On this matter, William Atkinson in his book "Life beyond death" noted the following:
« The
race has been hypnotized with the idea of Death. The common usage of the term
reflects the illusion. We hear those who should know better speaking of persons
being “cut down by the grim reaper;” “cut off in his prime;” “his activities
terminated;” “a busy life brought to an end;” etc., the idea expressed being
that the individual had been wiped out of existence and reduced to nothingness.
In the Western world
this is particularly true. Although the dominant religion of the West teaches
the joys of the “hereafter” in such strong terms that it would seem that every
believer would welcome the transition; although it might well be supposed that
relatives and friends would don gay robes and deck themselves with bright
flowers in token of the passage of the loved one to a happier and brighter
sphere of existence — we see just the opposite manifestation.
The average person,
in spite of his faith and creed, seems to dread the approach of “the grim
reaper,” and his friends drape themselves in black robes and give every other
outward token of having forever lost the beloved one. In spite of their
beliefs, or expression of belief, Death has a terror which they seemingly
cannot overcome.
To those who have
acquired that sense of consciousness of the illusion of death, these frightful
emotions have faded away. To them, while they naturally feel the sorrow of
temporary separation and the loss of companionship, the loved one is seen to
have simply passed on to another phase of life, and nothing has been lost — nothing
has perished.
There is a centuries’-old
Hindu fable, in which is told the tale of a caterpillar, who feeling the
approach of the langour which betokened the end of the crawling stage of
existence and the beginning of the long sleep of the chrysalis stage, called
his friends around him.
“It is sad,” he said,
“to think that I must abandon my life, filled with so many bright promises of
future achievement. Cut off by the grim reaper, in my very prime, I am an
example of the heartlessness of Nature. Farewell, good friends, farewell
forever. Tomorrow I shall be no more.” And, accompanied by the tears and
lamentations of the friends surrounded his death-bed, he passed away. An old
caterpillar remarked sadly: “Our brother has left us. His fate is also ours.
One by one we shall be cut down by the scythe of the destroyer, like unto the
grass of the field. By faith we hope to rise again, but perhaps this is but the
voice inspired by a vain hope. None of us knows anything positively of another
life. Let us mourn the common fate of our race.” Whereupon, sadly, they
departed.
The grim irony of
this little fable is clearly perceived by all of us, and we smile at the
thought of the ignorance which attended the first stage of the transformation
of the lowly crawling thing into the glorious-hued creature, which in time will
emerge from the sleep of death into a higher form of life. But, smile not,
friends, at the illusion of the caterpillars — they were but even as you and I.
For the Hindu story-teller of centuries ago has pictured human ignorance and
illusion in this little fable of the lower forms of life.
All occultists
recognize in the transformation stages of the caterpillar-chrysalis-butterfly a
picture of the transformation which awaits every mortal man and woman. For
death to the human being is no more a termination or cessation than is the
death-sleep of the caterpillar. In neither case does life cease for even a
single instant — life persists while Nature works her changes. We advise every
student to carry with him the lesson of this little fable, told centuries ago
to the children of the Hindu race, and passed on by them from generation to
generation.
Strictly speaking,
from the Oriental point of view, there is no such thing as Death. The name is a
lie — the idea an illusion growing from ignorance. There is no death — there is
nothing but Life. Life has many phases and forms, and some of the phases are
called “death” by ignorant men. Nothing really dies — though everything
experiences a change of form and activity. As Edwin Arnold so beautifully
expresse it in his translation of the “Bhagavaad Gita”:
“Never
the spirit was born;
The spirit
shall cease to be never.
Never
was time it was not;
End and
beginning are dreams.
Birthless
and deathless, and changeless,
Remaineth
the spirit forever;
Death
hath not touched it at all,
Dead
though the house of it seems.”
Materialists
frequently urge as an argument against the persistence of life beyond the stage
of death, the assumed fact that everything in nature suffers death,
dissolution, and destruction. If such were really the fact, then indeed would
it be reasonable to argue the death of the soul as a logical conclusion. But,
in truth, nothing of this kind happens in nature. Nothing really dies. What is
called death, even of the smallest and apparently most inanimate thing, is
merely a change of form and condition of the energy and activities which
constitute it.
