Dec 5, 2009, 12.00am IST
SWAMI SIVANANDA
Death is separation of the soul from the physical body. Death becomes the starting point of a new and better life. Death merely opens the door to a higher form of life; it is only the gateway to a fuller life.
Birth and death are jugglery of maya. He who is born begins to die. He who dies begins to live. Life is death and death is life. Birth and death are merely doors of entry and exit on the stage of this world. In reality no one comes, no one goes. Brahmn or the eternal alone exists.
Just as you move from one house to another house, the soul passes from one body to another to gain experience. Just as a man casting off worn-out garments takes new ones, so the dweller in this body, casting off worn-out bodies, enters into others that are new.
Death is not the end of life. Life is one continuous never-ending process. Death is only a passing and necessary phenomenon, which every soul has to pass to gain experience for its further evolution.
Death is like sleep. Birth is like waking up. Death brings promotion to a new and better life. A man of discrimination and wisdom is not afraid of death.
Every soul is a circle. The circumference of this circle is nowhere but its centre is in the body. Death means the change of this centre from body to body. Why, then, should you be afraid of death?
The supreme soul or paramatman is deathless, decay-less, timeless, causeless and spaceless. It is the source and substratum for this body, mind and the whole world. There is death for the physical body only, which is a compound of five elements. How can there be death for the eternal soul that is beyond time, space and causation?
If you wish to free yourself from birth and death, you must become bodiless. Body is the result of karmas or actions. You must not do any action with expectation of fruits. If you free yourself from raga-dvesha, or likes and dislikes, you will be free from karma. If you kill egoism only, you can free yourself from raga and dvesha. If you annihilate ignorance through knowledge of the imperishable, you can annihilate egoism. The root cause for this body is therefore ignorance.
He who realises the eternal soul, which is beyond all sound, all sight, all taste, all touch, which is formless and attributeless, which is beyond nature, which is beyond three bodies and five sheaths, which is infinite and unchanging, self-luminous, frees himself from the jaws of death.
The individual souls or jivas build various bodies to display their activities and gain experience from this world. They enter the bodies and leave them when they become unfit to live in. They build new bodies again and leave them again in the same manner. This is known as transmigration of souls. The entrance of a soul into a body is called birth. The soul's departure from the body is called death. A body is dead if the soul is absent...
Natural death, it is said, is unknown to unicellular organisms. When life on earth consisted of these creatures, death was unknown. The phenomenon appeared only when from unicellular, the multi-cellular organism evolved.
Laboratory experiments have shown that after the cessation of an individual's life, parts of the organisation can continue to function. The white blood-corpuscles, if cared for, can live for months after the body from which they were withdrawn has been cremated.
Death is not the end of life. It is merely cessation of an important individuality. Life flows on to achieve its conquest of the universal; life flows on till it merges in the eternal.
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