Deepak Chopra: A Living Possibility
I am not afraid of death.
I want to say this clearly,
not as a performance of spiritual courage
but as an honest description of where I find myself,
after eight decades of living and exploring
and attending to the dying.
I am not afraid because I have come to believe—
through reflection, through meditation,
through the witness accounts of people
who have had near-death experiences,
through the testimony of the great wisdom traditions
and, yes, through something in my own direct experience
that I cannot fully articulate—
that what I most essentially am
does not end when this body stops.
The body is a temporary form.
Consciousness is the field in which all forms arise and pass.
The wave is not the ocean,
but the wave is made of ocean.
When the wave dissolves, the ocean remains.
The pattern of awareness that I call ‘Deepak’
has a particular history,
a particular set of relationships,
a particular body that will, in time, return to its elements.
But the awareness in which all of that arises,
the witnessing presence,
the sakshi, that, I believe,
is not subject to the laws that govern bodies.
I hold this lightly.
I do not offer it as metaphysical certainty.
No one knows.
But I hold it as a living possibility,
which is more than adequate for living fearlessly.
Deepak Chopra
Awakening in the Final Chapter: Aging with Grace, Love, and Freedom