On Mount Athos, carved above the gateway of St. Paul’s Monastery in Greece, is one of the most powerful and profound sentences ever written in the history of human civilization. The inscription reveals genius at the highest level. Using just thirteen words, it provides the secret to life on earth:
“If you die before you die, then you won’t die when you die.”
Scholars believe the origin of this quotation derives from exclusive rituals that were held in Ancient Greece called the Eleusinian Mysteries. Beginning around 1600 BCE, these sacred religious rites took place at the Sanctuary of Eleusis near Athens for almost 2,000 years. Some of the most notable participants included Aeschylus, Sophocles, Plato, Augustus, Plutarch, Hadrian, Marcus Aurelius and Cicero.
With heavy hitters of this caliber showing up, we can safely assume something quite meaningful must have been occurring at the Eleusinian Mysteries. However, every single participant had to take a vow of secrecy before admission was granted, so there are no recorded accounts of what exactly transpired. Researchers have been debating this question endlessly.
What we do know is that the rituals lasted about 23 days and involved fasting, marching, chanting and sleep deprivation. All participants had to consume a secret drink called kykeon. The ingredients of this ceremonial drink remain a mystery, but some scholars believe it included a hallucinogen. Others consider it heresy to suggest such an idea.
I, for one, don’t care whether psychedelics were a part of the Eleusinian Mysteries. In fact, I don’t really care what exactly happened at these rituals. It might be fun to know from an intellectual perspective, but from a spiritual perspective it is irrelevant. The quotation carved on the gateway of St. Paul’s Monastery tells us everything we need to know.
All of the insights granted to Plato, Sophocles, Cicero and the other participants are readily available to us right now, merely by comprehending this one quotation. Of course, there is a catch. To be able to comprehend it, at least at the level intended, we first have to see clearly that our impending death is the greatest gift we will ever receive.
Almost everyone can see clearly what a gift it is to be granted life. We sometimes take our lives for granted—that’s true. But when our fragility reveals itself, when an event comes up that threatens to extinguish our lives, the clarity comes rushing back. We remember how urgently we want to keep living. We recognize the miracle of our mind, thought and consciousness.
What we rarely stop to think about, however, is that our mortality is what gives our lives value and meaning. Without the constant threat of death lurking in the background, we would lose our appreciation of the preciousness of life. We would lose our drive to accomplish goals in a timely manner. We would lose our desire to grow. And most importantly, we would lose our desire to glimpse beyond death, beyond self, and beyond ego.
It’s not hard to conclude from this thought experiment that our impending death is a gift. But an intellectual understanding is not sufficient. To be granted the revelation that the participants of the Eleusinian Mysteries received, we need to feel this truth with every fiber of our being. We need to feel the immensity of the gift of mortality at a visceral level.
Why is feeling it at a visceral level so critical? Because the revelation requires dropping our fear of death 100%. Not just with our minds, but with our bodies, hearts and souls too. The only way to cease fearing death 100% is to feel its awesome beauty, to be awestruck by its design, to bow down to the brilliance of its embodiment in our lives.
If we can do this, then the revelation follows without any effort. Because if we can truly cease to fear death 100%, then we become able to live right now with a kind of presence that is otherwise impossible. We become able take extraordinary chances, step far outside of our comfort zones and transform ourselves into greater and greater beings.
In essence, if we cease to fear death 100%, then we become absolutely okay with dying right now. And if we’re absolutely okay with dying right now, then we become absolutely okay with seeing the truth of what is without distortion. And if we’re absolutely okay with seeing the truth of what is without distortion, then we become absolutely okay with letting go of our attachment to our egos. And if we’re absolutely okay with letting go of our attachment to our egos, then we never actually die.
That’s the revelation. Because who we are, who we really are at the deepest level, has nothing to do with our egos or our bodies or our minds or our thoughts. Those are all just constructs. None of them are real. The constructs will die, yes, that’s for sure. But what underlies them is simply consciousness. And consciousness is simply pure love. And pure love lives forever and ever and ever.
So now you are on an even playing field with Aeschylus, Sophocles, Plato, Augustus, Plutarch, Hadrian, Marcus Aurelius and Cicero. Now you know exactly what they learned at the Eleusinian Mysteries. If you die before you die, then you won’t die when you die.
But I’m guessing you’re not entirely persuaded. We unpacked that all way too fast, right? So let’s break down the quotation a bit more to marinate in its immense power. Let’s take a look at a real world example—one drawn from my personal life.
I used to suffer from serious panic attacks when I flew on airplanes. Just walking down the jetway to get on a plane was a huge ordeal for me. Sometimes, I would end up pacing around and around in the terminal for an hour just to build up the courage to board.
