IS THERE LIFE AFTER DEATH?

 

I do not believe in life after death; I know life after death. There are three aspects, first, we start thinking, have faith, and then we know. If we sit in an air-conditioned room, we believe the fire is hot in the next room. We believe. But as we leave the door and go to the next room and experience some of the heat, that belief turns to faith because now we have experienced something. So, belief becomes faith. Then, when we jump into the fire and become one with the fire, we know what the fire is. So, belief leads to faith, and faith leads to knowingness.

Every person has gone through a period of knowing an afterlife, generally known as death. Speaking, there is no death. No one dies. Even this physical body cannot die. What happens to it is that it disintegrates into its original elements. In other words, it is just transformed into different things. So, if even this physical body is indestructible, what about the eternal Spirit? For, there is everlasting life. The meaning taught to us by the Scriptures about everlasting life is that there is no death, and the basis of all fear is death or, in other words, fear of the unknown. Every situation in life is feared because of the unknown. A person is not happy in his work, not necessarily because of his work mates but because he feels inadequate, and fears he might get the sack. He has fears at home. He fears about his children’s health; they might be healthy now, but he fears, “Oh if they should fall ill, what am I going to do?” Or if his wife is going to start nagging the following day, what is he going to do? So, fears are mostly grounded on that which is unknown, and the basis of all these fears goes right back to the conception of death.

RELATIVELY SPEAKING THAT WHICH IS BORN MUST DIE

Relatively speaking what is born must die. Everything that is born has its period of living, it decays, and dies, but that is on the relative field. When we go deeper within ourselves, as in our meditational practices, we start realising there is no death; there is only life, everlasting life.

When we say life, the other side of it would be death. There again, we come back to the law of opposites. You can call Divinity God or Divine energy or whatever; if we call Him the Creator, then He is forever creating, and what does He forever create? He creates life. He does not make death. This is a metaphysical or philosophical understanding that life is eternal and can exist in a grosser or subtler form.

We have found that the human mind is only known to us in ten per cent of its value. Ninety per cent of the mind being dormant must exist in a subtle state. Therefore, the grosser ten per cent of the conscious mind cannot know the subtle ninety per cent of the mind. So, if the body does not die, if the body is indestructible and disintegrates into its original elements, then the subtle body within ourselves, which is the mind, is indestructible too because the composition of the body and mind is the same. It is all matter, one in a grosser form, one in a subtler form. Speaking relatively, when this physical body is discarded, the subtle body, which we call the mind, will not be destroyed either.

WHICHEVER IS MORE SUBTLE IS MORE POWERFUL

Whichever is more subtle is more powerful. For example, if a minute atom can be split, it can blow up the whole of Liverpool. As we go to the subtler essence of things, the more powerful it becomes, and because the mind is of a far subtler essence than the body, it can last longer. It can last longer than the physical body. So, the mental body can still exist after the physical body has passed away. So, what happens when one exists in the subtle body? That is the question that you would like to have answered.

The impressions and the existence in the subtle body are nothing different from the facts in the grosser body. But because the subtle body is more powerful, we experience all experiences more powerfully in the subtle body. The subtle body in that state of the hereafter has a chance to evaluate its entire life. It assesses, considers, and formulates if it should take another birth. This three score years and ten might seem a very long time to us, but in the scheme of eternity, it is not even a fraction.

REINCARNATION CAN NOT BE INTELLECTUALISED, BUT IT CAN BE EXPERIENCED

So, today’s life is a composition or the total of all the lives we might have lived before. Reincarnation is not something that can be intellectualised, but it can be experienced. Some people can go back to their subtle bodies and experience the lives that they have lived. This can come only on the experiential level. But certain intellectual inferences could point to previous existences. If anything had a prior existence, then it could have an existence hereafter.

In this world, one child is born in very happy circumstances, while another is born in very adverse circumstances. If that Divine law, which we could call God, is just and unbiased, then why should God allow one to be born in happiness, while another in such total unhappiness? Certain hereditary factors are also at play, but of course, hereditary factors, being totally physical and mental, are very superficial. There is still something far beyond it.

To return to our point, our lives today are the sum of past existences, and reincarnation can be experienced. There have been many instances in newspaper reports where a small child describes certain places and things and specific associations of previous lifetimes very, very accurately and this has been investigated and proven to be true. So, there are many arguments in favour of reincarnation and many intellectual inferences in favour of it.

WE HAVE TO GO HOME TO THE SOURCE DIVINE

Within the period when we exist in the subtle realm of the mental body beyond this physical body, we formulate another existence whereby we work out or receive the results of this life’s actions because we know that whatever we sow, we shall reap. And these seventy years is such a fraction of time in the scope of eternity that it might be too little to experience or work out all that has to be worked out in this little time. Therefore, it might be necessary for a person to take on another body to gain the experiences to follow the laws of evolution, which are pushing us forever onward to lead us to the source Divine, which can be achieved in one lifetime. It depends upon a person’s perseverance. It depends upon the honesty and sincerity of a person because one thing is for sure: we proceed from Divinity, and we end back in Divinity. We have to go home. After we leave the Hotel, we have to go home.

… Gururaj Ananda Yogi: Satsang UK 1976 – 08