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Saturday, October 04, 2008

What do you think happens to our soul after we die?


*note*...this from Anand's blog..I quote"Bliss is not a shutting off, but a turning on.
Bliss is not moving forward, nor backward. But it's not standing still either, but instead pulsating like a primordial heart.
Bliss is the individual's answer to the cosmic question." ..and"Your unhappiness is your Authentic Self's way of telling you: I exist. Please set me free".
This guy has seen the truth,indeed..read him.
-added by danny-
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What do you think happens to our soul after we die?

I saw this question on a website, asked by Deepak Chopra, the celebrated Indian author.

I have been asked this question by seekers at my ashram for years. And of the many answers I give them ( and they are all true), here is one of them.

What do you think happens to our soul after we die?

What do I think happens?
I don't think. I know, O Seeker.
Here is the answer you seek:Your soul is a collection of energy that comes together for a while in your physical form, and then, when you die, the energy is dissipated, and redistributed. The soul is like an infant's breath: soft, ephemeral, and yet so full of life. When you die, your soul joins every other atom of energy in the universe, something that we call the Universal Spirit. And from that source of energy, that very same life force that exists deep within your heart, from that Universal Oneness, you arise again.
Not the "you", as you think you are right now, because that is the limited self that you identify with; that limited self will completely cease to exist when you die. In other words, on a superficial level, the nihilists were right: there is no "I" after death, death is nothingness, complete dissolution, a cessation of every thing that defines who you are now. Now, this thought - of complete annihilation after death - can be a very anxiety provoking thought for most people. It can be frightening to think that you will cease to exist forever when you die. ( It is also a thought that brings a heightened sense of urgency to some people, and an almost frenzied hedonism in others, but more about that some other time. )

Most people, even the staunchest atheists cling to the belief that their after life will be of some meaning to them in a very personal sense. When people think of heaven, they think of angels singing to them, of bliss in a white cloud. If they think of reincarnation, they think of themselves reborn as a prince, or a king. Or, if they are particularly guilt ridden or neurotic, then they might expect to be reborn as a dog or a goat, even as an insect. But the common thread is the belief that some tangible essence of themselves will carry on.
There are many variations on the theme - each religion, and most spiritual beliefs have one explanation or another that serves to somehow give a sense of continuity to us. The end of my life, most people think (or at least, hope) is not the end of everything for me.

Now as I say this, the few of you who like to be intellectual, and spiritual, might claim: Not me! I know exactly what you mean, I am not stupid I don't think of things in such concrete terms. I understand the subtle metaphysical concept that you are talking about.

Let me say this: Although you might intellectually understand what I am saying, your emotion, your heart is fighting that notion. You have not emotionally embraced the fact , the undeniable truth that you, as you know of yourself in most waking moments will definitely 100% cease to exist when you die.

Even you, Deepak, hope in your heart of hearts, that if you are reborn again, it is with a sense of who you are. In other words, when Deepak asks, "What is my afterlife going to be like? he actually means, "What is Deepak's afterlife going to be like?"

The answer is this - "Deepak" will cease to exist when he dies. But he will be reborn. This might seem to be a paradox, but it is not. Stated another way, when you die, your Self will be reborn, but your limited self will cease to exist when you die.


The answer is complicated, but let me break it down as follows:

a) Your soul, as you think of your soul most of the time, will cease to exist when you die.
b) Your soul is the same as my soul, as everybody's soul. It is the Universal Soul. (although, if you use linear measures, you would say, "My soul is part of the Universal Soul.")
c) Your soul will cease to identify with your sense of self when you die. Your sense of self will immerse again with the Universal Soul. And then from that Oneness will arise another manifestation of it.
As you reflect on part c) of that explanation, remember that this is not a linear process. Linearity is a construct, a way of thinking that might make it difficult for you to understand the truth. Linearity and the constraints of vocabuulary and language - all of which are linear - might make it difficult for you to understand the Truth.

This is why the Buddha used analogies. This is why you and I, many of us, use analogies to understand this feeling of utter oneness, this Ultimate Realization.

