The theories of death - 1

I have been talking much about mortality and fatality without trying to explore if I am still alive or I am dead already without me knowing it. What if everything continues as it is in a different world which is the mirror image of our world and the shift from one world to the other happens in an instant? Talking of instants, do they really exist? For instants to exist, time has to be a reality. What if the past, present and future are happening right now? I may be experiencing everything simultaneously. Do you keep time in your dreams? Can you ever make out how much time would have elapsed during the course of your dream? I have many a time seen nightmares which seemed to have continued for hours, but when I check my watch after waking up, it has hardly been half an hour. Something is wrong in the way I interpret the world. Does the world really exist? Could it not be that I am just experiencing a long dream lying somewhere? How do I know if anything really exists? You can tell me of course, may be you can touch me too. But you can do the same acts in my dream too and I will believe it to be true. I may actually be watching a movie in my sub-consciousness. Do I exist? If I can prove I don’t really exist, then I can be assured I will never really die. If I can prove that I am also an illusion of myself, I can train myself not to experience pain. I can stand as an unattached observer of my body. Are you an illusion of my super or sub-consciousness? If I can convince myself about it, then I can kill you if I don’t really like you. You don’t really exist, so I won’t really kill.

What happens when I die? Why has this question not been resolved in thousands of years? Why has no one come back from the other side? Is this sufficient proof to make me realize that there is no other side? If there is no ‘other’ side, then there can be no ‘this’ side too. If I convince myself of the absence of the other side, I also convince myself of the non-existence of this side too. So I don’t exist. But if I am convinced this side, this world exists, then I can be sure other side exists too.

Mortality and morality are interlinked. If I am sure there is no heaven, hell, if I am sure there is no hell either, give me one good reason why I should be good. Of all the questions we struggle to find answers to, we are closest to deciphering one – does god exist? Let us examine two mutually exhaustive and exclusive scenarios -

        I.            If the world exists, and you read the newspaper daily then you know what a bad world this is. So, the creator of a bad world has to be a bad god. But god by definition cannot be bad. So we arrive at a contradiction. This proves that god does not exist. Or god is not good.

      II.            If the world does not exist, then there is no creator of world either. So god does not exist.

In my subsequent posts, we will examine all the possible theories of death. We will use logic. We will eliminate all the feeble theories and identify the few possibilities which can be true. We will never know for sure until we die. I am talking of ‘we’ as if I am sure that ‘I’ exist and ‘you’ exist. Descartes thought that he existed because he thought. The argument was inherently flawed. Do we know Descartes existed? We are not sure. We are not assuming we exist. It is sheer habit that prompts me to use the language of the commons.

We will bring the other related aspects of destiny and karma into discussion too. Be assured that god will not be spared. God has to cease to be the refuge of the weak. We will see if god can be accommodated in any of our theories. I must tell you though, if god existed, then those who hate to die would not have died. If he existed then my mother would still be with me. Alright, I will not make this personal here.

Let me also admit honestly that I want to be convinced of the possibility of a happy continuity after death, of the possibility that families and friend are re-united after death, of the hope that my mother is in a much happier place than this world and I will be able to meet her on the other side.

Could death be good? This I can answer right away. Yes, it could be. Sit in some quiet place, take ten deep breaths and think, if in the final analysis you are dead, then does it really matter how you live? You can stop worrying about your finances, your job, and your future. If you go really deep into future (provided future exists), you will find yourself dead. So just live as you like right now. This will be as close to preaching as I will get. Our aim is to unravel, not assume, not recommend.

So fellows, if you exist, keep up with me as I develop and dissect the theories of death. Once we are done with death, we will talk about life...

 

Pillar of Cloud

It is fascinating to see how Israel destroys its enemies at will. It is always liberating to see nations shedding off the irritating garb of diplomacy to display the only true emotion in the world - vengeance. It is so peaceful to know that there are leaders in this world who are not chasing the Nobel Peace Prize.

 

Israel's intelligence agency blasted the car and the body of the military leader of Hamas to tiny pieces. Now Hamas seeks revenge for this act of revenge. Rockets will be fired, bombs will be detonated, lives will be lost. Could this be one last chance for the world to give itself an armageddon it truely deserves? Chances are remote; lets hope more nations get involved.

