THAT WHICH IS ALIVE OR CONSCIOUS IN US AND DEATH
“…of created beings before birth is unknown, between birth and death is known and after death is again unknown”
(Bhagavad-Gita II: 28)
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Human beings are the only species which is afraid of death and dying. Other “higher” animals fear danger, unknown, and do everything they can to avoid being killed, but when their “time comes” they have no problems with death itself. They accept it peacefully.
At the same time, interestingly, humans are the only species which believes in life after death. Logical, isn’t it?
And, do you know how believers “prove” that life after death exists?
Well, they use testimonies about reincarnation, the so-called “after-death”, near-death, out-of-body experiences, accounts of paranormal occurrences and abilities, religious heaven and hell explanations…
And, guess what the only common ingredient of all these “proofs” is? It is personal consciousness:
a) which was produced in the past by some man/woman/ child and which “emerges” in another living body in the form of memories, images, emotions…;
b) which appears in (some) cases of heart failure, brain damage… (near-death experiences);
c) which is (allegedly) created or received independently of the senses and nervous system (brain) during some extraordinary events or experiences.
If you have been reading this book carefully, you can easily detect how solid these proofs based on personal consciousness are – as a soap bubble. However, the ongoing debate between life after death supporters and opponents almost exclusively rests on this kind of arguments and reasoning. Once more, the wrong or ill-founded way of thinking is imposed as the only possible one. Again, the clueless (but skilful) manipulators magically transform ignorance into “knowledge”.
Instead of engaging in a long discussion about reincarnation, extrasensory perception, stories of those who “returned” from “the other side”…, I am going to ask (and answer) a few easy questions, just to show you why any discussion is futile:
- If I have some (inexplicably acquired) information about the life of a dead girl named Kamaldjit Kaur in my head – does this doubtlessly mean that I was that girl in a previous life?
Are the visions of “a past life” confirmation enough that the one who has them actually lived that life?
To put it bluntly, to claim that someone who talks about past (using the first person) also lived in that past is the same as to say that someone who talks about future (and even guesses the order of events) also lived in the future!
- Have any of the people who had near-death experiences, and lived to tell about them, really died during those events?
Nobody who really died has ever come back and told anybody what death is like. (Jesus included.) Plain and simple, not one of those recounts can be accepted as the evidence for afterlife! The “returnees” do not describe life after death but their state of mind at the moments which (supposedly) precede death.
- Are near-death and out-of-body experiences, memories of past lives, extrasensory perception… any kind of proof that conscious, personal life continues after death of the body?
No, they are not, in any way. I mean, you can say/believe that information you “receive” comes from “your” previous lives, from the dead who are (not) related to you, or from anyone else who is still alive, or even that your “disembodied Self” is able to perceive the surroundings, but all that (if there is no other, concrete explanation) could only prove that:
1. Once produced individual/personal consciousness can exist “outside the body” and, as such, “roams” around the universe;
2. It is possible to “catch” it by our brains.
Everything else is only a matter of subjective interpretation or “intellectual gymnastics” without any real significance.
Now, let’s use the insights we have gained so far to disclose the relationship between personal consciousness and death. Let’s make sure that the false knowledge and stupidity are eradicated.
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Why are we afraid of death?
Because we instinctively want to live and go on living, and death is (we know it consciously and subconsciously) the end of everything that we hold dear. This ubiquitous fear reveals the real “strength” of human faith in life after death teachings/ theories and other similar things. And, it concisely informs us how much our sub-consciousness is satisfied with the way we live our life.
Even the smallest crisis can pierce the balloon of strategies, convictions, and “truths” behind which we hide ourselves. One single moment of panic unmistakably demonstrates how fragile and uncertain everything is. It explicitly shows us the value of the noise we are surrounded with, the activities we are occupied with, or our identities, thoughts, emotions…
Even the body we love, or hate but always rely upon and try to keep it alive, is betraying us. We cannot expect any support from the mind either. Watch it for a few minutes if you can. You will see that it is like an ordinary fly which constantly flies up and down, left and right.
We are tense, and it is difficult for us to face death, because we persistently ignore impermanence as a fact of life. So we grab all we can and feverishly hold on to personal conscious- ness, things, people… “This is me”; “This is mine”; “I feel”…
It is not hard to see that, with respect to death, people actually fear the prospect of nothingness, or non-being – the absence of defining, self-consciousness which makes us “US”, or alive in this life. Hence, we try to convince ourselves and others that “I” does not die, and accordingly, nothingness/emptiness is filled or replaced with familiar “self-information” which continues not merely to exist, but to live on after death “in the astral, immaterial, or spiritual body awaiting the Resurrection or a new birth”.
But, now you know that this is all bullshit, because those who promote and support the idea of afterlife do not understand that “knowledge of the unity of our personality” which is supposed to “survive and live on after death” has nothing in common with that which is alive or conscious in us.
Furthermore, you are now aware of “the presence” of “your own” non-personal “entity” which is very much like (if not identical to) the nothingness/emptiness we are talking about.
And yes, of course, like everybody else, you too were afraid of it, avoided “meeting” it… thinking that it will hurt you, turn everything upside-down and destroy the very meaning of life itself.
Still, as you can see, nothing bad has happened. …Quite the opposite.
You have acknowledged the “non-self” quality of your being and got to know it, or rather, found out what it is NOT. The moment you did that, the widespread delusion in which most of mankind lives became obvious, the virus which causes it was eliminated, and you realized that:
a) Fear of death is proportional to the amount of ignorance, i.e. to the strength of our connection to ego / self / personal consciousness.
b) We spend our life building, studying, and defining our own personality and identity but fail to understand that without the body all that knowledge, all ideas, thoughts, emotions… have absolutely no value or importance at all and completely lose their purpose of existence. Even if our personal consciousness “survives” the death of the body in some form, without that body it has no meaning.{2}
c) Everything that happens in our brain in everyday life, and particularly at the moments of dying, cannot hurt us in any way, because it is not real enough. The mind is the one who (in the form of ego) gives power and the means of influence to our consciousness and the reality around us. Yes, of course, death is there, but it represents a problem only to the body and the illusions we are wrapped in, not to the essence of our being.
d) Dreams are a wonderful opportunity to gain an insight in everything said above. Our behaviour in the course of dreaming implicitly shows what our state of mind will be like at the last moments of life. If we scream when the “spiritual” body in our dreams is in danger, or feel great if something nice has happened to it, it means that we are “one” with that body.
In order to break free, all we have to do is comprehend (over and over again) that nothing bad or good is happening to that which is alive or conscious in us.
The “spiritual” or “immaterial” body from our dreams is just a hologram or illusion.
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If we are not what we think we are now when we are alive, how can we be that when we die?
Or, the “eastern variant”:
If we are not what we think we are now, in this life, how could we have been anything else in the previous?