2. A Small Story:

Once, in USA, a young lady asked the great Indian monk Swami Vivekananda*

'What is life?' Swami Vivekananda said, 'Come with me to India. I will teach you.'

She asked, 'What will you teach me?' He said, 'I will teach you how to die.'

The question is about life but the answer is about death! It seems strange! What Swami Vivekananda* is saying is that if you know the secret of death, the quality of your life will be different. Your very understanding and attitude towards everything will change. We can actually use our lives to prepare for death. We do not have to wait for the pain of seeing someone's death or the shock of being faced with a critical illness to force us to look into the meaning of life.

The only way to break free from the vicious cycle of birth and death is by becoming enlightened, by entering into death, dropping the fear. As long as you are afraid of death you will never look death in the eye. Unless or until you do that, you will never know how much you are blessed with abundance. Only when you know that you will lose something will you realize the value of that thing. Once when you face death without fear, you will understand the death is not the end of life but it is the climax. Death is just a matter of belief.

When you believe that death is terrifying, it becomes terrifying. We are not able to face death because we are not able to face the ever changing nature of life. We try to hold onto things, to people, to feelings, to situations and that is where the problem starts.

We are terrified to letting go. Look at everything happening in life with the understanding that change is the nature of life, the very reason why life is so colorful and interesting. Death is a deep relaxation it is the ultimate 'letting go'. It is the dropping of the old and starting with the new.

When your being recognizes that is cannot achieve what it wants to through this body it decides to move on . This moving on, this passing over is called death. Death is a fresh start – When you die, all that happens is that you rejuvenate your body is your mind. You take a fresh set of memories, a new place, a different set of relatives, a new life

We take up a new birth hoping to fulfill all our incomplete desires. Choices given to you by god to start all over again is death. Facing the fear demystifies death. Every moment you die, the next moment you are born. Death and birth are just cycles. If you die you will be born and if you are born you will die. When you understand this you start living your life, you start enjoying every breath that you take on planet earth. Death is the beginning of a new chapter of life.

• Which is the only way to break the birth and death cycle?
• When can we realize the abundance of nature?
• When can we realize the value of something?
• What happens when you belief death is terrifying?
• Are we scared of letting go?

Which is a deep relaxation? ·

• Is death a new beginning?

MATERIALS NEEDED

• 1. Pictures of deer eating grass, the lion eating deer, the hunter catching the lion.
• 2. Glue,
• 3. plain sheet cut into circular format.

PROCEDURE

Encourage the children to stick the pictures in the order of life circle. Stick the pictures in the circular form of deer eating grass, the lion eating deer, the hunter eating lion

INFERENCE

Connect them to the fact that our life is a circle between birth and death

PROCEDURE

Encourage the child to dip the foot in the water and keep the foot print on the outdoor floor and ask each child to observe how it just disappear behind them. They can also observe the friend's footprint disappearing in no time. Ask each child to explain what they understood from this. INFERENCE

Death happens everyday. Everything is unstable, everything is changeable.

Death is truly the mystery of all mysteries. There are only two things that are certain about death. One that we will die at some point in time. The other is that it is uncertain when or how we will die. Everything that is born has to die. That is the nature of life. Beautifully the verse in the Upanishad says of that what ever you think in your last moment, you become that. '

'Thoughtless awareness' is the strongest experience you can have in your life. Even for a single moment, if you find that experience it is enough. Naturally when you leave the body that will come up. That will act as a light and you will be able to move into the consciousness. What exactly happens at the time of leaving the body? This question cannot be answered by a living person as has not experienced death. It cannot be answered by a dead person since he cannot come back to narrate the experience.

Only an enlightened being, a person who has gone through death conscious and come back a new, can exactly explain what happens during death. We do not just have one body. The physical body is just one of the seven bodies we have. It is the only gross body that can be felt and seen in space-time. However we actually have seven layers or bodies or planes of existence. Since these layers have a subtle existence they cannot we seen or felt by ordinary person Each of the bodies holds a corresponding emotions. Seven bodies are physical body, pranic body, mental body, etheric body causual body, cosmic body and nirvanic body.

Pranic body-holds the desires that arise in life. Mental body-holds all the feelings of guilt experience in life. Etheric body-Holds the experiences of mental pain felt in life.

When the spirit leaves the body it crosses all the seven body layers. The physical body dies, but the remaining six bodies do not totally do.

If you are holding a lot of desires in you life all those unfulfilled desire are held in the pranic body. So even the physical body dies the pranic body does not die. Somehow, you manage to move away from the pranic body, and enter next into the mental body. When you enter into the mental body all your guilt raises.

The way in which we want to live is desire, and the way in which we wanted to live but didn't is guilt when the desire, guilt and pain are less intense, you not only have an easy death with less suffering but you also age gracefully. Guilt is about the past and desire is about the future.

Happiness comes from an external object or reason. If you feel happy when you get to eat your favorite candy, you feel that the candy is the cause of your happiness. But it is not to be. you will hate your favorite candy if you are forced to eat the candy one after other continuously.

Happiness is temporary feeling created by the mind. Bliss the seven bodies, is the true reality. It is the causeless, unending happening inside you of spontaneous energy, joy and suspicious.