I have been close, real close to death twice; once in a drowning incident in Lake Erie when I was eighteen and once in a hospital emergency room when I was forty-two. Both times were very scary, but only up to a point before the most incredible peace took over, a peace that can only be described as a "peace to the tenth power!"
From those personal experiences, I can tell you that death is not to be feared. However, what happens after death . . . might be!
I was still fully conscious both times during my encounters with near death, but the death that I will be talking about here is the final, irreversible death, the ending of life which occurs after the vitals stop and there is no possibility of resuscitation, which can take as long as hours or days. This is when some fascinating occurrences takes place which I will attempt describe in simplified detail. (A "very" detailed minute description is available that takes up volumes, but is not recommended for the casual reader).
When we are dying and begin to lose what is commonly referred to as consciousness, many times we see visions that arise independently of conscious thinking. These are the result of how we lived our lives. We might see fearful beings chasing us if our life has been filled with hatred. Or, if our life has been filled with love, we may see our departed family members welcoming us, or hear divine music or see divine landscapes too beautiful for description. The dying may utter words like, "I see beautiful people and beautiful gardens, and I hear beautiful music, or they may converse with the departed friends and relatives that they see.
The final moment of death is when all the bodily functions stop with no possibility of reversal. This is when the psychic energy of the mind, which cannot be destroyed and doesn't die, and which is conditioned from both a lifetime of living and from previous existences, disconnects from the body and becomes a psychic force. Think of it as information traveling through cyber space. Now, everything that he/she has done in the past is released from mind and memory, and transferred into a spark called a "rebirth linking" consciousness." In Christian terms this could be likened to a soul, however, unlike a soul, rebirth linking consciousness is merely information with no eternal being or personality behind it.
The psychic force in effect during the deceased lifetime is called the "life continuum consciousness" and this now ends. In its place, a momentary "rebirth linking consciousness," only a fraction of a second in duration, takes over, transferring all of the data from the immediate lifetime and past lifetimes. This is quickly followed by a "death consciousnesses" that terminates the present lifetime, again only a fraction of a second long. Then there arises a new "life continuum consciousness" that will be the permanent basis of the new lifetime, containing a record of all the good and bad karma, as the consciousness enters a new physical, fine material, or subtle existence. This life continuum consciousness contains the seeds of karma, or habitual actions, and will serve as the basis of the attitudes and actions of the next being.
This is how rebirth takes place: When our old body wears out, mental energy does not die with it but seeks out a new existence that best fulfills the legacy of the old existence. Mental energy can be described as volition, karma, or action to make something happen, which necessarily involves desire, wanting, ambition, craving and clinging. The daddies of all desires are the desires to live and exist, and the desires of pleasure. This is the result of a strong sense of ego or me that transcends death. It is so strong and indestructible that it forces rebirth into another form.
This involves neither eternal life nor annihilation, but a new existence which is subject to the same things of the old existence, which are old age, disease and death, as the cycle continues. The ending of this cycle of birth and subsequent death is when the mental energies of the mind are exhausted and no longer seek rebirth. This is called Nirvana, or "blowing out the flame" in Buddhism.
Rebirth throughout history has been an attested phenomenon in all lands, from Plato to Pythagoras, from Schopenhauer to Kant, and even Christian authorities such as Origen who lived 200 years after Christ who said that there is no eternal suffering in hell and no such thing as eternal punishment.
Buddhist monks, as well as normal people have glimpsed their past lives, sometimes in great detail. But it takes a clear, calm mind and this is not so easy for most of us to do. The "normal" mind is either busy and covered up with pursuits of pleasures and excitement, or lazy and shiftless so that the subtleties of past life memory can never arise.
One lifetime, a life that can be very short i.e teenage suicides, is not enough time to get it right for a human being. There are residues and desires that linger.
And insisting that we have only one lifetime to get it all together is as unreasonable as it is fearful!
anagarika eddie is a meditation teacher at the Dhammabucha Rocksprings Meditation Retreat Sanctuary (www.dhammarocksprings.org), and author of A Year to Enlightenment. His 30 years of meditation experience has taken him across four continents including two stopovers in Thailand where he practiced in the remote northeast forests as an ordained Thervada Buddhist monk.
A loving God gives us many multiple lifetimes to refine and evolve our souls, a odd but true secret kept far away from most religions and far away from most of their devout adherents.
We tend to see death as a singular event in time, a moment that moves us from living to non living in a single dramatic episode.
The real truth is that we are slowly dying all of the time; death is a very gradual lifetime process that health habits and medical intercession can delay or even stop.
Thus, philosophically, every birth is most sad as it implies a death.
To quote your Buddhist theory of living entropy; "All is anica";(all is death is the translation):You are inspirational and most enlightened compared to Judeo-Christians: Paul Schroeder
Well . . . Buddhism has been around for a long time with its roots dating back to India 6,000 years ago when recluses retired to the forests and mountains to find truth for themselves instead of believing second hand information. Einstein believed that Buddhism, because of its scientific approach, would be the religion of the future.
Thanks for the comment and the great rating.
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Okay, I'll be up in the mountain where I am starting to build another meditation cabin, but will be back later this afternoon to check in with my friends at SearchWarp and listen to the health care debate in congress.
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