Death: The Dissection

I read somewhere, in the whole recorded history there were only 11 days when people were not fighting any war in any part of our planet. So, thousands years of history and 11 days of peace. Still an achievement! If history is studied carefully or not so carefully; it is apparent most of the conflicts have arisen due to religions. Wise people say fighting over religion is very idiotic since the underlying teachings of all religions are the same like peace, love etc. etc. I won’t know about that. I have not really read any religious text, not even my own religion Hinduism’s texts. Actually, especially Hinduism’s texts because like everything else in this religion, there are indeterminate number of texts too.

From whatever I have heard, I can say, there is another common feature in all religions. Gods in all religions rule in heaven and they don’t die. Whereas, we creatures of earth, we have to die. I don’t know any aliens personally so can’t comment on their death. Our life is very tiresome it always kills us earthlings in the end.

What is this death? Doctors tell us all organs of our body stop working at death and after that our body starts decaying. Doctors have a way of saying obvious things using fancy words. Religious leaders and priests tell us our soul leaves our body in fact some researchers have found the weight of the soul to be around 800 grams. It’s not that difficult to calculate you just subtract post-death weight from pre-death weight of a person, then repeat the exercise for a sample and then take the average. The difficult part here must have been duping the funding agency in thinking that this is a real and useful research! Philosophers discusses and argues then argues and discusses about death. The Marxists of course think we all with our bourgeois life are already dead.

Death has been dealt again and again in fiction, movie and other media. The subject about death widely dealt in media is adjustment problems of friends and families after demise of a person. But very few have gone to the territory of questioning death. Among the recent literatures the Harry Potter series dealt with it a little. According to the great wizard Dumbledore death is a well deserved rest after a fulfilling life.

But, for normal person on the road, what does death mean? May be death is a kind of final good bye. In various phases of one’s life we are close friend with different people. Then sometimes they leave sometime we have to leave. While leaving there is always exchanging of phone number and addresses with great promises of keeping in touch always. For sometime it’s like that then changes of time and place take toll on relationship and people outgrow each other. After few months or years there will be no communication at all and gradually the person will fade in memory as well. Then we reach a point where there is no connection to old friend and there is no scope of ever having one.

Death is somewhat like this with few differences. Sometimes you never get to say good bye. Definitely no exchanges of phone number and address. The loss of connection is sudden and final. And there’s absolutely no resurfacing. These days, old and long forgotten friends are sometimes resurfacing, thanks to modern day phenomenon known as social networking in the internet.

If only we had known where we are going after death then we could exchange addresses. May be this exchange is the very reason, why we don’t know our whereabouts after death. Because death gives us complete break after a hard life. In case, rebirth theory is correct then death gives us the total chance to “move on” to start from the “scratch”. Nature provides us a clean slate which can obviously be not possible with lots of baggage from past.

Suppose there is no God, no afterlife, no judgment, no incarnation then why does death come? The logical explanation would be, without death, only birth will explode the population, creating imbalance in our planet. This finally may lead to destruction of our planet. May be death helps in evolution as well. Birth of new improved beings from the ashes of death of old.

After industrial revolution, there’s no looking back for science. Now it’s at pinnacle, everyday is a new discovery. Great age and time for humanity. But too much truth sometimes can kill the mystery, fantasy, imagination and romance. Hundred years ago, moon was so romantic. The love poems are crowded with comparison between lovers’ anatomies to moon. Now one would think twice before comparing his girl friend’s face to a dry area full of holes. In fact, a face like moon is sounding like a face full of acnes!

 
There are only very few mysteries left keeping the romance alive. Death is one of those magic, romance and unsolved mysteries. Death is still the not uncovered shroud.