Even the body does
not die, in the strict sense of the word. The body is not an entity, for it is
merely an aggregation of cells, and these cells are merely material vehicles
for a certain form of energy which animates and vitalizes them. When the soul
passes from the body, the units composing the body manifest repulsion for each
other, in place of the attraction which formerly held them together. The
unifying force which has held them together withdraws its power, and the reverse
activity is manifested.
(This is not true, what really happens is that the human
can no longer keep his body working and therefore his cells die.)
As a writer has well
said: “The body is never more alive than when it is dead”.
(Here, William Atkinson mistakes scavengers microorganisms
for body cells.)
As another writer has
said: “Death is but an aspect of Life, and the destruction of one material form
is but a prelude to the building up of another”.
So the argument of
the materialist really lacks its major premise, and all reasoning based thereon
must be faulty and leading to a false conclusion.
(I am more understanding with materialist people because
with so much charlatanism, it is logical to be very suspicious.)
But the advanced
occultist, or other spiritually developed person, does not require to seriously
consider the argument of the materialists, nor would he even though these
arguments were a hundred times more logical. For such a person has awakened
within himself the higher psychic and spiritual faculties whereby he may
actually know that the soul perishes not when the body dissolves. When one is
able to leave the physical body behind, and actually travel in the regions of
“the other side,” as in the case of many advanced individuals, any purely
speculative discussions or arguments on the realty of “life after death” take
on the appearance of absurdity and futility.
If an individual, who
has not as yet reached the stage of psychical and spiritual discernment whereby
he is given the evidence of the higher sense on the question of the survival of
the soul, finds his reason demanding something akin to “proof,” let him turn
his mental gaze inward instead of outward, and there he will find that which he
seeks. For, at the last, as all philosophy teaches us, the world of the inner
is far more real than is the world of the outer phenomena.
In fact, man has no
actual knowledge of the outer — all he has is the report of the inner upon the
impressions received from the outer. Man sees not the tree at which he is
gazing — he perceives but the inverted image of that tree pictured upon his
retina. Nay, more, his mind does not even see this image, for it receives only
the vibratory report of the nerves whose ends have been excited by that image.
So we need not be ashamed of taking mental stock of the inner recesses of our
mind, for many of the deepest truths are recorded there.
In the great
subconscious and super-conscious regions of the mind are to be found a
knowledge of many fundamental truths of the universe. Between two of these
truths most strongly impressed there are these
1)
the certainty of the existence of a Supreme
Universal Power, under, back of, and supporting the phenomenal world;
2)
the certanity of the immortality of the Real
Self — that Something Within which fire cannot destroy, water cannot drown, nor
air blow away.
The mental eye turned
inward will always find the “I,” with the certainty of its imperishability. It
is true that this is a different kind of proof from that required regarding
material and physical objects, but what of that?
The truth sought is a
fact of spiritual inner life, and not of the physical outer life — therefore it
must be looked for within, and not without, the soul itself. The objective
intellect concerns physical objects alone—the subjective intellect, or intuition,
concerns psychical and spiritual objects; the one the body of things, the other
the soul of things. Look for knowledge, concern either class of things in his
own appropriate region of your being.
Let the soul speak
for itself, and you will find that its song will ring forth clearly, strongly,
and gloriously: “There is no Death; there is no Death; there is no Death; there
is naught but Life, and that Life is Life Everlasting!” Such is the song of the
soul. Listen for it in the Silence, for there alone can its vibrations reach
your eager ears. It is the Song of Life ever denying Death. There is no Death —
there is naught but Life Everlasting, forever, and forever, and forever. »
(Chapter 2)
OBSERVATION
I largely agree with
what William Atkinson said in this chapter, but I also perceive that he
oversimplifies it, because when one delves deeper into this matter, one
discovers that death finally does exist, since nothing that has an existence is
eternal, and everything in the end ends up being extinguished. But while the
physical body only lasts various years, the soul lasts for many billions of
years. And that is why humans have to be reincarnated over and over again,
because a physical life is not enough for the soul to develop and thus become a
high being that can live for an immense number of years in the divine world.
And all this I explain more deeply in this other article (link).