That was only the beginning of my problem. Once the plane took off, my mind would start racing with negative thoughts that kept spiraling downward. I’d find myself contemplating the insanity of being in a tiny metal fuselage hurtling through the atmosphere.
The more I thought about it, the more I kept fixating on the fact that I felt out of control. I was in the hands of the pilot, the air traffic controllers, the mechanics who serviced the plane, the weather, and all kinds of other factors over which I had no influence.
By the time we reached cruising altitude, I would be completely unhinged. Nothing seemed to be able to settle me down, no matter how much I tried. All I could think about was how badly I wanted to get off the plane.
Once I reached that stage, I’d be convinced I couldn’t hold myself together any longer. I’d start to seriously entertain the prospect of smashing a window so that I could eject myself mid air. I know it sounds crazy, but I would get myself into such a state that leaping out of the plane actually seemed like a sensible idea.
Luckily, there was one tiny piece of me that knew better than to act on the urge. So I’d white knuckle it the whole rest of the flight. I’d be so terrified, I can barely put it into words.
The closest I can come to describing it is that I felt like I was on the precipice of death for all eternity. Imagine if you woke up to discover you were bound to a chair bolted to the ground in the middle of a one lane highway and a bus was headed straight for you going 90 miles an hour. Now imagine time standing still so that the experience persisted indefinitely, instead of lasting for just for an instant.
I remained in this heightened state of terror all the way until the plane landed, which in some cases was hours. Hours of absolute terror. You would think I would have stopped flying altogether, given this response. But the crazy thing is that I always erased from my mind how bad it had been until just before boarding a plane again. Then the whole cycle would start over.
Finally, I reached a breaking point. I was on a plane from Los Angeles to New Zealand, which was a hideous 13 hour flight. Why on earth I would do this to myself, I have no idea. After less than an hour in the air, I was already wanting to smash a window and leap out of the plane.
Realizing that I was going to have to dwell in complete terror for another 12+ hours was beyond my tolerance threshold. I started frantically scanning the faces of the people around me, thinking I might be able to convince one of them to take pity on me and somehow rescue me from my living hell.
I was so desperate, I would have reached out and held a hand, anybody’s hand, if someone had been willing, but there wasn’t anybody. All the passengers around me were fast asleep and there were no flight attendants to be seen.
That was when it became crystal clear. I just didn’t see any way that I would be able to make it. Try as I might, I could not figure out how to handle the thoughts spinning wildly inside my head. They were just so out of control, beyond anything I’d ever experienced.
Since I couldn’t see any alternative, I did the only other thing I could do. I simply surrendered. I simply gave up all my agency and handed it over to a higher power. I didn’t feel I had a single other choice. I was at the end of the road. I simply accepted the fact that I was going to die. I’m not exaggerating in the least. I really truly accepted that I was going to die on that flight to New Zealand.
And then a miraculous thing happened. I realized if I was going to go that far, I might as well go all the way. I didn’t just accept my death. I decided I might as well embrace my death. Because if this was how I was going to go down, what the hell, I might as well lean into it all the way.
I remember saying to myself, “Okay, I don’t really know for sure if I’m dying right now or not, but I do know for sure I will be dying at some point. So why not learn as much as I can from this experience? Why not be grateful that I’m going through this experience. Whether I die now or at some point in the future, why not use this experience as preparation? Because I want to face reality. I want to know death. So bring it on. Bring it on!”
Well, guess what? Literally, the very instant I changed the way I was thinking about the experience, the very instant I embraced death, the panic attack inside my head immediately subsided. It simply went to zero. I felt completely fine. I wasn’t scared in the least.
“If you die before you die, then you won’t die when you die.”
In other words, I became living proof that the quotation is true. As soon as I ceased to fear death 100%, I became okay with dying right now. And as soon as I became okay with dying right now, I became okay with seeing the truth of what is. And as soon as I became okay with seeing the truth of what is, then I became okay with letting go of my attachment to my ego.
Because that’s what was driving the whole show. I was attached to my ego. That’s why I was so afraid of flying. My ego was totally flipping out that it wasn’t feeling in control of the situation. Of course, the hilarious thing is that it never had been in control and neither had any other part of me. My ego was making up a fear about something that didn’t even exist and never would!
That’s what’s so incredibly amazing and powerful about the quotation. It’s not the comfort that you won’t die when you die that makes it powerful. What makes it powerful is that it provides continuous ongoing proof that you’re okay right now exactly as things are. You’re always okay exactly as things are and you always will be. No matter what form you are in, no matter what stage of existence you are in, you are okay.
And that’s why you never actually die. Because you’re always okay exactly as things are and you always will be. Thank you, Eleusinian Mysteries! Thank you!