Dr. Rajesh Bhola
India
Feb 14, 2014
India
Feb 14, 2014
A
spiritual person who is pleasant in every way and is making all efforts
to attain Nirvana - by meditating, praying, prostrating, reciting,
making offerings, performing acts of charity, leading a life of purity
and righteousness, and regarded by all as a saintly being - is an
exceptional person. Even such a person, however, cannot escape Death.
Howsoever we may grow vertically, we all meet the same horizontal fate.
Why must all things die? In the schools of Indian and other Eastern
cultures, mental phenomena in one lifetime give rise to physical
phenomena in a subsequent life; as per this view, we suffer physical
birth, disease and death in this life because of our desires, craving
and attachment in our previous lives. This interpretation is thus
indissolubly linked to the idea of rebirth. It culminates in the idea
that the end of craving leads to the end of the circle of rebirths.
The
rich and the poor alike meet the same end; the black and the white both
go to the grave; the powerful and the humble all leave this planet
eventually. Death remains a grand mystery, despite the fact that science
and medicine have made invaluable contributions in the past four to
five decades, especially in improving the quality of life. Every major
religion, philosophy and spiritual train of thought has sought to
explain this mystery of Death. It is a subject that touches the life of
every man and woman, uniting the entire human race under a cloud of
inevitable mortality. Scientific research into single-celled organisms
reveals that the nature of life, at a cellular level, does not
automatically include a self-destruct mechanism (or Death). In other words, it appears that Death is an ‘unnatural’ part of life. Yet, everything on Earth eventually dies.
Many religious thoughts simply accept the inevitability of Death, and
instead proclaim that better alternatives await the faithful in the
afterlife. These ideas bring comfort to many people who have lost their
loved ones or are facing death themselves - but they leave others
wondering why Death must exist at all. We have tried to turn even
religion into a bulwark against reality, when its real function is to
help us live authentically. The question of the nature of Death also has
profound implications about the nature of God. Maybe God numbs our
sensibilities after Death, if we are good; maybe, if living a bad life
truly results in eternal torment afterwards, God is not really as loving
as many people claim; maybe there are many pathways to God, or many
Gods, and the mystery of Death will be solved differently for each
person - depending on his/her philosophy of life; maybe there is no such
thing as Death, and there is instead a continual rebirth through
reincarnation; maybe life is nothing more than a biochemical accident,
and Death brings with it a never-ending state of nothingness - in this
view there is no God at all. The mystery of Death is so profound that,
despite the millennia of religious doctrine, mythology, scientific
research and the many theories and explanations that exist on the
subject, the riddle remains unanswered. Even within individual religious
groups there is often a stark difference of opinion on the nature of
Death; just walk around a cemetery and note the different inscriptions
on the tombstones. Clearly the only way to decipher this profound
mystery is to find an authoritative source of truth that will expose the
mystery and remove the confusion.
Death is a horizon towards which all march, and beyond which all must go.
There are two sides of Death - the side that concerns those still
living in their bodies and the side that concerns those who have passed
beyond the horizon. All we know is, that which was present, visible and
cognizable, is no longer so. All the rest is guesswork - whether we call
it revelation, hope, doubt or materialism. If we are to get closer to
the real mystery of Death, we shall have to adopt a completely different
concept. The subjects of Death and religion are inherently linked.
If something does await us after we die, a supernatural being like a
God must be involved. It stands to reason, then, that we should look to
religious texts for information about Death. However, there is a diverse
array of religious doctrines on the subject. For example, the Buddhist
texts contain many spiritual insights, but Buddha himself never claimed
to be God - or to speak on God’s behalf. Thus the insights contained
therein are the Buddha’s, not God’s. So it is very difficult to have a
definite idea of any afterlife. Atheists and agnostics have their own way of resolving the mystery of Death.
They view this life as made up of simple matter - in spite of its
countless states and conditions. In their view, matter is universal,
permanent and immutable; it only changes form – to either solid, liquid
or gas. They believe that we are all made up of matter, come out of
matter, exist in matter and, when ‘dissolved’, return to matter. There
is no time, spot, sphere or focus - physical or metaphysical - where
this force (of matter) is not present and in manifestation. In the same
manner, we cannot imagine a time, spot, sphere, or focus - physical or
metaphysical - where (natural) laws do not work (where a metaphysical
apple falls up instead of down or where we plant an apple and reap a
mango). This matter, force, energy, or the laws, is eternal, immutable,
omnipresent and always active. Behind each there is intelligence –
leading to life. Life – not Death - is therefore the eternal fact.
Death is but an incidence in this continuum of life. In this view, there
is but one life. Everything that is, was and shall be, is eternally and
fundamentally nothing more and nothing less than an indivisible
fractionalization - a ray from, and one with, the one life. In fact,
Death is the only natural thing in the unnatural existence that we live.
The Buddhists recognized that Death is even more natural than birth,
and reserved the colour black to signify mourning at birth, and white -
with garlands of flowers - to symbolize the release of those they loved.
However, If Death is a natural phenomenon, it must be susceptible to
reasonable interpretation and understanding. Yet, to the majority of
religionists, scientists and philosophers, Death has eternally been a
mystery.
To
believe that a man is extinct because he is out of sight is to say two
things: that his existence depends on our seeing him, and that his
existence depends on bodily form - its continuity and coherence. Neither
of these premises may be true. On this basis, every single thing that
passes beyond our angle of vision or that we cease to look at, is Dead.
This makes us perceive that any reality lies only in our consciousness
of it. So, the real anguish, when a loved one is taken from us by Death,
is caused by the fact that we associate invisibility with annihilation.
Yet, in reality, the person’s existence for us has only transformed,
from regions physical and corporeal to regions metaphysical and formless
- for he lives on in our memory, and in our love and anguish. What we
can be sure of is that Death will indeed ‘arrive’. Perhaps one day we
may establish whether we do survive Death as distinct entities. Today,
the grand mystery of Death cannot be unravelled to us even a moment
sooner than when we pass from this lifetime into the eternal one. So,
till the time we are Alive, let us reach out to one another in a noble
and constructive manner…and let Death come as it will.
Dr.
Rajesh Bhola is President of Spastic Society of Gurgaon and is working
for the cause of children with autism, cerebral palsy, mental
retardation and multiple disabilities for more than 25 years. He can be
contacted at rabhola@yahoo.com
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