Life is nothing but a movement of our understanding from one experience to another. This movement happens in space and is governed by time. As long as we go along with the flow, everything is fine. When we get stuck with experiences that we like and detest those that we don’t then there is trouble. Maharshi Patanjali says the fifth impurity of the mind called klesha is clinging on to life—Abhinivesha.
The desire to clinge on to life exists in all creatures—a plant, an animal or a human being. Nobody wants to die so easily. Even an animal, when chased by a predator, runs for its life and goes through tremendous fear when captured, as long as there is life in the body. Research shows that even plants are sensitive and get agitated when someone approaches them with an intention to harm.
Maharshi Patanjali says that this fear is a quality of the very life force itself and even learned people are not spared from it. A klesha is an impurity or a false notion of the mind. Clinging on to life is a falsity because it is a thought based on a primary untruth that life exists as a fraction in an individual. While primarily we cling on to life in opposition to fear of death which is an inevitable one-time event in our lives, on a daily basis we do not want to lose out on anything that we like—loved ones, property, name, fame, material possessions, beauty, good looks, knowledge or happy experiences. Life flows through us with its own force and power and we do not have anything to do with it, alter it, lengthen or shorten it. Particularly what we consider as our life has a habit of preserving itself.
Even the learned and the wise who have imbibed the non-duality of existence are not exempt from this fear. This fear of loss of life, loved ones, property and material possessions, name or fame, all born out of the primary delusion of Dwaita—two-ness—or a separate existence, is unwarranted. It is a klesha or an impurity which is a hindrance in the path of self-realisation. Practice of Kriya Yoga —Tapas, Swadhyaya and Ishwara Pranidhana helps remove this impurity of the struggle to preserve and protect what doesn’t belong to you in the first place. Life doesn’t belong to you or me. Nothing can be done to retain it even for a second. When this truth is realised—life becomes easy in the face of difficulties, ill-health, breaking of relationships, change and movement from one place to another, one stage of life to another or one experience to another. Clinging to life is the most difficult of mental blocks. ‘Let go’ are two words that are easier said than practised.
(www.vignanabhairavatantra.blogspot.com)