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Namah Death as Transformation

transformation, is an enabler of progress. evolution of human consciousness.
This idea aligns with the learnings from a
growing body of thanatological literature on
death salience and death proximity.

Recent literature on near-death experiences
evidences the transformation that occurs in
human personality and the quality of human
engagement with others around them, when
death is near and imminent. At these times,
human consciousness inevitably seems to
want to explore the value and purpose of
death, from the frame of inner experiences The Mother describes the flow of consciousness
and perceptions (18,19). as, “.... a perpetual progressive development
(26).” Consciousness expressed as matter
Near-Death Experiencers and death- in the material world acquires a denseness
proximate patients report a “transition”, and a rigidity that slows down evolutionary
as a transformation of perception, as they progress. The Mother explains that the
experience death proximity. At this time, a gradual decay and disintegration of material
transformation of perception their normal forms is brought about by the persistent and
everyday ego-consciousness, appears to be growing disequilibrium between the natural
replaced by an “ego-distant consciousness” urge and flow of consciousness towards
marked by serenity, peace and is largely non- Divine perfection and the material forms’
verbal, akin to a spiritual self-actualisation incapacity to be fully aligned with the pace
(20,21). Death knowledge and proximity, thus of this progress.
seems to bring upon a transforming and re-
orientating experience as patients relinquished “At a certain point of this growing disparity
an ego entered worldview in favour of a deep and disharmony between the form and the force
sense of being embedded in a larger whole that presses upon it, a complete dissolution
(22,23). Lai et al. (24) and Renz et al. (25) report of the form is unavoidable. A new form must
how death proximity expedites forgiveness, be created, a new harmony and parity made
compassion and reconciliation in dying possible. This is the true significance of death
patients, and enables a deeper engagement and this is its use in Nature (26).”
with the relationships and values they
consider important. Death is “personally Susan Brison’s book, Aftermath: Violence and
transformative” transformation in the manner the Remaking of a Self, captures the value of
in which human beings relate to oneself death in its unique capacity to hold space for
and the world around them by offering transformation succinctly:
prospective and retrospective perspectives,
not previously known nor understood by “I am not the same person who set off, singing,
the death proximate individual. Death may on that sunny Fourth of July in the French
be called an instrument of facilitating the countryside. I left her in a rocky creek bed

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