"Men fear death," says Lord Bacon, "as children fear to go in the dark."
We look upon death with fear and aversion because it breaks the continuity of our life. Yet if we think about it calmly and simply, is death not as natural a phenomenon as birth? It is taking place around us all the time. Leaves fall from the trees and fresh leaves grow in their place. Millions of cells in the body die, and new ones are produced to replace them.
Every form of life passes away and gives place to a new one. A phenomenon so universal, so natural and apparently so necessary cannot be without a deep meaning. Life exists in the midst of death. Look at any living form, whether an animal, a tree or a human being: in it there are always, side by side, forces that lead to accumulation and forces that lead to dissolution and decay.
No form lasts forever. It is through the death of existing forms that nature is able to move on toward other and better forms. Every form gives way to a new form so that life may move upward.
So much may be granted: life as a whole goes on, and even progresses. But what of the individual, of you and me? Where are we going?
The more nature is studied, the more clearly it appears that each manifestation in the higher forms of life has an individuality of its own, and that this individuality must evolve in a continuous process, separate from the others. The thoughts, affirmations and intuitions of the greatest philosophers, of the profoundest minds of all ages, agree on the continuity of individual human life: this continuity is not broken by death, but goes on at another level and by other means.
As the French philosopher Bergson tried to explain, it is not fanciful to think of life as a stream or a movement. As this stream passes from form to form, it is affected by the experiences that come to it, and its waters are, in a sense, colored by those experiences. Each single stream remains a separate stream by virtue of its own individuality. In the case of man, this is another way of saying that man survives death, that is, that the nature within him, or a fundamental aspect of himself, ultimately endures. We may call this aspect the soul.
In both Hindu philosophy and Theosophy the following view is found: for the body there is death; for the spirit, which is universal and yet present in each separate thing, there is immortality. Between the two lies the individual life, that is, a consciousness. This consciousness shows a periodic flowing out and withdrawal, governed both by the attraction of the spirit, which is the star of its life, and by the forces of matter. Consciousness first spreads out toward outer conditions and then withdraws. This is the phenomenon of recurrence, of which we see many examples in nature; in other words, it is reincarnation. Birth and death are nothing but outward and inward movements. The going forth and the withdrawal are like waking and sleeping.
If we regard life as essentially independent of the body we wear, the failure of that body to function does not mean the extinction of life. As a mental being, the individual may pass into a different state. The same consciousness, with its feelings and impulses, the impressions it has received, the images it has formed and all its reactions, is still there, and these are still in its memory. But since all our mental images are kept alive by renewed contacts, most of them must fade away some time after the contacts have ceased. So when the conscious being is withdrawn from the scenes in which its mind was shaped, those scenes first fade from its consciousness; then its various tendencies lose their activity, at least for lack of field and stimulus. Removed from the conditions with which it was in tune and to which it responded, the being naturally tends to turn more and more inward and to live in a world of its own. The state after death must be like sleep and dream: a state of withdrawal in which the conscious ego is bounded and enclosed by its own ideas, as in sleep, yet has vivid experiences, as in dreams. The poet Shelley's famous phrase "Death and his brother Sleep" shows how a poet can sense a truth whose logical basis he himself does not know.
Then comes rebirth. The question is often asked: why is the individual reborn? Perhaps we may answer: "For whatever reasons you were born this time, for the same reasons you will be born next time." From the scientific point of view, nothing happens except as the result of forces at work to produce that result. If we do not regard the conscious being as a product of the body, we must accept that it existed before birth; and what brought us into a body this time are evidently forces, that is, impulses, belonging to this conscious being. As long as these forces continue to operate, we are bound to enter a body again.
We return to a new physical body without our former memories. Each time we begin not as the old being but, in practice, as a new person. As Wordsworth says: "Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting." We come back as a sweet, innocent child, to begin a new chapter and to write a better story with new characters. The old tendencies may still be there, but they remain dormant until they are provoked and awakened.
Death may be a means of renewal for us; but what of being parted from those we love, from those to whom we are attached? We must solve the mystery of separation: how it arises and what it seeks to teach us. Physically we are not one, nor are we one in our minds; but if we go beyond the mind, we can be one. The shadow of separation does not fall upon a love that asks nothing for itself. Death is a matter of time; unity lies only beyond the processes of time.
— N. Sri Ram
