“Every form of meditation is basically a way to transcend the ego, or die to the ego. In that sense, meditation mimics death—that is, death of the ego. If one progresses fairly well in any meditation system, one eventually comes to a point of having so exhaustively "witnessed" the mind and body that one actually rises above, or transcends, the mind and body, thus "dying" to them, to the ego, and awakening as subtle soul or even spirit. And this is actually experienced as a death. In Zen, it is called the Great Death. It can be a fairly easy experience, a relatively peaceful transcendence of subject/object dualism, or—because it is a real death of sorts—it can also be terrifying. But subtly or dramatically, quickly or slowly, the sense of being a separate self dies, or is dissolved, and one finds a prior and higher identity in and as universal spirit.
But meditation can also be a rehearsal of actual bodily death. Some meditation systems, particularly the Sikh (the Radhasoami saints) and the Tantric (Hindu and Buddhist), contain very precise meditations that mimic or induce the various stages of the dying process very closely—including stopping the breath, the body becoming cold, the heart slowing and sometimes stopping, and so forth. Actual physical death is then not much of a surprise, and one can then much more easily use the intermediate states of consciousness that appear after death—the bardos—to gain enlightened understanding. The point of such meditation is to be able to recognize spirit, so that when the body, mind, and soul dissolve during the actual dying process, one will recognize spirit, or Dharmakaya, and abide as that, rather than flee from it and end up back in Saṃsāra again, back in the illusion of a separate soul, mind, and body; or to be able, if one does choose to reenter a body, to do so deliberately—that is, as a bodhisattva.”
~ Ken Wilber, The Collected Works of Ken Wilber, Volume Four (1999)
But meditation can also be a rehearsal of actual bodily death. Some meditation systems, particularly the Sikh (the Radhasoami saints) and the Tantric (Hindu and Buddhist), contain very precise meditations that mimic or induce the various stages of the dying process very closely—including stopping the breath, the body becoming cold, the heart slowing and sometimes stopping, and so forth. Actual physical death is then not much of a surprise, and one can then much more easily use the intermediate states of consciousness that appear after death—the bardos—to gain enlightened understanding. The point of such meditation is to be able to recognize spirit, so that when the body, mind, and soul dissolve during the actual dying process, one will recognize spirit, or Dharmakaya, and abide as that, rather than flee from it and end up back in Saṃsāra again, back in the illusion of a separate soul, mind, and body; or to be able, if one does choose to reenter a body, to do so deliberately—that is, as a bodhisattva.”
~ Ken Wilber, The Collected Works of Ken Wilber, Volume Four (1999)
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