The Last Days and Hours of Life
Gerald Porter
I hope to spend the last days proceeding my death wholly absorbed in the mood of the Clear Light. Realizing that there is no need to merge with the Clear Light because I am the Clear Light.
Let everything unnecessary fall away.
May I surrender to my true nature as the Clear Light.
I would hope for the reading of at least one complete cycle of the American Book of the Dead in my presence, establishing an unshakeable rapport with my reader.
I would hope that for at least one month before my final hour, that someone runs orbs for me that will help to repair the deficits of my character and purge debilitating karma.
Let me ask as I approach the end of my life, “How can I be of service?”
How can I help to alleviate the suffering of the Absolute?
I hope as much as possible to perform Prayer Absolute and more deeply establish an essential habit of assuming divine suffering that will continue from lifetime to lifetime across the megalocosmos, and throughout the macrodimensions.
I hope to be able to run orbs and perform ABD readings for others in need, so that my remaining time as much as possible is devoted to service.
I hope to be surrounded by my loved ones – to hold their hands and stare into their eyes in that final hour and see the truth that we have so often evaded in the pretenses of life.
I hope to hold the hand of my wife, the one who has been with me. The one who has embodied the Beloved for me in this particular time and place. Her essence is branded onto my soul and death can never undo what has been made one.
Ironically, I am ambivalent about her being there, because I know she will have to endure a painful separation that I would hope to spare her. For me this is the most difficult challenge death poses. But fate will decide, and if it is her lot to outlive me, then I will gladly accept the sure comfort of her warm and familiar presence.
I pray that I have the grace to realize that anyone who is present, if I am fortunate enough to have any company at all, is in truth the Beloved. Let me recognize the face of the Beloved in all those around me, and every action as the hand of the Guide.
I wish to especially cultivate a sense of gratitude for my life and to forgive all perceived mistreatments.
I hope to die in beautiful surroundings. I find as I contemplate my physical surroundings at the time of death, I lapse into fantasy. I understand that sickness that so frequently leads to death can be pretty cruel and taxing. The abilities and even the interest in life are often diminished by the distractions of infirmity and the very real draw of the other world. Still an exercise in fantasy seems appealing. I can’t decide if this is a kind of magic that will draw me into a corresponding parallel world where this vision will be realized, or a kind of escapism projecting a Grandma Moses or Currier and Ives scene over the more stark and rigorous demands of dying; or just a too literal interpretation of the directions to describe the conditions of my last hour in detail.
I want to die at home. I wish to avoid all medical facilities and do not want extraordinary care to stay alive. What follows below is a story about my death in which I would gladly be the protagonist. Writing this I remember the lines from the Voyager’s Quatrain “All phenomena is illusion, neither attracted nor repelled.”
I would like to die from a room on the second floor of a rambling colonial or Victorian house. A large antique oriental rug with that deep, rich burgundy throughout the design on the floor, an indulgent floral wallpaper, and a crazy mash-up of 19th century Hudson River School, surrealist, and magical realist paintings on the walls mounted in big oversize frames like you see in museums.
My worn out body slid between cool silky sheets with warm heirloom quilts heaped atop an old antique bed with head and footboards that look like the doors of a gothic cathedral.
Overlooking a view out a large bay window of a pastoral scene of a meandering stream whose voice I can faintly hear though the open window. All tucked in a lush grove of old maples and oaks surrounded by newly mown grassy fields populated with black and white cows, and horses with long manes.
The quiet is broken occasionally with the eager but contented bark of a dog, and from time-to-time the sound of children playing.
The ideal time to pass would be sunset on a surprisingly warm but mildly breezy day in early fall when the leaves have just started to turn red and bronze. The room is illuminated with warm yellow glow punctuated with a few warm beams revealing the sleeping cat curled up on the rug in an inconvenient spot soaking in the heat.
In the days leading up to the final hour, I would appreciate hearing all kinds of music – folk, blues and world music, the honest expression of the people, Leonard Cohen, pop music from the 20th century, Jimi Hendrix, even Sinatra and Sammy Davis, Jr. Classical music and jazz (Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, Thelonius Monk, Dave Brubeck, etc.), E.J. Gold’s “Epitaph for an Ego,” and anything by Poulenc or Erik Satie. Although most of the time I would prefer to make peace with silence and to fall deeper into that vacancy which I have never found quiet but teeming and surging with activity that both agitates and calms. It is easy to forget the silence. But if you get acquainted, it can easily become a seductive lover who tempts you away from everything so rude and blatant. Nestled in the embrace of silence, the world behind the world gradually rises to the surface like the body of Ophelia. That is all I want and need.
I would like my unembalmed body to be placed in a cotton shroud and buried in a cardboard box. No marker is necessary or desired. We know where this can be done in upstate New York.
Every day for the month leading up to my death, in as fully awakened state as I can muster, I would love to. . .
See objective art of all varieties. Hoping for surprises and shocking ambushes in anticipation of the labyrinth.
Hear the reading of poetry of the heart and soul. Poetry that makes me laugh and cry, and maybe even sing and dance (if I am able).
Make poetry and draw pictures and even paint if physical capacity allows. I long to feel the freedom that the muses unleash when they breath strange notions igniting my mind, and seize my hands like the frenzied brushes of an obsessive artist to paint their fancy.
See dance. I would love to see bodies in meaningful and expressive movement, even as I prepare to give up mine.
Have good company to share all these things. Always remembering, that no matter who I am with, even alone, I am always in good company.
All these conditions would be pleasant – the realization of an idyllic dream, pretty but not essential. A pleasure that might have some redemptive value beyond pure aesthetics, if I could embrace all this consciously with eyes open and heart alive. Living with these treasures as if each moment were my last, until it is that final moment on the brink of transition. Imbuing every impression with life until it blazes and stands as a beacon in the vast dark ocean of space-time, savoring every bite of a full banquet, and paying my due without regret in full measure.
And if I have done this right, covering the debts of a few others. Giving them a few moments of never guessed at freedom.
But the material surroundings are not necessary because it is my hope, my sincere intent, that at the moment of death, I be so fully present with one foot already in the Clear Light; in that numinous, majestic territory of the bardos; that my vision will be filled with a deeper, truer prescience that overshadows in substance any manifest conditions of the temporal world that only appear more obvious.
Simultaneously what the world might call beautiful, horrific, so sweet and tender as to effectively necessitate tears, and so profoundly real that the earth shattering reverberations of the world sound are inescapable and rattle mercilessly the molecules embedded within the very quick (which is what this timeless place really is).
And then the Clear Light, it is always the Clear Light and no other.
Permeating everything. It is really all there is in different disguises hiding out from itself, and doing a damned good job.
Now I will take off my mask.
And in that final hour I hope to see the Beloved in all those around me.
Their faces each an icon of a lifetime and a mirror
That reveals first the particular in self-absorbed isolation, and then an enormity too subtle and obvious.
In that final moment of passage, I will lay down a trail of bread crumbs, like Hansel and Gretel, for my friends to find their way home.
Knowing that this day we will be fully restored,
Not made One but remembering the One we are, and that our time is at hand
Rejoicing, victory is already won.
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