I am no authority to speak on death as I am still alive and writing this blog on death. Ok, Jokes apart, Death is an inevitable phenomenon in our life that is taboo to speak on and I would like to share my thoughts and near-death experiences on it. Death and Life may seem like opposite polarities but they are intrinsically connected. In India, we have many schools of thought like Advaita Vedanta, Shaivism, Tantra, and much more to name a few. Each religion of the world has tried to explain death in its own terminology.
Now, what is death? When a living organism doesn’t move as it was first moving a.k.a the animating principle is vanished, the organism is declared dead. We are seeing and observing death all over our vicinity. For example, the snake eating the rat, two lions fighting till death, or if I am allowed to write in a complex manner that the living sprouts come out of the dead seed. Does the seed have to die to give life to a new sprouting plant?
Why do we fear death? Actually, we don’t fear death as we all know that it’s an unknown leap into infinity. What we actually fear is the loss of the known faculties. Known faculties being our money, our possessions, our family and friends, and other aspects of our life. Now, why don’t we want to die? Because all our empires will be demolished. Now anybody who has dodged the dagger of death will fall into its lap one day or another. If we investigate upon ourselves, our body cells are dying each minute with the regeneration of new ones. Our body cells are in a process. Even our breath has to leave for a few seconds from our body so that a new one can enter. There is the death of breath and aliveness of breath. Now we talked about the flesh body and the pranic body. Now we are also in our mental body. Our thoughts, emotions, perceptions, beliefs, feelings, and much more incomprehensible contents of the mind are in constant flux. Our thoughts come alive and go dead or vanish in unfathomable time frames. The same applies to every other aspect of the mind. Now it may seem like life and death are happening simultaneously. Now if we think with full momentum about death and mortality, we really cannot think about it. Because death is not a stoppage but a continuum. In India, Hinduism and Buddhism believe in reincarnations. That means when one life form ends, it is transformed into a new life form. Hinduism believes in Atman or the soul while Buddhist believes in anatta or ‘No self’. Now when we see a dead body, only the animating principle is not present and so it is declared dead.
As I grew fond of idol worshipping of Lord Dattatreya to currently fond of worshipping lord Mahakala (lord shiva’s form of the ruler of time), and from there, my daily living experience changed a lot. I somehow experience micro deaths from time to time as I carry out my daily routine. See if we can get a little complicated here. First, the ancient seers and yogis knew the secret of the universe and they downloaded it into their very minds (from akashic records). They came up with a term or you can call it a device named moksha or liberation. Hindu cosmic theory consists of four yugas. So these yugas are manifesting linearly as well as non-linearly at the same time. Yes, it may seem like a paradox but I will try my best to explain this. Four yugas consist of satya yuga, treta yuga, dwapar yuga and kali yuga(currently going on). So let’s investigate further into this. Each particular yuga has three other latent yugas embedded microcosmly in them. For let’s take a simple example. A universe is a defined space-time combination with limits attached to them. A simple atom behaves like a micro-universe. A simple human being with its complexity behaves like a micro-universe. So for each person, according to his perceptions, he creates a universe of his own. He projects a specific universe with his private lens of senses and perception, creating a personal universe out of this infinite cosmic eternal universe. The yuga cosmology was developed by the seers so that we can maintain our karmic bondages to carry out our appropriate individual function and play our part in this world. If there is a village where all people adhere to the conduct of truth and purity (Satya Yuga), then that specific area has been initiating a small form of Satya-yuga in that specific space-time dimensions and that micro Satya-yuga is embedded in the macro kali-yuga. Similarly, where chants of Radhe-Krishna are going on, that specific dimension colours itself of a micro dwapar-yuga in macro kali-yuga. So the creation, sustenance, and transformation are going on endlessly and simultaneously. It is described linearly in the ancient philosophical texts because the mind cannot put together the thought of simultaneous eternal creation. The mind self-destructs when it touches the dimension of Brahmic consciousness(brahman is known as the ultimate non-dual reality in Advaita Vedanta). The brahman consumes the mind by bringing it to its natural state. So instead of saying that the god of death is lord shiva, he is a transformer. We can say that the transformer is energy-matter. The human form undergoes a transformation as it is mentioned in Bhagavad Gita where Krishna says to Arjun that the atman just changes the body as one changes his clothes or garments and puts on a new one. So the Atman( the true self of a living being) is never killed or can’t be slain.
So these were my thoughts. I hope you can understand this and become fearless when the taboo of death arises in your mind.