Thursday, July 7, 2011


As a human being I always wanted to know what will happen to us after our death. When I was a little kid I thought our lives will end with our physical death where we bury or burn our body. At that time I thought we only live until our physical death takes place. Eventually I learnt that our life is not only consists of a physical body but to have a life there should be a mind as well. We all know that mere physical substance can get destroyed. So after our death our physical body gets destroyed by means of degeneration or by burning. This is the place where I had this problem as to what will happen to our mind. Will it remain with our dead body? Yes, that is possible if we buried it after its degeneration. If not, what will happen to it if we burn the body?
In my early blog posts on supernaturalismpartI, partII, partIII and in Way I understand god I mentioned that mind is an energy that comes in to being by the energy associated with molecules which make our physical body. Complex body structures like the human body contains more energy and high mind power by which they can think and plan. Simple body structures contain less energy and have a low mind power. And as we all know energy cannot be destroyed, so what will happen to our mind or the energy associated with our physical body once it gets separated from the physical body during the death?
I think this is the place where afterlife concepts with all the gods, ghosts, rebirth, and reincarnation come to the scene. According to Buddhism, when we are involved in good things like meditation and other meritorious things, our internal energy or mind power increases and on the other hand when we do sinful acts  the internal energy or mind power will get reduced. After death our internal energy or the mind will search for a physical body which matches the corresponding energy levels. If it finds an energy which is similar to human it will be born as a human baby. If the energy is higher than that, it will remain as a high energy steam which I might call god. Now you would think if this energy is too low and if it won’t match with any creature what will happen do the energy. In my perspective, this low energy stream is what we might call ghosts. Then what about animals? All Buddhists believe that what we have now is what we have earned in our past lives. If we have done good things we will be blessed with a good life whereas if we have done wrong things in our past lives we will be punished and will get a bad life. Even though we are lucky enough to have a human life we can identify several differences; some are rich, some are poor, some have a good healthy life while some have physical disabilities. Those differences may have a relationship with our internal energy as healthy people have good physical body with high energy or good mind power. That means if we have a good mind or high energy level, after our death we will be reborn as good, healthy children. If we have less energy we will be reborn as weak children or even as an animal.
I know that all my blog readers are not Buddhists. But I’m requesting you to do good things and live according to your religion principles since every religion teaches its followers to commit merits in order to make the earth a better place to live. So let us live according to our religion and its sacred principles to be a better human being and thereby to make our lives richer and more enlightened.