Sacred Life Sunday: What Happens When We Die....

For some reason, I have never experienced anything remotely close to fear of death. Sure, I have feared lingering illness, but not transition itself. It never occurred to me to be afraid.

Yet I couldn't have provided a picture of what the afterlife looked like, if challenged. I just knew there was one. It didn't concern me much. There was something at the inner core that knew when it was time, when I was done here, it would be time to go back where I came from.

In fact, honestly, I've never felt as though I belong here. Of course I do.. or I wouldn't be here.. but that's my way of saying that I feel like an observer more than a participant. The antics of Samsara often leave me feeling very odd - like watching a movie in a foreign language with poorly-written subtitles. The veil between the spirit world and this one is apparently fairly thin for me.

Last night I listened to a radio show about the afterlife. The man who was being interviewed has written a book claiming to provide scientific evidence that an afterlife exists. Clearly, in my opinion, he was trying to appeal to western minds that prefer scientific evidence of everything - but this is something that can't be proven. It's a matter of faith.

I believe we go somewhere familiar, that we have a complete understanding of what earthly (and otherworldly) life is all about, why we are here, the significance of this incarnation and the purpose of the next one. I do believe in a multiverse, that there is life that may or may not be similar to ours in other dimensions.

It just makes sense.

For a long time, I didn't believe we would recognize people from the past. The idea seemed rather absurd. It just makes no sense. While I try to keep an open mind, it's a hard one to grasp. It doesn't fit in with the process of reincarnation. If reincarnation exists, then those souls we know who have passed on have also moved on to other incarnations.

However, now I do believe that spirits can manifest as they choose and might imitate people known to us so that the newly arriving spirit won't be frightened. Remember that scene in the movie "Contact", as an example? For those who didn't believe or never thought about it, the whole process of transition would likely be rather frightening.

Some spirits don't realize they're dead and continue hanging around on earth for a while. Those are people who have died suddenly, violently or by suicide. That would explain poltergeists and other apparitions. Sometimes they don't know where to go. They need to be guided.

I believe we can be visited by spirits from the Other Side. In fact, I've had a visitation as I wrote about here some time back. My father visited me after his suicide. I don't believe he'd completely crossed over at that point but was looking for a way.

The purpose of all this rambling is to say that I believe death is just as sacred as life. It's not something to fear. It is a homecoming, a resolution and a completion. It's a graduation from one state of being to another.

I'd be interested in reading what you believe about the afterlife.

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Passing through the gates...

..when we finally know we are dying, and all other sentient beings are dying with us, we start to have a burning, almost heartbreaking sense of the fragility and preciousness of each moment and each being, and from this can grow a deep, clear, limitless compassion for all beings. - Sugyal Rinpoche


Last night, I was watching a show on PBS that impressed me a great deal. It was about medical research, how scientists explore the various parts of our bodies, how they age and how they eventually die.

In this particular segment, they discussed Alzheimer's Disease and how they figure that it may be only five years until they can reconcile that disease, make it only a chronic condition rather than fatal and can slow down the progress. While they might not be able to reverse it, they might be able to keep it from progressing any further from the point of diagnosis.

I was spellbound. They explained that a large reason for this progress in medical research is because of those who donate their bodies after death to science. They can often examine the corpses before all the cells have died. There is still quite a bit of activity going on in our bodies, even after we have technically died.

When a body has been donated, they can be kept on life support until the research institution can collect the body.

When one gets to my age, we start thinking about these things a bit more seriously. The women in my family are rather long-living but I do have health conditions that could take me out early. My spiritual beliefs are strong enough that I have a fair sense of what will occur after I leave the mortal coil. If I'm wrong, I'm wrong and won't be able to do much about that. What I do know is that I believe strongly our souls go somewhere else and do something else.

So what do we do with what we leave behind? What do we do with our bodies?

The whole concept of funerals seems perverse to me. Completely perverse and ego-based. I could never consent to such a thing. It imposes unnecessary expense on those I leave behind and is an individual focus that I would find very uncomfortable.

I joke with people who know me well that I will come back and haunt them if they do such a thing. That rattling around that they can't quite place? It'll be me.

And I can be really annoying! :)

One of the things I know is that I want to end my life with meaning, just as I want to live it with meaning. Leaving my body to science is so consistent with who I am and what I stand for that I am currently investigating how to make sure that desire is documented.

I'm not interested in "selling" this idea. I'm not about that and won't do it. All I'd ask is to give it a passing thought, to consider all the people who might be helped by the medical research that is provided by just one body.

We're all in this together. I can't think of anything with quite as much meaning as this would be, making use of the shell we leave behind as our souls soar to the next plane of existence.
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