The End… or The Beginning?

Dr. Rajesh Bhola
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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