From the very onset of life, a fundamental question baffles the wisest of minds on this planet. We are unable to define or understand what essentially is that which constitutes Life. Does a boundary exist at the point of birth, and at the point of death? If it exists, what constitute the moments beyond these two points? Are we conscious when we reach and pass through the process of death? And can we still feel and see the material and physical existence, after we have crossed through the process that we define as Death? Do we actually possess within each of us a Soul of our own? And if it exists, when does it enter into the tiny body of each of us when we were in the peace and serenity of our mother’s womb?
Medical world around us has advanced much in the last century than all the time of the existence taken together. But even today, a medical doctor gives us a very simple definition of death: cessation of heart beat, or complete stoppage of electrical activity in the brain. But human curiosity is such that, it fails to accept boundaries. Naturally, we want to know what happens beyond the thin point of that definition, we want to know what is AFTERLIFE.
There is something beyond our body and mind, which we refer to as our Soul. At the point of our death, our body and physical mind still exists, then why do we actually die? That proves there is a thin source of energy that drives this amazing system, wherein at the point that it leaves the system, our system comes to an immediate standstill! Amid all the technological advancements in electronics, computer and the engineering world, the fact still remains that this internal body system is still the most sophisticated system on the planet. We know electronics, we know computers, we know tablets and laptops, we know how to send a spacecraft to another planet, but we still haven’t decoded how this most sophisticated system works, to the point that we even don’t know how it begins or ends!
This body is an accumulation of all that we consume. It is actually like a debt that we take from the bank. But here, the bank is the Nature. Naturally a debt has to be repaid sometime. At our death, we repay that loan to the nature as our body. Our body is taken back into the soil of our planet and our debt is repaid. In complete awareness there is no mortality. It is just a change of clothes. Our soul has a certain energy associated with it. When the energy reaches a point which our physical body cannot comprehend, that source of life departs our body. It can be due to old age, due to an accident, a suicide, a murder wherein the physical body is damaged and cannot withstand the energy of our soul. It has to naturally depart. Each soul of ours enters this planet with a particular task at hand. The liberated soul soon enters into another womb, in an ambience where that unfinished task from its previous birth can be completed in this reincarnation. This cycle goes on till that eventual task gets completed and that particular soul reaches salvation. There is no universal salvation without individual salvation. The soul is devoid of physical mind and body, as it leaves behind both of these when it leaves the previous body. So naturally at birth and beyond, we do not know who we were in our previous birth. That explains why we do not remember anything about our past incarnations. The basic human nature is such that, we assume there do not exist such a thing, that we cannot experience. But then we do not even experience the several litres of blood that is pumped through the very veins of our body. Does that mean that we believe there exists no blood within each of us?
Death then is essentially like changing our clothes, from one dimension to another. Our mind and body changes, and this mind and body is not actually us. It is actually driven by that source of existence within each of us. And we are here on this planet to fulfill an immense possibility. And immense possibilities do not happen in a lifetime, it requires many of them together. That explains why each one of us cannot go to the moon, why each one of us cannot play the violin like some extremely talented 5 year olds, why each one of us cannot make a substantial impact to the world that we live in. But it somehow eventually will, for each of us are here for a destined purpose, and we will reach that destined purpose, for even Neil Armstrong would have incarnated several times to achieve the feat of walking on the soil of moon 3.8 Lac Kilometres away from home. And even he do not know that it wasn't a struggle of one lifetime, but of several lifetimes together!
