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APPLICATION
THE NOTION OF GROWTH
169
also never lose our identity while entering dreams, we always take the 'I' with us, - and we always feel completely normal and natural in our dream-identity while doing the most extraordinary things.
Though we all experience leaving our physical body several times during sleep each night, we usually would not connect our dream-experiences to the mechanism of death. Yet death is also nothing more than our consciousness leaving our physical body. Sure, it seems different because we do not return to this particular physical body and its familiar environment. But then - have we ever cared much about the many 'dream-bodies' we left behind when waking up? And as we were able to retain our identity, character and memories while entering the dream-world, we also take all our identity, character, wisdom and everything we are and learnt with us at our time of death.
The apprehension with which the West looks upon death stems from the idea that our present life is the only one we will ever have and that - if we botch it - we never will get another chance.
This is a good illustration how rigid concepts can limit our scope of life. As long as we believe that this is our only life, we tend to get as much physical excitement out of it as possible. Especially in our youth we focus almost exclusively on the joy our body can give us. We presume that older bodies would be less capable of doing so and that any non-material enjoyment would be much harder to reach. We hardly ever recognize or even hold possible that alternative dimensions of life may bring far more intense thrills and ecstasy.
Unfortunately this exclusive focus on material enjoyment often carries over into our more mature part of life. Instead of recognizing the limited range of material enjoyment and
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