Here’s an extraordinary meditation on death by the Tibetan Buddhist Situ Rinpoche, transcribed from a talk he gave to students:

The physical definition of death

I am continuing to talk about death and the bardo. As we have learned earlier, the basic, fundamental advice about the fear of death and also for living people is to do one’s best, so that when the inevitable death occurs, we will be prepared positively for it. Now I will talk briefly about the physical definition of death as related to the basic definition of the body.

The life span of a human being like us on this planet in this solar system of this universe is somehow fixed. It is almost a miracle if we see someone live beyond one hundred years. I cannot say there are more than a few thousand people living on this planet right now who are over a hundred. It is very difficult to live that long, but it is possible. If we think of a few more years, if we think of someone who has lived two hundred years, I would say that we cannot even count one person with such a life span. So while a human being as such might live billions of years, a human being on planet earth of this solar system definitely does not live beyond two hundred years. I say this to make us a little happier. We cannot live above two hundred years, and that says to us that the relative interdependent manifestation of our body has its own fixed mechanism. I think in scientific or mechanical terminology this would be called the genetic or cell structure. You may know more about this than I do, actually. There is something fixed; the physical definition of death as a human being on the planet earth is according to the life span of the body. Of course, we should know that this is relative reality, and it is always possible that one can transcend this relative reality. It is not an ultimate truth that we cannot live more than two hundred years. It is a relative truth.

In order to transcend physical relative reality, one has to have a deep level of realisation. Living without dying is in the same physical entity as we call immortality. In Buddhist history quite a few masters have achieved this, and the master who is most well known for this achievement is Guru Rinpoche. Guru Rinpoche lives today.

Of course some western scholars have said that is not the case, and quite a few have written about Guru Rinpoches’ not being immortal. But we all believe that Guru Rinpoche lives even today. He attained realisation. I have had discussions about this with quite a few people who do not want to agree with me. That is all right, we have freedom of speech and freedom of belief. Some people like to say that for Guru Rinpoche and other great masters who have attained immortality, it is their mind that is immortal. That I do not agree with because our mind is immortal all the time. We do not have to be Guru Rinpoche, we do not have to be enlightened, and as we are our minds are immortal. The mind reincarnates from one life to another; it never dies. Guru Rinpoche’s realisation of immortality is not talking about the immortality of his mind. Guru Rinpoche has realised that the body is manifestation of the mind.

That is how Guru Rinpoche transcended the laws of nature, because nature is part of the mind, part of the ultimate. So once that realisation happened, then Guru Rinpoche became immortal.

Immortality is something achievable, but unless we reach that kind of realisation and transcend relative reality, our body is mortal, and a mortal body has a life span. Sometimes we like to say that human beings live only about one hundred years. This is inadequate, because a human being means a being in the human realm, which is one of the six realms. A human being is not limited to the human being of planet earth. A human being might live on another planet. The human realm as one of the six realms extends throughout the existence of sentient beings, so some human beings might not look like people that we know. They might look like a carpet, which would seem very weird to us, but definitely it is possible. We look like a tree trunk. So somebody who looks like a carpet may look at us and say “What strange beings, they look like tree trunk.” The human realm is a state of mind and the human body has no real definition; it can be anything. We are the human beings of the planet earth. Looking up, we have something on our head called hair. A being that had never seen us would find this hair very funny, because some people tie it up, some have it down, some cut this way or that way, and some shave it totally. It would seem strange to them, but for us it is one of the ways to beautify ourselves and we take good care of it. Some of us who have lost it polish the pate to keep it clean and shiny and beautiful.

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I wrote a post on “the library angel” on our blog, Spiritual Nirvana a little while ago and it seems appropriate to bring this up here.

Have you ever walked into a library (or bookstore) and found your gaze being drawn to a book which contains exactly the information you’re looking for? Many people do, including your truly. Most recently I went to my local library to dig out a particular book. Out of all the volumes on display, my eyes alighted like magic on another book I had been looking forward to reading, but thought it hadn’t yet been published.

