‘They say, at the time of your death, you see the person you were supposed to become.’
What exactly is the meaning of that?
In a purely spiritual way, at the time of death, the consciousness naturally wants to leave the body. In my opinion, it is like when I meditate, the mind gets concentrated, consciousness then reaches a stage where the attachments with the body somewhat lessens.
You stop caring about things like your appearance, you become a little less emotional and so on. You look at your body, mind and thoughts from a neutral perspective. This gives you more of an understanding of the mistakes that you’ve made and the enjoyments that the body’s gone through.
Once you’ve realised your mistakes you naturally realise what you could’ve become if you hadn’t made those. You start realising what you should’ve done to be better. You also realise that the sense enjoyments you went through wasn’t really the end-all be-all that you perceived them to be.
Now, these things can be realised on hindsight as well. But during the time of death or when nearing the end of your journey in this body, the entire journey can be relived on hindsight. That is when one can realise the biggest mistakes of one’s life.
Now, if you look at Mahabharat and think of Krishna as consciousness then you’d probably understand that when Bhishma, Drona and Karna died, they died attaining freedom. They got mukti. You could also say that they took Samadhi.
Now, how could the aforementioned ones of Mahabharat take samadhi and few of the others couldn’t?
By acceptance.
They could accept their mistakes, flaws. They realised the apparent wrongs and rights they did. More than anything else they could realise this cycle of good and bad. They understood the role karma plays in everything by being on a higher, more neutral plane of consciousness. That neutral plane helped their individual consciousnesses attain mukti(freedom).
Now, going by the belief of rebirth, I know people hardly believe in it. But still, let’s say it happens. It happens to those who can’t let go of this cycle of karma of good and bad deeds. They take shape and form again and again. Some in the hope of enjoying those good deeds, others in the hope of trying to right those past wrongs.
Whereas, mukti can only be attained by those who can attain neutrality by going beyond this karmic cycle with the great virtue of acceptance.
Om Shanti…..?