Life After Life

There always comes a moment when we wonder about life, it’s meaning, it’s vicious cycle, it’s objective and it’s essence!

However of all… the most intriguing aspect of life, which doctors and sages alike have been trying to find an answer to is… What happens once it ends? What happens when we die? Is death the ultimate end or is it just a stage of encompassing cycle of life after life?

We all have our own religious beliefs leading us to believe or not believe in concepts like reincarnation! However none is sure and the curiosity remains!

Various psychiatrists, doctors and authors have explored the arena and have come up with surprisingly more or less similar findings, which touch the underlying theories of most religions.

Books by Brian Weiss (a renowned American psychiatrist, hypnotherapist and author), which narrate the experience of hundreds of his patients, re-affirm the belief in reincarnation and the concept of the soul being one’s ultimate identity… beyond the bodily attires one wears in various lifetimes and beyond the point where one sheds those, i.e. death!

However there still remain a plethora of queries! What exactly happens after death? And what actually is death beyond the stoppage of physical bodily functions? As it turns out from the reads of Brian Weiss and the likes, as well as the religious teachings of many, it is the soul which keeps us alive and once that leaves our body… We Die! But what is this soul?

While few say it is God’s particle, few others say it is an electrically charged particle! But whatever it is there seems to be a general universal understanding that it is the soul that keeps us alive and its exit from our physical body makes us die!

Now the question arises as to what happens to the soul once one dies? Interestingly there are a few books where people, who have had a slight brush with death but finally revived after about a few minutes, have shared their ‘after death’ experiences. These books, for curious ones like me, not only make an interesting read but also make one delve deeper into the objective of life.

Like my recent read, ‘Life after Life’ by Raymond A Moody (a philosopher, a psychologist, a physician and an author), had a compilation of a few after-life experiences narrated by people who were declared dead but who revived after having been ‘dead’ for about a few minutes. Now what went on with these men or women in those few minutes of being ‘dead’ is indeed very interesting to all naturally as majority of us have not been there! ☺

On basic generalization, the souls of the people involved left their bodies and witnessed the whole scene after they were declared ‘dead’ after an accident or surgery or disease.

In each of the accounts people involved said that they felt light, pain-free and relieved once they ‘left’ their bodies and they were floating around over the scene for a while before they went through kind of a tunnel before encountering a light.

Now what I found most interesting about these momentary encounters was their meeting ‘The Light’ which many of them believed or just knew was ‘The God’. Almost all who saw the light described it as a bright but soft and pleasant light.

While many saw it, a few even interacted with it. Those who did were shown the flashback of their whole life in kind of a quick-but-not-rushed manner and then were very softly and lovingly asked ‘what did they have to show to Him?’, as in, did they do anything worthy in their lifetime of showing to Him, The God.

And a few were even asked if they were ready to die? Of those many weren’t as they felt they had little children or others to take care of. And so the God was pleased as they had no unfulfilled desires of their own as the reason but the sense of responsibility towards others. And so they were sent back, to serve! A few were sent back with a guideline from The Light to ‘gain knowledge’ as that’s the objective of the human life along with that of ‘serving others’.

And thence was born a miracle, when a dead revived after a few minutes of being ‘dead’.

The experiences narrated by people who were from different backgrounds, regions and religions were quite similar to one another, which I feel do answer a few of our questions and generally substantiate the theory that eventually this life is not the absolute end, this is just a stage and we do exist in somewhat sublime form after this body perishes and most importantly there is a power to whom we all are answerable, irrespective of our caste, colour, creed or country.