Life Beyond Death - Yogi Philosophy

Yet another excellent book I read on the subject of death and from a perspective of the yogi philosophy. I am trying to put down what I understood because frankly I have never read a book which talks to you at such a high level.

The main premise is that there is no death. That which we call death is nothing but the "other side" of life.
Death is nothing but the destruction of one form of life to building of a new one. What I found interesting and it was something I always thought about all along - the concept of heaven and hell - I always questioned the existence of heaven as a place where u go if u were righteous otherwise u land up in hell ... but I never really had a chance to explore this further until I read this book. Think about it, how can you be punished forever for such a small amount of time spent on earth. The yogi philosophers almost mock at this concept.
Anyways don’t want to criticize any faith or their beliefs, after all they are just beliefs right?

So these oriental occultist mentions about the idea of several planes of existence. A plane is not a place but instead it is a state. These astral planes are the most important element in understanding their take on life beyond death. So like I was saying the astral planes have several levels, the lower level beings ones which are still connected to earth and all its desires and wants , while the highest one being when u have completed removed all the sheaths of these desires and have attained pure spiritualism. After a person dies on earth so to speak his soul goes into a slumber. this is akin to a child resting in his mother’s stomach for 9 months before he starts his new life. So while the soul is in its slumber it tried to distance itself to the earthly desires. these maybe his loved ones, some duty which remained unfulfilled or anything. When the soul finally wakes up depending on how much away he is from his desires he wakes up on one of the astral planes. And as and when he becomes spiritually more active he moves upwards in the astral plane. A soul can move down on an astral plane to help other souls achieve spiritualism but a soul on a lower plane can never move upwards unless it has achieved a higher level of spiritualism.
That is the reason these occultist say that you should never call a soul down on earth because all you are doing is hurting the soul by getting it closer to earthly desires. All that he has achieved is almost lost and he back on a lower astral plane.

Another aspect of this philosophy that struck me really well is that after death you most likely meet the people you love. you might not get up from your slumber and meet that person but since the beliefs, ideas, state of mind of people who love each other are akin ... you would most certainly land up on the same astral plane. Moreover that person can always come down to a lower plane to help you achieve the desirable.

There are a lot of other concepts which were interesting when they talk about the astral religious expressions, the occupation, the companionship, the communication on the astral plane. Finally it talks about rebirth.
in spite of removing many of the sheaths of earthly desires, if there still persists some hint of these desires the soul then goes into its second slumber and when it wakes up finds itself in a new body, it reincarnates.

Such is the take of death - sorry "other side" of life by the oriental occultist and I found this philosophy very interesting.

Death of Ivan Llyich - Tolstoy

Yep I read Tolstoy.... believe that ..

Just finished reading my first book that requires you to deeply understand what the author is implying, not just grasp it but relate it as well. It’s a book that will probably be at the back of my mind for a while, and the best part was that it’s not a difficult book to read, the language is very lucid and so are the thoughts.
The book I am referring to is "death of Ivan Llyich" which was originally written by Leo Tolstoy and then translated by Nadine Gordimer.

This book basically deals with Ivan Llyich who has always lived his life trying to move up professionally and tried to fit in with the rich and famous. It starts out with everyone’s outlook after hearing that Ivan Llyich just died, his colleagues and friends think about who would now get his position of power, how they would find a new partner to play cards with them, the wife is more concerned about how she would manage to conduct all the rituals and if there was some way she could get money from the government, the daughter and the son in law are more concerned about his wealth. The only real person who was with Ivan all the time was his loyal servant Gerasim.

The book then tells us how Ivan lived all his life and finally comes to the most interesting part, where he knows his health is desecrating and death is inevitable. It starts off with Ivan denying the fact that he would indeed die, trying to believe that the doctors would indeed be able to cure him and reduce the pain that he is suffering. He wants to belie that he would get better soon and life would be as happy as always. It then goes on to show that Ivan’s health is degrading and that he begins to believe that the doctors are just fooling him and that he would probably not get better. That’s when he begins questioning as to why God is punishing him with this pain, he always believed that the life he led was right and true, and he begins questioning the existence of God. Finally it dawns him that indeed the life he lived wasn’t true, it was full of materialistic gain, and there was no spiritual awakening ever. And he realizes this after he looks at the way his wife, his kids; his friends are behaving with him. He realizes that these people are infact himself. Finally he acknowledges that death is here and the only thing he can do right is to go in peace and not trouble his family anymore with his unbearable pain.

I guess the reason this books hit me so hard is cause I believe this realistic fiction is after all our life. Ivan Llyich is nothing but us. We live all our life running behind things that are materialistic, unreal, that have no value when we ultimately look at death in its face. I am not sure how I would react if I knew death was near, but what I do know is I wouldn’t be able to open my arms to it. I haven’t lived a meaningful life to acknowledge death. But then again how do we become spiritually active , lead a more real life ... I don’t have an answer to that yet, but it does begin with knowing what is important to you, whom you would want to be on your side when u r on your death bed , how do want to look back at life .... Would you have any good memories, anything that is infact worthwhile? That is my take on it; everyone has a different outlook towards life but it all boils down to understanding not life but death, the experience of dying, understanding the meaning of death.

I would really advice everyone to check the book out, like I said it’s an easy read and very worthwhile indeed.

