|
Literary Forum
LIFE IS A JOURNEY
By: Shri AK Suri,
Life Member,
Chandigarh Senior Citizens Association
Life is a continuous process
occasionally interrupted by death till a man has served his un-served KARMAS and
attained freedom from the cycle of birth, death and re-birth.
Our soul, thoughts, habits,
tendencies and impulses will not end when we die. Death is not the end of our
story, but is the end of a chapter in the book of life.
It is a myth to say a man
goes from this world empty handed. In fact, he goes from this world with the sum
total of his actions in present life and comes back with the same credit
balance. If some of his actions had no reactions in his present life they would
occur in some future birth.
Out of sheer ignorance, man
identifies himself with his physical body, name and form while in reality he is
pure consciousness but has acquired impurities due to his limitless desires. It
is, however, certain that after a long journey ultimately, at some point of
time, it has to merge with his source.
The human being is encased in three bodies- the Idea or Causal body, the Subtle Astral body- seat of man's mental and emotional nature- and the Gross body
Causal body is a matrix of 35
elements of which subtle body has nineteen elements i.e. intelligence, ego,
feeling, mind (sense consciousness), five instruments of knowledge (the subtle
counterparts of the senses of sight, hearing, smell, taste, touch), five
instruments of Action (the abilities to procreate, excrete, talk, walk and
exercise mental skill) and five instruments of life force, those empowered to
crystallizing, assimilating, eliminating, metabolizing and circulating functions
of the body. The subtle encasement of nineteen elements survives the death of
the physical body which is made of sixteen gross chemical elements.
As chalk cannot mix with cheese, one thing is certain i.e. purity of mind is the sine-qua-non for the merger of individual consciousness with the cosmic pure consciousness. That is why certain persons in order to hasten their progressive human evolution, adopt certain spiritual paths.
At death, nearly all persons from earth have to go to astral world which is teeming with astral beings for further spiritual advancement The astral world is extremely beautiful. The astral body which is made up of light is not subject to weather conditions. Joyous festivities take place in the astral world when a being is liberated and becomes eligible to enter the causal world to completely evolve himself.
To sum up, when the gross physical body is destroyed by death, the other two coverings still survive. However, when desirelessness is attained, it results in the disintegration of the two coverings and the tiny human soul emerges at last to merge with its source thus completing its journey from consciousness (desires) to pure consciousness (desirelessness) and rests in eternal peace.
 |
