Die Before Death

“Die before death” 

    - Muhammad صلى الله عليه وسلم

The spiritual master Ibn Arabi (d.1240) distinguishes between a compulsory return to God and a voluntary return. The compulsory return occurs at physical death which everybody faces. The voluntary return is only achieved by the few who are with God in this life having already died in the sense that their ego (nafs) has been deprived of its nourishment and dies (fana).

The Quran speaks of the Saint as "he who is dead and whom We have brought to life, making for him a light whereby he walketh among men" (6:122). 

In today's world, you are advised to "Be yourself", "Love yourself" because "You are perfect just the way you are." This is a complete inversion of traditional wisdom which always advised us to slay the lower self (nafs) in order to realise the higher Self (ruh) - like a phoenix rising from the ashes. 

Modernity no longer believes in a higher Self and a lower self or a higher world and a lower world. Everything is flattened out in a systematic process of banalisation. In their view, reality is simply what it appears to be.

 

We have defined two levels of the self for the sake of simplicity but actually there are many levels of the self.

What we ordinarily take to be the self is often only a projection - sustained by attachments to external things. These attachments function like power sources which the self plugs into for its nourishment and continuity.

The word for personality in Latin is persona which meant mask. What we call the self is often only a mask worn by a deeper self beneath. In reality there are many such masks -many illusory selves within us.

The outermost self is sustained by the most vile attachments. When those power sources are unplugged — that self dies and a deeper self is revealed.

As we progress inwardly, the external attachments that sustain the newer self become more subtle and refined — coarse pleasures give way to finer ones.

We should clarify that the inner journey involves a turning away from external phenomena and turning inward toward the One. Through the remembrance of God and the practices that orient the soul toward Him, the outward masks gradually fall away.

Ramana Maharshi: "Your only purpose is to known who you really are."

Delphic Maxim: "Know thyself"

Muhammad ﷺ: "He who knows himself knows his Lord"

The inner journey is ultimately a lonely path — the journey of the alone to the Alone as Plotinus once said. Stripped of external supports and sensory consolations, the soul travels in profound solitude toward the One who is without partner. God is Solitary and He loves the solitary ones. The Prophet ﷺ said, "The solitary ones have raced ahead (of everybody else)." When he was asked who are the solitary ones (al-mufarridun), he said "those who remember God perpetually" (source: at-Tirmidhi 3596). 

Just as night is darkest before the dawn, spiritual unveiling often occurs in the depths of what St. John called the Dark Night of the Soul — that condition of seeming abandonment and emptiness which is, paradoxically, where grace most powerfully purifies and reveals. What feels like utter isolation and loss is, in truth, the final preparation for luminous union.

 

Notes

1. In the Vedanta, we are told that the bliss of Liberation (moksha) is usually experienced after death. Only the jivan-mukta experiences something of it in this life.  

"The jivan-mukta is 'Liberated in life'

The sufi has 'died before death'

This is essentially the same thing. 

To die before death is to be liberated in life" 

    - Anonymous