My First 5K Run

I have always had an active lifestyle and workout regularly about 4-5 days a week; unfortunately this never shows up on the weighing scale which for me always goes one way... UP
None the less, I haven’t lost hopes of seeing the scale dip down in my favour someday. I have been brave enough to face the taunts that my jiza showers me with whenever I tell her "jiza aapne Portland ke snaps dekhe ya jiza aapne Boston ke naye snaps dekhe" ... and jiza always has the same answer... "haan dekhe and tu pehele se mota lag raha hai" , "u are now looking like your age or more than your age" . I know jiza you mean well and I hope you know that I am making every effort to lose weight to look good in the snaps when the time comes :) , but I am after all a Panpalia ... our dna is such that love for food and heart disorders are engraved in it (sorry jiza I know I could have used better words and better language). Anyways I always thank jiza and Neha for motivating me to at least try to be in shape in their respective ways. Ooh that reminds me, jiza I lost 1 pound the last time I was on the weighing scale... though i now realize that it must be water loss after the workout.

Coming back to the topic at hand, I decided to give my fitness a go and enroll myself in my first ever 5k competitive run. For those who are not familiar 5k run is as the name suggests a 5 kilometer or a 3.1 mile run. After enrolling for the run, I had about 2 weeks to prepare for the run, though I can run continuously for about 40 minutes or so, I wanted to concentrate on increasing my stamina and developing my speed ... but alas 2 weeks is a short time to do so and at the end of the 2 weeks I was clocking at about 35 min for the 3 miles run.. So finally the day or the race arrives, thanks to a heavy buffet and a afternoon nap the day before, I did not get much sleep at night ... but got a chance to catch up on a French movie I was dying to see for a long time. The weather wasn’t great either, it was a little cold and was raining and to top it off I forgot my nylon running tracks ... Neha was kind enough to offer to go back and get it for me, but I didn’t let her. We arrived early and I was given the number 55 for my race, the number does not mean anything, it was just a random number. So we were just hanging around watching the other racers, some were warming up, others were jogging and some were like me just hanging around. I did some stretching myself and then went out with Neha for a small run around the parking lot.

Finally the time for race came and all the racers including me arrived at the start line ready to make a dash, the quick runners were at the start, the slower ones at the end. I was somewhere in the middle. The racers were a good mix of athletes, men and women in good shape, teenagers, young children and some elderly folks as well. My sole aim was to complete the race within 35 min, which was my target, and of course finish before the elderly :)
The gun was fired and everyone started running , I ran fast and was initially among the first 15 racers , but soon I realized my mistake , I didn’t have the stamina to ran that fast and I was soon running out of gas. Then people started overtaking me, and that’s when I was telling myself that I should have paced the race. Nonetheless I finished my first mile in 8 minutes, which was the quickest I ever ran. Also I must remind you guys that it was raining and unfortunately my specs did not have wipers on them... i did take nehas advice and wore my "Superman" Cap straight to keep water from coming onto my glasses. So I was then running and all the time was thinking that should have carried my music with me. I was so used to running listening to music that now that was all I could think of ... Tupac, NWA, Bhootnath, Krazzy4 ... etc ... running through my mind as I see racers ran past me. In spite of this I finished my second mile in 10 minutes , I was very pleased with myself for the speed but I knew that the last mile was going to be extremely tough since I was already running out of gas and to make matters difficult the terrain was all upslope , and my lower back was killing me.

I kept on going telling myself that I have to do this, and more importantly I knew I could do it. Running outside in the pen is so much more different than running on the treadmill. No Matter how many inclines you add in your routine on the treadmill you can never simulate actual outside terrain and I was witnessing it first hand. I was finally running my last leg, and I could hear Neha and some other people cheering me on, though obviously Neha was the loudest... urging me to complete the race.. and as I ran the finish like I saw the timing 30.12 minutes, which was much better than my target rate ... so I was happy ... Neha hugged me and told me that I had a good race ... Later I found out that the quickest guy ran the race in like 17 minutes, but I wasn’t competing, I was doing it for myself.. to see if I was indeed fit enough to compete the simplest of all races.. the 5k

And now as I continue to train myself, I got a book on the running which explains the how, what of running. My next aim in a couple of months is to run the 10K, obviously will keep yall posted on the developments.

The Beginning

DEATH - usually defined as the end of life , but is it really? Or is it just the end of this life and the beginning of another, isn't it just the other side of life. I have always wondered what is it about death that fascinates me so much. Why is it that we are so afraid of death? Is it because what lies afterwards is unknown or because in spite of how fulfilling our life was its always not enough. The sole truth about life is Death, the only thing that is inevitable is death. And that is where the quest for understanding Death begins, the meaning of death, what it holds and what lies on this side of life .

and thats where the name of my blog comes from. Shinigami is the Death God in japenese culture, similar to the Yamraj for us Hindus. Why Japense ? Maybe it is because of my liking towards the japenese culture - their wicked movies, mangas, culture. Something about the Asian culture always impresses me.
I was just reading an article the other day, where they were taking about a suicide website in Korea. The site is said to demonstrate methods of committing suicide and contains advertisements for "partners in suicide" and this particular website as per the media has received well over 50k hits. Sorry for digressing, but such instances always catch my attention and gets me thinking on how easy it is for someone to take his life thinking that he would be happier in death.

Anyways I have started on my quest to find out what lies on the other side, it not about spirituality but i just want to understand death and read about what great thinkers , philosophers, saints have to say about it. Maybe i could arrive at some conclusion.