Tag: death

Loss brings about great suffering. But what is the basis of this suffering? What’s behind this? Is there a way to disarm this source of pain or to minimize it? Here we’ll see how to deal with loss.

First, a meditation: “if you’ve lost something, it’s because it wasn’t really yours”.

What you lost was not the person or object. That was never “yours”. You’re not the ultimate owner of anyone or anything. You lost the illusion that it was yours.

And that’s what’s making you hurt. The brutal reencounter with the reality that nothing is yours deeply disturbs those who base their lives on the illusion that happiness comes claiming ownership of things and people.

Not even your body is yours. Did you make your body? I didn’t make mine. A rock, a fiber of cotton, water, earth… none of this is yours. You can’t make any of this. For those who have activated their devotion, the concept is easy enough to understand: everything belongs to God.

This concept is central to yoga and essential for living in peace: nothing belongs to you. You are just you. Consciousness. The soul.

That’s why things enter and leave your life beyond your control. Because they are not yours. When we don’t understand this, inevitably we experience the harsh lesson of loss.

And what about losing loved ones? It’s beyond awful. So much pain. But that person was never “yours”. The person was never really “your” brother or “your mother”. You never owned that person. The person was an eternal soul who came and played that part in your life, and now he or she is gone. Every relationship here has a beginning and an end. I was born, I will die. You were born, you will die. The pain of separation can be mitigated with a dose of reality: every person has always existed and will always exist. Only your time with that person, under those conditions, has ended. You can learn more about this topic of life after death in this video.

You’re a tourist. Only passing through. You arrived with nothing and no one and you’ll leave with nothing and no one. Everything you have is on loan, to be used while you’re here. The only thing that’s absolutely certain in life is that you won’t leave with anything or anyone.

The feeling of loss is a call for your awakening. We have to wake up to our internal reality. Even if you don’t believe in soul or God, you still cannot deny that you’re conscious and your experience of life in internal and metaphysical.

That’s why any step you take in this direction will bring you enormous positive gain and wellbeing. Changing extrinsic objectives for intrinsic objectives, prioritizing peace, emotional health, love… all of this will bring about huge gains and save you from the suffering that naturally arises from focusing on external things like money, things, social status, etc.

In the book, The 3T Path (https://3tpath.com/books/) you can see in detail how to develop the mental power and vision to conquer this paradigm shift and, thus, how to deal with loss.

Watch my video on this topic here.

Look what they’re saying about The 3T Path book: “a richly rewarding experience” – Chaitanya Charan Das

What will happen when you die? Is there life after death? If so, what destinations are there for those who die in a human body? In the sacred texts of the Vedic tradition, we find detailed information on this which I will summarize here.

There are four possible destinations after a human death. Souls enter material bodies, inhabit them, and then leave. When a soul enters a body, we call it conception. When a soul leaves a material body, we call it death. But for the soul, there is no birth or death; it is eternal. When trapped in a material body, the soul forgets its true nature. Its consciousness is covered, and it identifies with the body.

The first and most cherished destination after death is to attain liberation (moksha in Sanskrit) by developing pure love of God (prema). Since the soul is trapped in the cycle of birth and death (samsara), the very goal of yoga is to free ourselves from this painful cycle and go back home, back to our original personal existence in God’s abode. Those who actively dedicate themselves to finding their true spiritual nature can achieve this. This is the ultimate purpose of human life – the chance to seek and attain enlightenment. For one who reaches this state, there will never again be another birth.

The second destination is a birth in the celestial planets of the Universe. According to Vedic cosmography, the Universe has all kinds of civilizations, with different species of advanced beings. Many of these have a much more advanced standard of comfort to what we experience here on Earth. The texts speak of pleasures ten thousand times superior to the best of what we can get here. Longevity, beauty, immense and varied sensory gratification are granted to these denizens. This kind of birth is achieved by those who have accumulated good karma as a human, by dedicating their lives to the good of others, doing their dharma and being ethically and morally strong. Since this destination is just one of millions of possible births in the Universe, it’s also temporary and after death as a celestial being, the soul again has to take birth as a human on Earth.

The third possibility is to immediately take birth as a human, again. This is good because it gives that person another chance to seek enlightenment, but it’s bad because it means that soul did not use its previous human life fully.

Lastly, the soul can take birth in the millions of other animal and plant species. This happens when a human uses his or her life very poorly, accumulating negative karma and cultivating a bestial mentality. In other words, that person failed to make use of the rare human birth and behaved just as an animal, with no thought to spiritual evolution.

For those who did not become enlightened here are also two unfortunate side journeys, two temporary states or experiences which the soul may have to undergo: being a ghost and going to hell.

Ghosts are the subtle bodies of the dead, usually humans. When a human dies and isn’t ready for it, maybe due to attachment, anger, or a desire for revenge, its willpower delays it from moving on to the next birth. It gets stuck between bodies. Because the subtle body is perfectly identified with the biological body, the person maintains the same form as its now dead biological body. When that attachment, anger, or desire for revenge wanes, the hold of that person to its previous incarnation ends, and the forces of nature carry the soul to its next birth.

Hell is a place a human soul gets dragged to work off some seriously bad karma. Hell in Vedic literature is described as a place with hundreds of thousands of different virtual reality zones, each meant to impart on the wayward soul a lesson, to help it overcome a particularly evil trait it has developed. Hell has absolutely nothing to do with religious choices or ignoring God. It’s strictly a type of morality spa or intense sensitivity training to teach the person to avoid the crudest kinds of evil behavior, such as boiling animals alive. After some time in hell, the soul moves on to its next birth, usually an animal or plant incarnation.

If you want to understand more about the soul, God, God’s abode, reincarnation and the process of yoga to reach enlightenment, you’ll love my book The 3T Path – Self-improvement and Self-realization in Yoga, available here: https://3tpath.com/books/.

Watch my video on this topic here.

Look what they’re saying about my book: “By applying clear language, helpful examples, and an thorough grasp of the history of yoga, Das offers a spiritual toolkit that can be used at any time.” – Dotrazn