There is one real birth and one real death. You are born once and you really die only once.

What is the real birth?

It is the birth of a "drop" in the Ocean of Reality.

What is meant by the birth of a "drop" in the Ocean of Reality? It is the advent of individuality, born of indivisibility through a glimmer of the first most-finite consciousness, which transfixed cognizance of limitation into the Unlimited.

What is meant by the real death?

It is consciousness getting free of all limitations. Freedom from all limitations is real death; it is really the death of all limitations; it is liberation. In between the real birth and the real death, there is no such reality as the so-called births and death.

What really happens in the intermediate stage known as births and deaths is that the limitations of consciousness gradually wear off till it (consciousness) is free of all limitations. Ultimately, consciousness, totally free of all limitations, experiences the unlimited Reality eternally. Real dying is equal to real living. Therefore I stress: Die for God and you will live as God.

THE PATH OF LOVE, pp. 76-77
1986 © Avatar Meher Baba Perpetual Public Charitable Trust