Whether you are a Buddhist, Hindu, Advaita, Christian, Muslim, Jew or atheist, even a long-time, ‘somewhat advanced & awake’ Buddhist, Hindu, Christian, etc., it is natural to be terrified of the moment in the illusion of “time,” in the ‘forward progression’ of “your” familiar and apparently self-cognizant “personal story,” where that illusory “me” sense will end and the never-actually-existed centralized locus called “me” will no longer feel connected to anything, or have any feeling at all.

If “you” believe that “me” is ‘real,’ was ever ‘real,’ and you concurrently identified with it, it’s inevitable that “you” will feel terrified to “die,” to end that sense of self, because “you” know nothing else, no other process to interact with this apparent Universe and measure “your” place in it.

So you should never feel embarrassed about that feeling apparently arising, whether it’s at 2AM waking from a disturbed sleep, or at 2PM, leaving your physician‘s office after being told you have stage 4 terminal cancer.

If “you” realize (direct apperception, not intellectual knowledge) that there never was a separate “you” that was having its own “personal connection” to Everything, but that in fact “you” are Everything, Life Itself, that indeed, there is only This Everything & Nothing, or Being, there will be no place outside of Being that this terror could occur, and ‘no one’ to take delivery of it.

Last night in your night dream, a totally ‘extra’ separate “you” appeared, and perhaps in that dream it seemed to possess a big mansion, a Rolls Royce, and a beautiful family. Perhaps even within that dream, you dreamt of something - financial circumstances, illness, tension in that family - that threatened to take all of those things away from this extra “you,” and because the dream seemed entirely real, the dream “you” experienced the terror of that and started to freak out. In the dream.

The next morning you awoke, and saw none of those people or objects on your pillow. Which means “you” did indeed lose all of it. All that the dream-you never had in the first place. But now, there is no terror, no freak out, no concern whatsoever. You say, “Ah, it was just a dream” and immediately move on.

What may happen is you realize that whatever sense of a separate “me” and separate possessions or others you ‘feel connected to’ in any ‘future’ night dream should never be mourned or frightened to lose, because it’s just a dream. That may arise.

What also may arise, is the realization that this, too, is a dream. This so-called ‘waking state’ and the ‘waking “you location” is just another dream-story apparently arising in Being. Then “you” will give your ‘death’ no more credence than the dream-you that instantly vaporized the moment “you” woke up.

There is no ‘birth’ or ‘death.’ There is only Being. It always is and always was, timeless and immaculately complete. Nothing is ever born or dies. There is no Buddha-nature or Brahman-nature or Holy Spirit-nature that can ever be experienced by a ‘separate’ “you,” because there is only Being and nothing can be separate from That or exist outside of That.

Wishing you the inclusion of your terror of ‘death’ in the realization of Life Itself.

• Teja