spirituality. He told me about his many visits to India and his devotion to its ways. He wore amulets of the kind you can buy at temples and holy sites; he knew many sacred chants, or Bhajans; he had been blessed by many holy men in his travels. Some had given him mantras as a gift. A mantra can be as short as a syllable or as long as a sentence, but it’s basically a sound. In what way can a sound be a gift? To someone steeped in the Indian tradition, the gift isn’t the mantra itself but the effect it’s meant to bring, such as wealth or a good marriage. There are thousands of mantras and thousands of possible results they bring.
When I asked him what he did for a living, the man waved his hand and said, “Oh, a little healing, a little psychic stuff. You know, mind-reading. I don’t pay much attention to it.”
His careless attitude intrigued me, and I asked if he could show me an example. He shrugged. “Think of somebody and write down a question you want to ask them.” The only person on my mind that day was my wife, who had been visiting family in New Delhi for a while. I reminded myself that I should call to ask her when she was planning to return—we hadn’t set a fixed date since some of the family members were elderly, and my wife’s stay depended on how well they were doing.
I wrote this down and looked at my visitor. He closed his eyes and began to chant a long mantra. After a minute he said, “Tuesday. You’re thinking about your wife, and you want to know when she’s coming home.”
He had got it right, and after he left and I was able to phone my wife, he got the day of her return right, too. I congratulated him, but he smiled and waved his hand with the same careless gesture that said, “It’s nothing. I barely pay attention to it.” An hour later, when I was alone, I began to think about these psychic events, which are