Q: Let me ask you a question, MARTH. You always talk about a greatness of the true self. I imagine it comes from your long-time experience as a trainer for a self-help seminar…
By the way, I practice Transcendental Meditation, and you may be my mentor in that sense.
I’d like to know a relationship between what you call “the true self or love” and “transcending death”.

MARTH:
You have a very good point of awareness…
Yes, I used to be a trainer of a self-help seminar for many years in my youth. I witnessed hundreds of thousands of participants return to their true self through various practices even though temporarily… I honestly joined them, crying, laughing and experiencing various practices with them. I experienced my ego breaking down many times…

I strangely found my fear for death had gone many times when I loved the people when my ego diminished, when I was truly supported and loved, when I felt truly connected as one with many people in the seminars…

We went through various practices in the seminars, in which I experienced my fear for death was gone when I felt love for each other, in other words, I felt it “O. K. to die now.” And this same feeling happens every time, hundred times and thousand times. I wondered why and examined it thoroughly, because “death” has been the biggest fear for me since childhood. To overcome fear for death has been an important theme for me.

And I have come to believe it more and more firmly… “That’s right. When a man returns to the real self, he loves and is loved, and there is no fear for death…” On the contrary, he will feel so much love, happiness and bliss that he even thinks it O. K. to die now… I also had entered into a field of Atman many times. However, my experiences when I was with the true self were much bigger than that…

Humanity has developed separated societies, and we are separated with each other and isolated… I could say we are in a lonely, sad and suffering environment in a sense… Because it is not our true quality. Our true quality is that of oneness, of love. Therefore, when we return to our spiritual home, we transcend fear for death… More than that, we feel so much love as we feel it is O. K. to die now…

It is said women use the world “to die” during ecstasy while making love. That is, I think people transcends even death when they feel tremendous ecstasy, tremendous joy, and tremendous happiness… We feel so happy that we say, “It is O. K. to die now.” when we are loved by the beloveds and treasured by them. And that may be our true quality as the whole universe. I think people return to the true self and transcend death when they love and are loved, and it is not related to our knowledge but to our state of mind.
More than that, entering into love means no death. No, on the contrary, you feel so much love that you can accept death…

However, all of us are in different circumstances however physically affluent we are in the current societies. We cannot stay with our true self here… Therefore, we are not embraced by so much love that we feel it O. K. to die now, even among our families and friends… I wonder how happy and how blissful we will feel if we are otherwise.
I have had such idea all the time…

I have strived to convey it through my music… And my conclusion out of such experiences is that true human nature is love, and we realize love, which is beyond death, and return to the original self when we love and are loved. I also realized that there is true happiness when we live with it… Otherwise, our life will be sad, miserable and fearful, and there is no meaning for life even if we have a status, a fame and money. This is how I felt, too.
I don’t know if my story will be of any use for you… However, it was a great awareness for a humble trainer of a self-help seminar in his youth…

Moreover, I felt and examined various problems will be gone (which comes from our ego’s ambitions) when we are loved, protected and embraced by all the lives, substances, elementary particles, and dear friends and all, and when we live a truly healthy, loving, truly right, wealthy life…

I also thought things start moving when we have enough love to think, “That’s O. K. if I die from sickness…” rather than “I don’t want to be like this or like that.” “I wish my sickness will be gone.” It also made me think at that time that I can overcome various problems if we have enough love between fungi, between vegetables, between fruits, and between elementary particles of this world, have a sense of love and being loved by animals, and such healthy diet, truthful power, or support from right people and to live with the beautiful people of the true quality…

Now human beings destroy animals, and destroy each other. We live a life in the world without love where we cannot experience the true nature of ourselves. I cannot but feel we will suffer from fear for death, fights and conflicts, or problems of our family, and various problems then… It is no doubt that humans feel so much bliss and happiness as we think we are O. K. to die now when we love and are loved, and we enter into love, joy and wonder… I’m sure humanity will be able to create a civilization filled with love, abundantly shining and transcending even death…

I also realized that people never think of winning, excelling others, boosting the self and improving the ego when we are with our true quality, when we are love, and we love and are loved. Therefore, I came to know that there is no self-boosting, no ego-boosing when we are with the true quality and are love…

In other words, I realized that love is born and the true self is born when we never boost the self or the ego, never assert ourselves and never engage ourselves in conflicts and fights arising from them. I also felt we will overcome death when we have such awareness at that time…

We can naturally see non-existence of what we call death from a standpoint that this world is not, it is unknown and mystical. Besides that, I felt in my youth that a sense of “being” in it is, when there is the true quality and love there, we will be embraced by such love that we feel it O. K. to die now, end the ego, and finish all the conflicts and fights such as the self-boost, the self-assertion and the self-protection…
I have created my music and poetry of MARTH from such point of view… And this is a final message from a trainer who has had such experiences to the people of the world…

Therefore, if we fight with something within a separation, our true quality and love will be lost due to our conflict of separation… It doesn’t matter what you fight with, but we would lose an eternal life, a joy to transcend death, bliss, love, in other words, love of the non-self and all the wonderful things, the biggest force of joy to live because of our senses of separation. This is the reason why awakened people try to end conflicts within themselves… They will lose such precious love, joy and bliss if they have a conflict within…

They treasure love of the true quality as they do know all the good from the true quality, from oneness, and the source to create the true prosperity and truly sustainable success and truly wonderful things will be damaged otherwise… They treasure nothing other than this because they can create anything out of it…

In other words, unless we have the true quality, our life is nothing but a pain, even if we have a status, fame, money, power and everything… This is the reason why all the kings in the past had to fall because of their inner conflicts. They had everything but love…