This Time Around

"In the Eastern tradition, the state of your consciousness at the last moment of life is so crucial that you spend your whole life preparing for that moment.  We've had many assassinations in our culture recently and when we think what it was like for Bobby Kennedy or Jack Kennedy, if they had any thought, what it would have been.  'Oh, I've been shot!' or 'He did it,' or 'Goodbye,' or 'Get him,' or 'Forgive him.'  Mahatama Gandhi walked out into a garden to give a press conference and gunman shot him three or four times, but as he was falling the only thing that came out of his mouth was, 'Ram…' The name of God.  He was ready!
 
"At the moment of death you let go lightly, you go out into the light, toward the One, toward God.  The only thing that died, after all, was another set of thoughts of who you were this time around."  ~Ram Dass, from Grist for the Mill ©1981