Fascinating and exceptionally reassuring is the notion of
our soul moving on after death. Backed by the highest and most ancient religious
and spiritual scripts, the notion creates both fear and assurance. For now, God
bless the soul who discovered fire – a more subtle of the five elements. It was
windy by the sea beach as the moonlight made distant waves glitter. A 30
minutes struggle finally yielded a warm fireplace by the sea and the
opportunity to gaze at the clear sky above in awe.
The comparison of an individual’s perception of “Self” to
that of the waves has been a profoundly intriguing analogy. Like each wave in
the sea may perceive itself to be a singular entity; but when you gauge the infinite
sea blurring into the horizon, you know the wave was nothing but a tiny peck in
the infinite – or perhaps, the infinite itself. And so is our daily illusion of
the I-consciousness.
Deep sleep as I realize is the absolute state of being. Once asleep, our soul merges into the
superconsciousness, uniting with the creator, the ever-present and endless. Physical
awareness, and the 16 hours of being “awake” is a myth, a dream we all live
each day.
The fire, true to its age-old nature had attracted
many by the beach. Some needed a source to light their chimneys, while some
needed warmth. Gokarna – a serene seaside town provided a rarely clean beach in
India, beautifully isolated from the hustle of urban life. Amidst the chatter, I focused on the waves
hitting the rocky part of the beach at a distance. Does the soul really move
on? Does it carry the karma, and the memories of its actions bundled inside, to
its next bodily manifestation where karmic justice takes course?
As my logic raced searching for answers, I couldn’t help
but draw parallels with the paradox of ship of Theseus. Look at the waves. They
strike the beach and are dismantled, disintegrated. What is formed after this
event is new waves. Are these waves the same as the ones that hit the beach? Or
are they newly created with only partial remnants of the waves that were? If
the waves-hitting-the-shore is symbolic of the physical life coming to an end,
how could the soul that moves out of the body, retain its uniqueness once into
the astral or causal realms. How could the soul after leaving the body and
uniting with the endless “mass” of superconsciousness, be separated from it yet
again while retaining all its memories and report-cards from the past life?
Would it not fuse with the rest of the ever-prevalent spirit and form a
completely new entity, devoid of what it was, and what it experienced in its
past embodiment.
A theory like this could well shake our beliefs in Karmic
justice. The fact that in the court of cosmos, justice is served to each soul
beyond one lifetime in the physical realm. Who do cause and effect work on, if
the soul that found another physical manifestation never was the same soul that
it left as?
The past years of spiritual quest had drawn me close to all major religions, spiritual practices and beliefs, teachings of many self-proclaimed “Gurus” and self-realized beings. As a
thorough observer; grasping each belief, soaking in each event, I travelled on.
Only to realize, that when you travel round and round, your net displacement is
zero. And how foolish could you be to attempt to measure your displacement in
the infinite cosmos. Could a body of salt ever accomplish its dream of entering
the sea to gauge its depth without melting away?
For now, it was the beach, the waves, and the comforting
company of the fireplace.
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