 

Israel calls this Operation Pillar of Cloud. Apparently, Pillar of Cloud is a biblical event. God is dead, religion is in cemetery and the believers have been diagnosed with terminal weakness. But we don't really mind a good war for god's sake, do we?   

Just take it

What makes you crawl O ferocious one? Why do you volunteer yourself to slavery while every moment you want to be free? Freedom is your true nature, bondage you got from your nurture. Shun the shackles...obliterate the obstacles. You will never get to choose your death; but you may live the life you want. They taught you to fear the unknown. It is time you hunted it down.

 

Live in the darkest dungeon if you hate light. Burn yourself in the sun if you seek spotlight. Hate this world? Destroy it. Want the world? Just take it. Isn't it a shame, knowing all along that you can do anything, you still went about your disgusting routine, being nothing. Design or destroy - don't just keep admiring your life from a distance. It is time to test your childhood hypothesis - that you are not like anyone else. This pursuit of your potential self will define you. Let your ego run amok. You are not a shadow. You are not invisible. Not anymore. Give yourself a God you can see - worship yourself. This life, this journey, is about enlightenment. Don't worry, you won't die of hunger. If you don't have enough food, you will hunt down beasts. It is in your nature.

You became terminally ill the moment you were born. Whatever you did from then on, it won't preempt or prevent your death. Yes you are going to die, and isn't it very liberating? You can lose everything, yet laugh at it. But there you are, chasing and purchasing the trivial nothings. No, we are not communists; we don't believe in universal happiness and brotherhood. Infact we realized in our very childhood what dawned on the Buddha after medidating for years - this life is boring, the world is a sad place, and we all die. Just that we don't preach or practice the middle path. We are extremists.

You are bored of being an obedient tail-wagging participant in the world order. If the world is spared an armageddon this December, you will end it yourself. Won't you?

 

The watcher of funerals

He was not a sadist. But he loved to watch funerals. It was the only way he could make peace with the world. He would sit far off from the gathering and watch all of them shed tears over the body of the departed. They won't notice him - the body would always be the center of their attention. They would stand there with their heads hanging in guilt for not having spent enough time with the owner of the body. He would watch them shed tears, hear them say nice things, feel them feel fear of the unknown. He had been there too - as a bemoaner of a dear one. And he will be there sometime again - as a body. They all mourn, they all will be mourned for. It was peaceful to find everyone so miserable, so helpless in the face of death. It did not really matter where he would go from there and what he would go after - he will end up as a body being watched by people known and unknown. He might as well spend his lifetime closeby. Peacefully...

The unreal never is...

Cutting through the maze, going through the notions, doing the needful, it is inevitable i will be consumed by the forward momentum of life. We are programmed to distract ourselves from the reality of our lives, which is good i guess.

 

What is life? The time elapsed between your birth and death. So your life only gets defined after you are dead. And you worry so much about your 'life'! Achieve death and then bother about your life.

 

The real never is not.

Road to destination

After numbing himself to the futility of everything he woke up one sunny morning and started slaughtering the happy passers by on the road next to his house. Sad is how it ends....sad is how it stays. For him...for you. Be sad or be dead.

 

Don't cry when he comes for you...his name is death, have you not heard of him? You know he will come for you, don't you? He will transfer you to a parallel universe, where there are no roads, just destinations. Expect him. Anytime.

 

 

Mother...

I try in vain to keep myself busy all day, I try really
But you are gone, and with you has gone much of me
I attempted to accept your absence, yet i am sad again
For it were only you mother who could take away my pain

I should have remained your child; you were my safe place
But I grew up and ran towards things, I had to win the race
I may go on to win the world now, but I will remain a loser
For I have lost you forever, and you are all I ever had mother

You brought me to this world, I don't know where I was before
I don't know where have they taken you, but I will meet you for sure
I wasn't around in your final moment mother; I hang my head in shame
I wish I were playing in our garden again and you called my name

I hope they treat you well on the other side, you deserve the very best
I have to stay in this world for some time, with selfish strangers, as a guest
Please wait for me mother, like you always did, till I reach my endpoint
Then I will come running to you like a child; this time I will not disappoint...