The book just leapt out at me (not literally, of course). This phenomenon has been called “The Library Angel”. Strangely, you only have to mention it to other people for them to say: “That always happens to me!”, or, “Oh, is that what you call it? Is it a real Angel?”

It seems to be a real “supernatural” force, though purely anecdotal, so not really scientifically assessible. Here’s another example:

Some years ago I bought a book which turned out to be full of academic footnotes and terms I didn’t fully understand. I put the book in the bookshelf and assumed I’d never read it.

Recently, I was glancing along the shelves looking for something to read, when this book seemed to light up (again, not literally). My attention was riveted to it. When I took it down and started to read, it had information I wanted at that time, and the technical terms were completely understandable. I read it through in a day and gained much from it.

If anyone has any anecdotes on the library angel, Please feel free to send them to me, or put them in the comments section.

Here’s a tale of Cataleptic Exteriorization by T. Stokes, a Paranormal Studies lecturer.

This is a peculiar tale, with an ending very different from the one anticipated. My friendship with the family priest who was also the diocese exorcist, meant we shared tales of what is now called deliverance. The strange thing is that I was related to the people involved, and I think the family priest asked my advice only to insure my silence over the confidentiality thing, where an unwritten code of ethics prevents talking publicly over any personal events.

The family in question believed they were haunted by invisible assailants, as things would go missing and be found days, later somewhere quite unconnected. Light bulbs would continually pack up, and the usual nocturnal bumps and bangs that accompany these disturbances, with a constant feeling of tension and apprehension. It came to a head when the householders walking stick vanished, and a couple of weeks later an electrician who was re-wiring the house to stop the light bulbs exploding, lifted a floorboard, that had not been up before, to find the walking stick.

This brought matters to a head, the family of roman-Catholics were dumfounded as to why them? It turned out after questioning that this kind of thing had gone on for years, And there was no discernable kind of a pattern here, which is one of the things you look for, no particular time of day, both the couple were victimised, and all over the house was affected. Yet bafflingly, no signs of a haunting. No indication of lower spirit infestation, or a troubled spirit, It was only as a last resort having tried everything else that the priest and I arrived at a case of what Carl Jung called: “Cataleptic exteriorisation phenomena” And the priest then questioned them on a different tack, the sensitive questions were then over the couples sex life. It transpired that they were good Catholics, and kept church teachings over no protected sex, it has long been a source of suffering to Catholics that they cannot use contraception. Some say it’s because this old boy in the Vatican palace says as he can’t have it no-one else can either.

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If you like Biblical mysteries, where texts in the Bible are analyzed to predict future events, you may like Earthquake Resurrection: Supernatural Catalyst for the Coming Global Catastrophe by David Lowe.

I haven’t read the book myself, but I read Ray Gano’s review on Prophezine and visited the author’s website. The ideas come from a Christian perspective and the book speaks openly of the “rapture” among a million or so followers who “disappear” at the end of the world. Much of the analysis is based on the Book of Revelations, so if you’re squeamish about the Beast 666, and all the rest of John’s eschatology, now’s the time to switch off.

Ray Gano of Prophezine describes himself as “a staunch Pre-Trib Dispensationalist”, by which I assume he means that the dispensation for the end of the world has aleady been fixed. He writes: “In his book David Lowe points outs a pattern connecting the description of the resurrection to immortality of Jesus, the many saints who were resurrected in Matthew chapter 27, and the two witnesses of Revelation chapter 11: that all are accompanied by earthquakes, or a shaking of the surrounding earth. He then applies this pattern to the future resurrection of the dead in Christ, and questions whether it is possible that this resurrection will also be accompanied by earthquakes.”

In his synopsis of the book, David Lowe writes: “Earthquake Resurrection explores the possiblity that the disappearance of a large group of believers worldwide will be masked by global catastrophe. This possibility is based on a pattern found in scripture that the power unleashed when a human being is resurrected into an immortal body causes a shaking of the surrounding earth. The pattern is evident with the two recorded historic instances of the resurrection of Jesus Christ and the ‘many saints who had died’ in Matthew 27, as well as with the resurrection of the two witnesses of Revelation chapter 11 in the future.”

Check out the best price for Earthquake Resurrection.