IMMORTALITY

 

IMMORTALITY   

Immortality is the not the need but the desire of everybody. In God’s scheme of opposites, if there is beginning, there is also end; if there is life there is also death.  There is however a sense in which there is no death.  The Holy Gita says so. In English poetry, an anonymous poem  THERE IS NO DEATH is worded as follows:

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 seeming 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.

Your kindly thoughts and deeds ----they will live on.

This is not death ---‘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.

 

            Note the two major points made by the anonymous poet. The death of the physical body is the liberation of the soul which was imprisoned therein.  So this is the gain. Secondly, “Your kindly thoughts and deeds ----they will live on” and thus you will remain alive and there will be no death.

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G.R. Kanwal

27^th August 2023