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the opportunity of a whole lifetime. With this opportunity an effort can be made towards awakening. So, it will be a great mistake if someone keeps waiting until the moment of death to awaken. You can't awaken at the time of death. The sadhana, the journey towards awakening, will have to begin long before death; a preparation will have to be made for it. Without preparation one is sure to remain unconscious in death. Although, in a way, this unconscious state is for your own good if you are not yet ready to be born in a conscious state.
Around 1915, the ruler of Kashi had an abdominal operation. This was the first such operation ever performed in the world without the use of anesthesia. There were three British physicians who refused to perform the operation without giving anesthesia, saying it was impossible to have a man's stomach open for one-and-a-half to two hours during a major operation without making the patient unconscious. It was dangerous -- the danger was that the patient might scream, move, jump or fall because of the unbearable pain; anything might happen. Hence the doctors were not ready.
But the ruler maintained there was no cause for concern as long as he remained in meditation and said he could easily remain in meditation for one-and-a-half to two hours. He was not willing to take the anesthetic; he said he wished to be operated upon in his conscious state. But the physicians were reluctant; they believed it was dangerous to have someone go through such pain in a conscious state. However, seeing no other alternative, the physicians first asked him, as an experiment, to go into meditation. Then they made a cut in his hand -- there was not even a tremor. Only two hours later did he complain that his hand hurt; he did not feel anything for two hours. Subsequently, the operation was performed.
That was the first operation to be performed in the world where physicians worked on a patient's open stomach for an hour-and-a-half without giving anesthetic. And the ruler remained fully conscious throughout the operation. Deep meditation is required to be in such awareness. The meditation has to be so deep as to make one totally aware,
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