Death Is a Living Process

The Mate Moce Guide to Serving the Dying

A practical resource for practitioners of Adidam, based on the Reality-Teaching of His Divine Presence, Avatar Adi Da Samraj.

Prepared by the staff of Mate Moce, the Death and Dying Ministry of Adidam, this guide is offered as a practical companion-volume to Avatar Adi Da’s “Source-Text” Easy Death—which presents Avatar Adi Da’s Instruction on the process of death and dying, based in His unique experience and Transcendental Spiritual Revelation.

This guide focuses on the more practical dimensions of serving the death transition, including the intensive period leading up to death and the three-day vigil of service to the deceased that follows, which Avatar Adi Da has recommended for all His devotees. Also described are special considerations in serving the death transition of any individual in a manner that respects his or her beliefs and maximally serves the process of release.

“Death is all over the daily news. Through television, magazines, and now the internet, we are constantly confronted with a growing display of horrible and sudden endings due to accidents, war, and natural disasters. However, in our otherwise death-denying consumer society, we rarely see, face-to-face, the people who are dying each day-even those who die of old age and terminal disease. They die in hospitals, secluded and antiseptic, or their bodies are whisked off to the morgue or the funeral home. Perhaps, if a body is to be viewed, it is embalmed and made to look as if only asleep—a vision referred to as the “memory image” in the funeral industry. Family and friends generally have permission to participate more in their own feelings of loss than in the process the dying person is experiencing in and after death.

“Avatar Adi Da Samraj has shown us that actively serving those who are dying is a tremendous honor and responsibility. It is not only a service to the dying person-for the process of release, and for the sake of a most auspicious transition into the next moment of experience—but it is a service to ourselves, in that it counters the grief of apparent loss with the continued obligation to maintain relationship to one who has died. The process can also strengthen our seriousness about the nature of this world, and our response to Avatar Adi Da’s Call to real Spiritual practice.”

—from the introduction

Contents:

Part One discusses what to do when a devotee of Adi Da Samraj learns that he or she has a terminal illness-the orientation of retreat and intensifying the release of body-mind identification, and the practical, legal, and other preparations to account for.

Part Two focuses on the actual death transition-both the intensive period (of whatever length) leading up to death and the minutes and hours immediately following “clinical death”.

Part Three covers the three-day vigil of service to the deceased that Avatar Adi Da has recommended for all His devotees, and includes an address to grieving.

Part Four describes special considerations relative to serving the death transition of someone who is not a devotee of Avatar Adi Da, including respecting his or her beliefs and maximally serving the process of release.

Part Five focuses on concerns specific to the death of a child or a child’s loved one.

Part Six gives a summary about serving the death of animals.

The guide also includes a number of practical appendices that provide supplementary instruction and forms otherwise mentioned in this guide.