Ram Dass:

Imagine recognising that in yourself — and then living your life. Just imagine: resting in no-time, and dancing in time. That’s what’s available to us — it’s who we can be.

A human life is an experiment in planes of consciousness. Incarnation tests our ability to remember who we are, to remember that we’re also souls and that we don’t have to get so caught up in the story line we’re living out.

The game, as I see it, is ultimately to become one with Awareness — to just be, without any defining boundaries, without any conceptual structures. And the conceptual structure that’s hardest to shed is the “I” — meaning “somebody separate from everything else.” The age-stage is a time when the ego faces a gradual erosion of its boundaries, of its image that “this is who I am.” The soul looks to the age-stage as coincidental with a process in which the soul itself is dissolving its own boundaries, and expanding into its own greater identity as pure spirit. And death? A moment when the veils part, the ego falls away, and the soul lets go of all the encrusted layers of identity, with a sigh of relief.

What I understand from Eastern traditions is that if, at the moment of death, I am identified exclusively with ego, I am likely to be overwhelmed by my fear of the cessation of my own existence as a separate being. Because the ego will die. If, however, I have developed some soul-perspective, I will have a better chance of remaining quietly conscious through it all: watching my ego dissolving, watching the body dropping away. At that point, whatever in me that is left uncooked will steer me towards my next incarnation in order to continue my karmic work. — Beliefnet.com, concluded