Death: Afterlife

Death is always so fascinating. Over the ages people have been intrigued by the question what happens after death.

An atheist believes death is the end there is/most probably nothing after it. However, most of us never want to believe death is the final end. We don't want to know for sure nothing has left of our dear ones after their demise. I can vouch for this. We always like to believe they are somewhere there. Without believing this we can't go on leading a normal life after losing dear ones. We console ourselves by thinking they are up there watching us.

May be this started just as a defense mechanism but over the years it became the norm. this gave rise to so many rituals all over the planet done for the departed souls; pyramids of Egypt, ancestor worshiping of china or the shraddh at Benaras by Hindus.

Among the modern religions there are chiefly two kinds of schools of thought. Firstly, there are semitic religions: Christianity, Islam and Jewish. They believe each person is judged and then accordingly banished to hell or awarded heaven. Before judgment sinners and non-sinners wait in the same place, sometimes called 'Hedes'.

On the other hand the Indian religions like Hinduism and Buddhism don't believe in the real existence of a hell. Although there is calculations and measurements of sins. depending upon the committed sins human beings and animals get reincarnation. Obviously the status of present life is inversely proportional to the sins committed in past life. the sin balance is checked after each birth and when it is zero a person is awarded with 'Moksh' or eternal paradise. In case you are a non hindu and wondering about the difficulty of all these calculations of all living beings for each births then relax we have an expert mathematician named Chitragupta taking care of everything! 

Hence in case these religions, although there's a heaven but hell is right here on earth. We suffer for our sins in previous lives through a miserable hellish life.

Is there really a hell or heaven? There's no solid proof yet. But each and everyday we experience hell and heaven. Our life is a combination of hell and heaven.

Every moment we know consciously or subconsciously death is coming for us. Still we take life quite seriously. I mean noone says why bother with a job, maintaining a lifestyle, getting hyper about children's board score after all everyone including their neighbours going to die. we go on with our chores as if we and the chores are here permanently. This is the 'Maya' or illusion. without Maya there could not have been this world with so many splendors. Isn't it miracle of life!