By now you have probably noticed that people die. It is a cross-cultural given that everybody at some point in life will give it up and die. Death of the body is more common than dirt and used to contribute to dirt until the Egyptians taught the Romans that the physical body should be preserved creating one hell of an industry for priests and undertakers for the spiritually insecure. A lot of religious activity centers around death and dying because most people are afraid to die. Fear of death is a great way to shape how people live. We fear death once we notice it, because of a feeling that we are immortal (sly old reptile spinal brain and lotus chakra).

Famous humanistic psychologists Carl Jung, William James, and Carl Rogers all had experiences that led them to conclude that spirit might outlast matter. Rogers noted in his old age that he was too busy to think much about death. Jung’s concept of individuation or the process of selfrealization allows us to deepen our consciousness to include aspects of the subconscious that do indeed seem to be immortal. Even those who see death as the end of material and psychic existence, see the value of individuation as a living process worth pursuing. Individuation as a concept seems to render death as a doorway into the spirit world, void, egregore, or superconsciousness where the next order of existence is determined to some extent by the level of development achieved on this side of life. This concept is not so different as expressed in the esoteric expression of most of the great religions and myths of the world. Thus in death the meaning of life is finally revealed. This is not a long leap of faith from “Masturbate and you will go to hell!” or “Tell the truth and you will go to Heaven.”

People who have these beliefs do not consider them irrational or neurotic. Freud disagreed. Just because Freud totally blew it around “penis envy” doesn’t mean he was wrong about everything he wrote. He was a pioneer. Pioneers are bound to make mistakes. William James thought of death mythologies as a basic right and opined they made life more worth living, perhaps the only defense against the urge to suicide. My personal experience described in Shadow Strategies and Path Notes side with Carl Rogers in deciding to “consider it possible that each of us has a spiritual essence lasting over time, and occasionally incarnated in a human body.” Hatsumi-san said in the forward to Path Notes that his interactions with me led him to the same conclusion about death. I describe sharing energy with him in Path Notes. You can conjecture as to whom benefited the most from the exchange. I suspect our ability to soul merge was as big a surprise to him as to me. Budo shaktipat transfers the lineage as a form of immortality?