Life after Death

It occurs to me that people are keenly interested to know, “After death, what?” There are very few who are interested in knowing what we are now.

            What we are now, we can see and experience, and, therefore,  we are  not keenly interested to know about it, but a thing  that we  cannot see or experience we are keenly interested in and anxious to know about it.

            When we are told about what we are now, why we are unhappy, unlike our forefathers, why we have cultivated bad habits, wrong intentions and devilish tendencies, and how we must improve ourselves so that we can bring more happiness to ourselves and others it is found that very few are keen to listen and learn. But when something is told about what is there after death, many show their anxiety to know.

            It is not so important to know what is there after death, as to know what we are now, what is our present life, how to bring peace and happiness in the society. But these are modern times, wherein people think that they are intellectually evolved! Therefore, this question arises in each individual, “What after death?”

            Before entering into the subject we must first analyse these: what is life? What is death? Death of whom?

Life to a materialist

                To the materialist, life is an illogical and meaningless procession from womb to tomb-nothing to be improved and no goal to be reached. To them, life started as an accident at birth and ends in the same way at c a certain point called ‘death’. To them, each individual is an arrow that came from darkness into life to fly across towards the darkness again. To them, life is to eat, drink and make merry while living, for there is nothing before birth and much less beyond the grave. The law of their life is to kill, loot, steal and make merry.

            As Shakespeare said, after death there is nothing, as no one, once dead, comes back to tell us his experience. If after death anyone had come back and talked to us of his experience we would have believed that there was something after death. As no one has ever come back to tell us of his experience, we believe, nay, we are sure, that there is nothing after death.

Life to a Spiritual Person

                To the spiritual person, life is a continuous process with a great purpose and a glorious pattern, a right logic and a good meaning. The life which we are living  today  is an effect and since every effect must have a cause, our lives must have their independent causes even though those causes are not visible to us today. Therefore, their law of life is :”Thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not loot, thou shalt not steal, for thou shalt  suffer later.” Sow a wind, and you must be ready to reap a whirl-wing. Hence they cry, “live up to  certain higher values of life, such as tolerance, love, kindness and mercy.”

What is life?

                Life is a continuous flow of experiences. A successful life is that in which a person has a good number of successful and happy experiences, and a life of failure has a lot of sorrowful experiences.

            When we say we are alive, we mean that we receive sense stimuli and respond to them. When any person or individual stops receiving the stimuli or stops responding to the stimuli, we say it/he/she is dead. The father is lying in the bed, The son calls, “Daddy, Daddy…” but the father does not respond, for he has not received the call. Therefore, we say the man is dead.

            Now, analyse please. Who is dead? We find that when any body is dead the physical body is lying there. No part of the body has gone. The same body is lying there which was lying there before the death. When we ask who is dead, it is said “Mr X”. we find that the mind and intellect which was receiving  the stimuli and was responding to them has left the body. He cannot be the body, because it is lying  there, even after death. Hence we conclude that ‘I’ or ‘me’ is other than the body. Though the physical body is lying there, the mind and intellect have left it.

            The physical body is made of five elements- space, air, fire, water and earth. It is the nature of the physical body to merge back with the same five elements when it is dead, meaning  when the mind-intellect has left it.

            So, I am not the body. I am the possessor of the body. I am the dweller in the body. Body is just like the tenement for which I pay rent in the form of food, three to four times a day. If  I forget to pay the rent, you can imagine what a tragedy I will have to meet with. Therefore, the body is an instrument through which I express in the worlds outside. If my car is destroyed, why should I think that I am destroyed? I am not the car; I am only the owner of the car. Similarly, if the body is destroyed, I am not destroyed.

            I am other than the body. I am the owner of the body. Eyes, nose, ears, tongue and other organs are only my instruments through which I receive the stimuli.

            Therefore, it is the mind-intellect which is the real individuality of the man. When we say we must develop the personality, we mean that the mind and intellect are to be developed. A cultured or civilized man is he who has a sharp and wise mind and intellect. Due to our unintelligent way of thinking, we do not look beyond the body. When a person looks at his beloved and sees only the fair skin, and not the thoughts and ideas within, it not true love. Real love goes far being the body – to the emotions and thoughts of the loved one.

Fear of Death

            From the beginning of the world till today, people have been born, they have died; our parents were born , some of them are dead, and some of them are in the process of leaving the world. We are born; we will die one day, yielding place to our children. This is the pilgrimage which everyone is familiar with. Our forefathers became fertilizers for the fruits which we eat, and the day will come when we will be the fertilizers for the fruits that our children will eat. This caravan of life goes on forever. No one can stop it. One may not like the idea of dying, but in course of time, a hopeful dawn will turn treacherous, heralding the parting day, away from the lovely home, the only wife, the only loving son, the pomp and dignity, name and fame, the things fathered by working twenty-four hours of each day, and thirty days of each month and twelve months of each year of one’s whole life-time, by means foul and fair.

