What is death?

What do you think happens when we die? It is really the end or is there an afterlife? We will try to find out what is death in this post. If not regarded as our destiny, it is at least the ultimate and inevitable phase awaiting each of us. According to an old Medieval proverb, ‘one comes into this world, cries, and that is life. One cries, exits this world, and that is death’. Whether we like it or not, death is part of life. Men have always dreamt about immortality; they often perceived and made their gods immortal. However, the images they made of their gods were not particularly pleasant or idyllic, it was as if they could not imagine the face of immortality.

Very early on, men felt that it was impossible to envisage immortality without envisaging a transformation in bodily appearance and human form. The prospect of such metamorphosis, however, was obviously distressing, since it implied a loss of our faculties, of our identity, of all that proves our existence. It became therefore necessary to find justifications and explanations for this phenomenon.

Approaching death according to different civilizations

In the Sumerian religion, the dead entered the Kur, the ‘underworld’, where they presented the Gods with gifts in order to gain their goodwill. They were then welcomed by the other dead and shared their lives in the ‘Place of no return’.

In the religion of Ancient Egypt, the souls of the dead reached the kingdom of Amduat where the encounter with Osiris, God of immortality provided a source of renewed life. But in order to achieve eternal peace, the soul had to go through a second death and a resurrection. To achieve the afterlife, the soul had to pass a certain number of tests revealed in the Book of the Dead, named so by the manuscript. Therefore, in ancient Egypt, death was not considered as an end in itself, but rather as a rebirth. Also, you can check this interesting article – Egyptian Zodiac.

In India, the beliefs in reincarnation are based upon a complex system that determines whether or not the soul of the deceased will be reborn. According to Hinduism, there are 16 doors, divided into three groups, through which the soul can enter at death. Depending on the door through which the soul escapes, it will either elevate to a higher level of purification, be reborn in another body or it will become transfigured and eternally free from the cycle of reincarnations.

Unlike death, reincarnation is not a fatality, but an opportunity, through rebirth on Earth, to atone for bad deeds. These nuances are worth underlining because too often in the West, this doctrine is interpreted incorrectly and we are tempted to believe that after death, a new life on Earth will be offered to us.

However, whatever the rites, myths, and beliefs related to the survival of the soul after death, present in ancient civilizations – some of which still exist today – they do not enlighten us as to the necessity and the inevitability of death. Equally, the modern scientific explanation of the degeneration of the cells caused by aging is not sufficient to explain why we die.

Also, if you want to know what your rising sign is, you can check out this post – My Rising Sign.

Evidence of Afterlife

The harshness of life, our fear of living, suffering, and human tragedies aggravate the pangs of death. This is why our contemporaries have been searching for reasons to believe in the possibility of the soul surviving after death. Today, deprived of the points of reference or gods, myths, and symbols to which our ancestors, in their wisdom, used to refer, we are tentatively searching for a new course to follow.

In the last few years, from all over the world, numerous accounts from people who have been through ultimate experiences, have given evidence of possible survival of the soul, of death experienced as a crossing, or as birth, which allows us to draw the following conclusions: death, as described by those who have experienced it, is not a painful ordeal. It has quite a few similarities with the birth of a baby.

During this journey, we are totally conscious of our good and bad deeds, which seem to be an integral part of ourselves. We are therefore our own judge, which tends to confirm the principles expressed by Hindu karma. Further on our journey, we uncover powers unknown to us, such as the ability to fly like a bird. In the end, the spirit, light, and life prevail. Any human being who has been through this ultimate experience and has come back has asserted the prevalence of life.