Death….Something that has puzzled man for centuries….Saadhus, doctors, and metaphysicists have worried over this particular aspect of human life (smirk..) for years without being able to satisfy even the tiniest majority of people…Why…The eternal war …Faith versus Proof….Practicality versus spiritualism…Religion versus science…
Dr MacDougall even weighed the human body just before and after death, after calculating the weight loss rate due to respiration and other moisture loss…and was convinced that the body mass reduces instantaneously by ¾th of an ounce on death….The soul you say….or maybe a super accelerated loss of moisture at death….Who can say for sure….
It has always been an issue as to what happens to a person after death. Do we pass on to some other world or dimension or sphere of existence…or do we just shut off like a toy after it’s batteries have been removed…Logically it amounts to the same thing….A toy robot ceases to work because some part stops functioning…Human beings die because their heart or brain or liver or any other essential body part stops functioning…But no…we refuse to believe that our death is as mundane an event as a short circuiting in an electrical circuit….and why not….Spiritually….emotionally and intellectually we are superior to any of our creations….so where does all that go …our ideas, our love, our feelings, our opinions ..Where does it go….Where does the robot’s programming go….Nowhere….it is still there …only it has no manifestation….no observable effect ….so it ceases to exist……Is that a suitable explanation…..Does everything that we did, felt, dreamed still remain…..just in a way that cannot be seen or heard or understood…..
However logical one sounds….there will be always that regret and that disbelief …We can’t accept that there will be no paradise for us and no purgatory for all the sinners in this world…We cannot believe that all our good doing was for nothing…all of it will cease to exist…..But then again, I remember reading somewhere that all of our karma revisits us in this life itself…that we must pay for our sins and reap the benefits of our good doing in this life itself then logically what is the need for a heaven and a hell if everyone is going to be on an equal standing after death….We all wish that there is something to work for beyond this life this existence…something beyond our understanding ..We fear and sometimes hope that we will be judged in the future….to compensate for our trusting natures….for the times we were conned and hurt by people with malicious intent….We want them to be judged…we want the terrorists who kill on the grounds of religion to be upbraided by He in whose name they committed so many crimes and destroyed so many people…..sounds like all of us are a highly sadistic race…huh…..Well…not really…..we wish to see punishment dealt where a wrongdoing has been done…We are impractical emotional fools…..
Fools…..not really….When there is an injured dog in a hunting pack, he is killed by the other dogs in the pack as he would have eaten food that could be eaten by another and yet not hunted as ably as he once could…but we humans…..we cry ….we support the old till the very end, trying to prolong the time we can spend with them….We are anything but practical…It is so very obvious that the very fact that we are living proves and justifies our death…Just like a ball going up and coming down….light and dark ….summer and winter……Good and bad….life and death…The balance… If something exists so must it’s opposite…..Yet death in human terms holds a lot of meaning…No one speaks ill about a dead bully….The most stingy and shrewish relative or friend is praised at death……Death glorifies a person…we find it sacrilege to speak ill of one who is dead …..we feel ….that he has suffered enough….
And yes….that is why we are human……the behavior of animals put down to instinct and not practicality, so it seems, to justify our departure from the logical…..
PS: Yes…I know none of this is funny….but hey….I had a senior moment….
PPS:Some people got the impression that i scoff at this impracticality that humans show at the death of a loved one... but the fact is...i adore it....I feel warm on the inside ..and this may sound cheesy but yeah...i love humankind because of it...
Some very deep and intense thoughts there Sumedh. I guess the topic you've written about is something all of us try to figure out for ourselves at some point of time or the other in our lives. It's so difficult to understand coz no one really knows where we will finally land up after we die; and yet every single human being always wonders aboout it..........
ReplyDeleteOne great thing I've observed about your writing is that it shows how well read you are. All the many things you've taken in thru' your reading over the years is somehow very evident in what you write. In my English Lit. class in college, I'd once studied this Literary Theory. I think it was by Aristotle, if I remember correctly. It spoke about how nothing we write is ever completely original becoz we often reproduce in our writing the thoughts of others, that we've taken in thru' our reading. Of course, the way we present it is always our own.......That theory tries to suggest how everything we read eventually influences our own thoughts. I just thought of that theory today as I was reading your post.
-Ms. Lynette
hey buddy
ReplyDeletescientists have studied Near Death Experiences of many ppl....
n they have come to a conclusion that life does exist after death
try Astral Projection.... search ebooks...
science concludes by saying
its not like go straightaway to hell/heaven (maybe its beyond the point of return to this material world, so dead{almost} return before...)
my opinion is that all this is just to scare people out of their minds shrewdly to gain control n for leading peaceful (not really) lives
come on dude ..you can't really be sure
ReplyDelete