Wisdom Area: Mission and Fulfillment€¦ · Web viewTitle: Wisdom Area: Mission and Fulfillment Author: Director Last modified by: Director Created Date: 3/23/2011 3:12:00 PM Company:

LEGACY OF WISDOMwww.legacyofwisdom.org

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Project Directors: Jay Goldfarb Tom Valente Mostackerstrasse 11 7350 S. Tamiami Trail, Suite 214 4051 Basel, Switzerland Sarasota, FL 34231, USA Tel/fax +41- 61-361 5375 Tel. +1-941 927 5907 Fax 923-3205

Team & Sponsors: Ram Dass, Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, Roshi Joan Halifax, Harry Moody, Dr. Sarita Bhalotra, Dr. Rodolfo Musco, Mickey Lemle, Judy Goggin

Wisdom Area: End of Life Preparations

Question: What is Conscious Awareness during this last phase of Life

YouTube Video Title: What is Conscious Awareness during this phase of lifeYouTube URL: www.youtube.com/watch?v=f1navwJuE5ELength: 8:14

RABBI ZALMAN M. SCHACHTER-SHALOMI – commonly called "Reb Zalman". I was born in Poland in 1924 and raised in Vienna where I was simultaneously immersed in both traditional Judaism and secular modernism by attending a yeshiva and a leftist-Zionist high school. After fleeing from Nazi advance and imprisonment by the Vichy-French government, my flight from Europe led me to New York City when I was 17. I entered the Lubavitch Yeshiva; ordained in 1947. I received an M.A. in the Psychology of Religion (Boston University, ‘56); a Doctor of Hebrew Letters (Hebrew Union College, ‘68).

For 20 years I was Professor of Religion and Head of the Department of Near Eastern and Judaic Studies at the

University of Manitoba, Canada. In 1975 I became Professor of Religion in Jewish Mysticism and Psychology of Religion at Temple University in Philadelphia where I am currently Professor Emeritus. In 1995 I was called to

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http://www.legacyofwisdom.org/


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the world Wisdom Chair at Naropa University and later joined the faculty in the Dept. of Religion. I retired from the faculty and am now also emeritus at Naropa University.

My own experience of aging and eldering compelled me to found the Spiritual Eldering Institute in 1989, encouraged and assisted by professionals and colleagues in the field of aging. I have since developed and taught workshops to many thousands of individuals seeking to expand their awareness to match our extended life span.

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Question: What is Conscious Awareness during this last phase of Life?

Transcript:Rabbi Zalman Schachter Shalomi: The first thing that I was teaching in spiritual eldering was that you have to come to terms with your mortality. Nothing is going to happen without coming to terms with that. You are always going to avoid it. I had a situation – one of my friends was saying to his mother “why don’t you go to the seminar that Reb Zalman is going to give?” “I’m not yet ready to die” she said. Okay, I met her later on in Florida – oh, and he asked her – “so what would you LIKE to learn?” “I would like to learn how to get the respect I deserve.” Great. I come to Florida and I greet her, I open the door for her, I hold the chair for her, I do all sorts of things for her. She says “stop fussing over me”. That’s when I told her “you will not get the respect that you want to get if you don’t learn how to receive graciously what people are going to give you.” So that’s an important part.

Now, once I have come to terms with mortality, then I find myself on the gurney prepared for an operation and I’m being wheeled into the operating room. And at this point I am not coming to terms with mortality, I’m coming to terms with dying! It’s moved from the abstract to some very concrete thing. Now, if you are doing what religious Jews do then at the end of the day you have a review of the day, an examination of conscience. And one of the beautiful prayers that we have says “Master of the Universe, behold I forgive anyone who has angered me, has hurt me, who has done something bad against me, my money and so on and so forth, I forgive them all, let no one be punished on my account; whether

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they did it in this incarnation or in any other”. Interesting, that is how the text has it.

There is a thing about being able to say at the end “into your hand I commend my spirit”. These days, when I go and take a nap even, I sometimes do my out breath and say “what would be if this was my last breath”? Could I make peace with that? And I want to say if there is no stress in the body from emphysema or other pain, you know, then a kind of conscious dying is a wonderful thing. Like Kubler Ross has a statement where she says one of her patients says “Ich will mein sterben erleben” – I want to live through my dying. Not like the comedian who says “I don’t mind dying as long as I don’t have to be there”.

So I think that’s an important part, the preparation for that. But you know what, I did that already when I was in the Yeshiva. That element of being able to say “I am not the source of my life and I am ready to give back my life”. So I used to live in Borough Park, the Yeshiva was on Eastern Parkway. So I would go with the BMT and then change to the IRT. When I went with the BMT they had those little places at the end of the car where the conductor would sit. And I would always like to sit in them – so I could meditate and so on. So when it comes to this station and finally stops I’ll be gone, you know a kind of sense of not freaking out. I think that’s an important part.

There’s another element. I would like people to read what is under the Dewey Decimal system under number 133 in the library. All the stuff under Psychic Research and Life after Death is there. Those people who have had out of body experiences, near death experiences have all come back and said how wonderful it is.

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In my little prayer room I have a picture of Emmanual Swedenborg who has written a remarkable series of books in which he describes what’s going on in the other world. He points out that when you crossover there are some social workers who help you, who greet you and get you – you know you are in a different place now, and this is how you work your way. I do believe that some of this is so. I don’t know if it lasts for ever and ever because if I would have my druther druthers I would like just to be a drop in the divine ocean and disappear. You know to go into Shunyata, into Ayn Sof, that would be just fine, you know? But there is also the other thing - the energy body that’s being created in the lifetime; it doesn’t disappear with death.

One of my Acupuncturist people told me a story. He was working in the gross Anatomy lab. And the kidneys were cut out and one of his colleagues was working in another part of the same room on the kidneys. When he put needles into the kidney meridian of a corpse and the other guy says “what did you do just now”, because there was a shiver in the kidneys! So death, what we don’t know; the trouble is they haven’t come back from there to tell us – some of them have, but you know. I have had wonderful experiences with Psychics and some of them were also so stupid. You know, charlatans are there too. When you get veridical things it hits the nail on the head – and they know – that’s great.

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Wisdom Area: Mission and Fulfillment€¦ · Web viewTitle: Wisdom Area: Mission and Fulfillment Author: Director Last modified by: Director Created Date: 3/23/2011 3:12:00 PM Company: