The problem with Death

Death is and has been the big mystery of the ages.  Ever since we gained consciousness as a race, we’ve been wondering at what happens after you die.  Religion was pretty much created to address that and several other mysteries, but even with the advancement of science, what happens after death still lingers as the topic we know the least.

As we face different religious believes on a daily basis in this part of the world, it occurred to me that a bigger question is not so much what happens after you die but if there is any level of consciousness or better yet, self-consciousness after you cross the line.    I haven’t really being able to ask the question to anyone around here but it’s my understanding that for both Hindus and Buddhists, life is a continuum and your consciousness is recycled to another being, be it human or otherwise.  Most of what some devotees do in their lives is in preparation for being placed in the right body upon their deaths.  The believe is that if you do good in this life you either attain Nirvana or get closer to it by moving into a higher-level human being in your next life.  If you didn’t do so good then you get downgraded to another life form.  That in part might be why some animal forms are respected because they may contain an old family member or another lost relative.

However in all the discussions I have heard of reincarnation and such, none of them claim or mention any level of self-consciousness.

And, if there is no self-consciousness, do you even care what happens after you cross the line?  In essence, you would never know if you did cross the line or if you participated in another life before.  So, you’re pretty much back to square one.  I’d call this a little problem.

Christianity and Muslins, on the other hand, sort of figured that little problem out for themselves.  Not only there is heaven or hell to look forward to, but you will remember your sins and pay for them after you cross the line.  So not only you have to be fearful here in this life but anything which has not been fully paid for in your life time still has a chance to come back to haunt you later.  On the other hand heaven sounds like the perfect place to be.   Little lambs climbing on the backs of big lions still showing their big teeth that were the menace of those cute little lambs before.  For some lucky ones it means being pampered day and night by 70 virgins by your bedside.  --hope this translates into a heaven for those virgins as well--.   Nevertheless, heaven must be a nice place.   The level of self-consciousness should continue without a glitch. 

But as the mind wonders, continuing with the same level of consciousness does bring in another set of troubles.  Will your consciousness transfer at the same level as you had it here or will you get a 2.0 version?  I can imagine that most mentally-ill individuals would require some level of upgrade in their consciousness so for them there will be little that would be transferred from their previous lives.  Would you be able to selectively choose what you want to remember and leave behind things you want to forget?  If you remarried after your spouse die when you were alive, would you remember the old one or the new one?  Maybe the boundaries would not be the same as we have them now.

I could speculate like many before me but I just find it interesting that we have such a burdening curiosity to know what happens next.   Everyone has an opinion and a believe in how it’s going to be.  But just in case you have some of it wrong, make sure you at least do good in the one you have because once you cross the line, that’s it.

I didn’t mean to go so dark on this blog so to make it lighter, the picture above is of one of those entry points into the next life, the great Shwedagon Pagoda in Yangon (formerly Rangoon) capital of the People’s Republic of Myanmar (formerly Burma) that we visited two weeks ago.