Death is a stripping away of all that is not you. The secret of life is to ‘die before you die’ and find that there is no death. The only ‘real’ death is never knowing who you really are, never understanding your true ‘being’.
When you have a true sense of Self, this can never die.
Death is a word which frightens everyone except those who have known their Divine Nature. So, most people do not even want to hear this word because the very word fills them with utter fear, despair and dejection.
It reveals to them the hollowness of their worldly pursuits, though only for a couple of moments.
But there is nothing to fear at all. Death only takes away what is not yours, what was never yours. It has no power to take away what is really your own.
Wise men have often compared death with sleep to rid us of its fear and also to tell us about the futility of seeking happiness in this transitory World.
Sleep has such a profound dimension to make us realize that nothing in this World including our body, mind and emotions belong to us.
In sleep a mother is no mother, a king is no king , a beggar is no beggar, a Brahmin is no Brahmin, a shudra is no shudra. – Upanishads
In deep sleep, we completely forget everything about this mad World including our body, mind and emotions. In deep sleep we are in the lap of Holy Bliss.
In deep sleep we shed all our false identities and become one with God.
So if one is really fearful of death then he must also become afraid of going into sleep.
To face the permanent loss of this body i.e. death, boldly, we need to make some preparation and meditation is nothing but another name for this preparation
The purpose of all meditations is one and that is to make us know or realize that we are Divine Beings, Immortal and Blissful. And once we know it, just once, even for a billionth part of a second than all our fears disappear for ever.
Life gets completely transformed. For the first time, we come to realize that we were never born, so question of death does not arise at all. We realize that birth and death were mere jokes that Nature was playing on us.