LIFE
IS ETERNAL
Death is the most important topic that engages the attention
of human beings soon after they become a little mature. They know from their everyday experience that
death is the end of life. People don’t
live on this earth for ever. They die
when their tenure, and each individual has his/her own tenure, ends. It can
happen at any stage of life ---- childhood, youth, middle age and mostly in old
age.
Old age itself is the least enjoyable stage because of the drained energy and the sickly
organs of the body.
Though death is certain, hardly a few people welcome it or
invite it. They wish to live on in
whatever state of physical or mental health they may be. To cut the matter
short, , death is dreadful. Its sure arrival robs individuals of a peaceful
sleep long before they actually die.
Urdu poet Mirza Ghalib (1797-1869) asks in a couplet if the
date of one’ s death is fixed and it cannot come earlier, how is it that its fear kills one’s nocturnal sleep
almost daily.
The fear of death makes many individuals timid. They abandon
many activities which need courage becoming forgetful of the impending death.
On the other side there are some great poets and spiritualists who try
to motivate us to become fearless of
death.
See what the English metaphysical poet John Donne(1573-1631) says in the
following sonnet:
DEATH, BE NOT PROUD
Death, be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadful for thou art not so;
For those whom thou think’st thou dost overthrow
Die not, poor Death; nor yet canst thou kill me.
From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be,
Much pleasure; then from thee much more must flow;
And soonest our best men with thee do go----
Rest of their bones and souls’ delivery !
Thou’rt slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men,
And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell;
And poppy or charms can make us sleep as well
And better than thy stroke.
Why swell’st thou then?
One short sleep past, we wake eternally,
And Death shall be no more; Death though shall die.
“One
short sleep past, we wake eternally” is not only Donne’s belief but also of many others who think that the spirit of life is immortal. Dr. Sir
Mohammad Iqbal, a great Urdu and Persian poet ( 1873-1938) asserts that the period
of life cannot be calculated in terms of days and nights. Life is an everlasting entity , it has no end, no
terminal stage, no stoppage. It continues to flowing like a timeless river.
The
point on which most of the poets and
spiritualists have laid stress is that
individuals are a combination of body and soul. The body is not the whole of
life. It is just a part of it and for that matter a material part which is
perishable. The soul is the non-material part and this part is imperishable. It
is immortal. This is what Lord Krishna said to his hesitant disciple Arjuna in ‘The Bhagvadgita”. Arjuna
hesitated to fight against his rival kinsmen because they would be killed and
that would be sinful. It is at this stage that the great Lord tells him the truth about the body and
the soul.
“As a man,
casting off old clothes, puts on others and new ones so the embodied (Self ) ,
casting off old bodies , goes to others and new ones. Weapons do not divide the
Self (into pieces) ; fire does not burn it; waters do not moisten it ; the wind
does not dry it up. It is not divisible; it is not combustible; it not to be
moistened; it is not to be dried up. It is everlasting, all-pervading, stable,
firm, and eternal. “
In Ancient European Philosophy,
Pythagoras is believed to have taught a similar doctrine which is called
“Transmigration” or “Metempsychosis”.
A story goes that Pythagoras once heard
a dog howling and appealed to its master not to beat it, as he recognised the
voice of his departed friend. It was
from this that the world knows he decided to teach the doctrine of
Transmigration. (Burnet, Early Greek Philosophy. P.84-85).
Finally, an
anonymous poem entitled: ‘THERE IS NO DEATH’ :
THERE is a plan far greater than the plan you know;
There is a landscape broader than the one you see,
There is a haven where storm-tossed souls may go ---
You call it death ----we, immortality.
You call it death --- this seeing endless sleep;
We call it birth --- the soul at last set free,
‘Tis hampered not by time or space --- you weep.
Why weep at death? . ‘Tis immortality.
Farewell, dear voyageur ---‘twill not be long.
Your work is done --- now may peace rest with thee.
Yor kindly thoughts and deeds ---- they will live on.
This is not earth ----‘Tis immortality.
Farewell, dear voyageur
--- the river winds and turns;
The cadence of your song wafts near to me,
And now you know the thing that all men learn:
There is no death ---There’s immortality.
-------------
23 September 2021 G.
R. KANWAL
