ABSTRACT
Rather than one substance (God) or two ontological things (Purusha-Prakriti), Sikh teachings state there is One Process that operates through two major forms of becoming: the “visible” and the “invisible.” The visible assumes Time/Death-as-world; the invisible assumes Time/Death-as-Word. Seeing their conjunction reveals that death of the physical body is actually illusory, because true death is that of the ego-mind; a body that dies is merely reborn, an ego-mind that dies awakens never to be born again. Here, just as the Timeless (Akaal) lives within time (Kaal), so too can the deathless be lived within this life. The goal of “being-dead-while-yet-a-live” refers to a creative subjectivity, for being dead (to the world) but alive (to the Word) yields a non-egoic speechless-speech (akath-katha). This chapter discusses how the ego-mind is reversed and re-formed to achieve this death-in-life flow of awakened consciousness. Normally death kills you, but here you kill death.
