THE SEA OF DEATH

The soul that is sleepless and egoless is caught in a state of limbo: It has died to this world, but is not yet reborn in the other world. While this is not particularly upsetting, it results in a rather dry experience of reality in which nothing in this world holds much interest.

Such a soul was said to be drowned in the sea of death. In actuality, it is drowned in the sea of pure ignorance. Upon looking at the world around it, the soul sees that everything has a beginning and end in the field of pure ignorance—the sea of death. As a result, the joys and pleasures of the world, which others hold so dear, become like dry sawdust in the mouth.

The old saying “ignorance is bliss” may hold true for all those who do not know what true ignorance is—but the soul that knows the state of pure ignorance experiences it not as a state of bliss, but as an abstract nothing. It is experienced as a sea of death. To escape from this state and realize eternal bliss, the soul must first cross the sea of death.

Yet this is easier said than done. The soul that is drowned in the sea of death is incapable of doing anything that might help it to cross that sea. The thoughts of the mind and the actions of the body are not its own, but are carried out by something or someone else. As a result, the egoless soul can do nothing, think nothing, and feel nothing—so how can it possibly cross the sea of death?