Do excuse my tendency to use capitals - I realize that this might seem an unnecessary perhaps even annoying tendency, but there is no other way to convey the bigness, (or the Bigness) of the concepts. (If you are astute to point out that the concepts of BIG and small, are manifestations of linearity, I would commend you and agree with you.)

Anyway, let me try and use an an analogy, or a metaphor, if you will: Think of the Universal Oneness, the Universal Spirit, as a warm bath of energy that is constantly bubbling. Each bubble, each manifestation of the Universal Spirit is you. It is you, it is me, it is the bird in the sky. Those bubbles are everyone, and therefore, in a sense, no one.

They are no one, but they are all One. A warm bliss on which transient bubbles arise, only to return to the bliss.

To illustrate the difficulty of trying to communicate these thoughts with the linearity of our language, let us deconstruct the previous sentence. Read it again: A warm bliss on which transient bubbles arise, only to return to the bliss.

Now, the word "return" in that previous sentence is a word of linearity - return means going back, which implies a journey, and a journey always has a start and an end. So, "return" was not the most accurate word, but it comes closest to what I am trying to explain to you.

The bath continues to bubble, but each bubble happens forever, and at the same time. They happen one after another, but from a larger perspective, the bubbles not only form one after the other, but the very same bubbles are also happening simultaneously.

Let me illustrate. Here is an exercise that you can do right now, to get a glimpse of that Oneness that I am talking about - that place where there is no past, no future, no you and no me, and yet the both of us.

Think of this:

A warm bath, bubbles rising to the top.

It is a slow, but driving and intense heat that drives the bubbles up to the surface.

Some of those bubbles, having relinquished to the warm liquid, do not rise again. Others rise again, some subtly aware that they are a bubble floating in a warm bath of bliss, some (not blissfully) completely unaware of this.

And some who are always ( in a linear manner of speaking) in touch with this warm bath of Bliss.

For whom, the transience (in a linear manner of speaking) of their bubble, the suffering, or the pleasure, the pain, or the happiness, the joy and the sadness, are all properties of the bubble, not of the warm bath of Bliss.


Each bubble in that warm bath has within it a molecule of a past bubble. Except, remember, this is not happening in a linear manner, so each bubble has a molecule of every other bubble - past, present, and future. And therefore each bubble is the entire Unversal Spirit.

Each bubble that arises to the surface of that warm bath is affected by everything that happens to the Universal Oneness.



After you spend some time reflecting on those images, let us talk briefly about another cognitive construct that we use to make sense of our world.
This construct, like the construct of linearity, makes it difficult for some people to comprehend the nature of Oneness. This mental construct, makes it difficult to comprehend the nature of oneness. It is the notion that Karma is a linear process: many people believe that if they perform bad deeds, then they will pay for it in some form, either in this life, or another.

But remember - Karma happens now, and in the future, and in the past. It happens in All Space and All Time. In other words, if you do a bad deed today, that affects you and me and everybody. And it affects us now and yesterday and tomorrow - in the space of All time, and No time.

To the cynic, or the disbeliever, this might sounds a bit like New Age drivel. But, as I said earlier, there is no other way in which one can explain the Truth.

The problem is that there are so many pretenders, so many people who have learned the terminology of the enlightened that they write about it, and talk about it, and spout it , as if they have actually understood the essence of what it is that they are describing. A Buddha is exceptional, not only because he is an enlightened man, but because he is an enlightened man who describes eloquently a path that has led to his self-realization.

Most truly enlightened people are silent. One - because there are so few (as I write this, I have no idea how many other people are similarly enlightened) and Two -maybe, because there is a level of enlightenment, at which there is no discernible need to explain the answer. (If there is such a level of enlightenment then no one who claims to know the way is truly enlightened - myself included.)



Karma is not a question of, " what you do in this life, so you reap in the next life". A disclaimer before I explain what Karma actually is - The linearity of language applies to words such as "here", "now", and, in the non-linear world that I talk of, the meaning of "everyone" is the same as the meaning of "you" and vice-versa.

Karma is this - As you do now, so does everybody reap in their next life and in this life; as you do now, so does that energy get transmitted back to you, but also to everyone;
Every bubble influences every other bubble, because from another perspective, the entire Universal Spirit is one blissful bubble.