            Imagine, if there were no death, and only birth- what a tragedy!  There would be no  space available in the earth  to live. An increase of only a few crores of people has become a headache for the government today. It is a good law of nature that brings death whether we desire it or not. When we  agree that it is good law of nature that death must come, then why should we fear death? It is because we lack correct knowledge of our real nature; unintelligently, we have a distorted relationship with the objects of the world, the relationship that we call attachment.

Attachment

                Sages say that death is very easy and simple. It doe not demand any effort on the part of the dying. It is something like our going from the dining room to the bedroom, they say. If that is so, then why do we  feel so sad about an impending death, which is but going from one body to another?

            It is because we have wrong relationship of attachment with the objects of the world outside, and we feel sorry to leave them behind.  Suppose I am sitting in the dining hall and I tie myself with ropes to the tables, chairs, cupboards, etc. Then, with all these, if I try to leave the dining hall for the bedroom, do I not court discomfort, pain and sorrow?

            Similarly, by sheer ignorance, the individual ties himself with so many objects of the world outside that while leaving this world he feels a certain pain and sorrow. But by correct thinking (detachment) he can cut all the ropes and free himself while leaving this body for another.     

            An officer gets a promotion and is transferred form Bombay to Nasik. Generally, it is good to get a promotion and everybody feels happy. However, in this change of place, from Bombay to Nasik, children are the happiest, because they think of new places to be seen and new fields for play and enjoyment. They have no particular attachment to Bombay, so they don’t feel sorry to leave the city. But the mother is worried. Why? Because she has collected so many things like empty Dalda tins, empty perfume bottles, old clothes etc. and she does not want to part with them; at the same time, it is impossible for her to pack them all up.

            And it is worse for the man, because he does not want to leave the one-room house in which he got married and lived with his one and only beloved wife, the same house where all his children were born, from the  first to the tenth! He does not want to leave the circle of friends that he had surrounded himself with in the office and in the club. Attachment!

            You can see interesting scenes of attachment at railways stations when it is time for the trains to depart. Here a few with \tears rolling on their cheeks, there a few with melancholy faces ands some running  along  with the train, waving their hands an shouting “Write a letter ever day!” All attachment!

Destination Directed by Desire

                When the subtle body takes the pilgrimage from a given physical body to another, we say, “The man is dead.” Each one will continue the journey by going to the places directed by one’s own desires, demands for cravings. Now I am in the lecture hall. Who brought me here from home? It is my desire alone that forced me to come all the way from my house which is very far away from the lecture hall and the same desire has forced me to sit continuously for two hours in one place hearing the lecture. Otherwise it is very difficult to sit in  one place even for half an hour!

            At this moment, the hall is alive with my presence. After the lecture is over, the hall will be dead of my presence. Now the question arises, “Where shall I go – to the cinema hall or the coffee house or back home?” It all depends upon my own desire. As soon as my demand is met with, I leave that place and go to another place where my next predominant desire is to be fulfilled.

            The mind-intellect relationship with the body is something like that of a bird with its nest. The nest is safe as long as the bird visits the nest to feed its young ones. As soon as its purpose to visit the nest is over, it flies away, never thinking of the nest. And without the bird the nest perishes. Similarly, as long as the subtle body is there to exhaust its desires, love and hatred, likes and dislikes, the physical body is safe. No sooner is the purpose of the subtle body over, than it leaves the physical frame. Without the subtle body, the physical body must perish. But you do not perish- you are something other than the body.

            Possessiveness or attachment is due to the identification. In the walking state, you identify yourself with your gross body, and , therefore, you are conscious of your body and feel that the happiness and sorrows of the body are your happiness and your sorrows. But when you have withdrawn your identification from the gross body and have identified with the subtle body, then you are in the dream state. You do not experience the happiness or sorrow of the gross body, but you are happy or unhappy according to the  dream world or experiences created by your mind and intellect. But when you have withdrawn your identification from the gross as well as the subtle body and have identified with your causal body, you are in the deep sleep state and you do not experience any happiness or sorrow of the  gross  or subtle bodies. There you experience undisturbed peace and bliss. However, there you are not conscious of your experience of peace and happiness. When you reach the fourth state of consciousness called Turiya, you have conscious experience of happiness that is your own nature.

            Therefore your fear of death is because of your unintelligent identification of with the gross body, thus gathering the qualities of the body on you Self. Your identification with the bopdy is so deep that you apprehend destruction of yourself wheever uyou think of the death of the body.

*This article is by Swami Chinmayananda, founder of Chinmaya Mission.