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.
