Memories survive death

How to understand death; here was a person who was born in 1960 and then lived in this world for sometime and then suddenly died in 2000 for certain reasons. Where was he in 1958 and where he will be in 2001? How to comprehend his life that came into existence for a while and then vanished into a thin air? Is death a termination and the final end? Is it an irreversible process? Most Westerners believe death is the final and the irreversible. People remember the dead and cherish their past memories of them. Those memories too fade away over a period of time. But for me personally, such an abrupt end of a life does not make any sense. Hinduism believes that death is not a termination but a transition. In fact they celebrate death rather than mourn the death. Patanjali explains in his Yoga sutra:”the depth memory and its latent impressions are of a piece, their dynamics of cause and effect flows uninterruptedly across the demarcation the birth, place and time”. He implies that deep memories embedded in the conscience mind survive death and this flow of memories is not interrupted by their type of birth, place or time. He says that ‘the will to exist’ is eternal. Even a toddler who has never heard or seen a death has a fear of death. Unless this toddler had experienced death previously and such a death had left a deep scar in his depth memory he would not have acquired this instantaneous sense of death. Scientists have now started believing that ‘conscience’ survives death and a number of NDE (near death experience) support this belief. A growing number of clinical Psychologists around the world are using past life therapy in their practices. There are quite a number of parapsychologists now seriously documenting purported cases of reincarnation. One of the pioneers in the field is Dr.Ian Stevenson, professor at the University of Virginia Medical School. In 1966 he published a well documented work titled ‘Twenty cases suggestive of reincarnation’.He has documented cases of reincarnation in many different cultures as diverse as those of India,Tukey,Thailand,England,Canada and the Inuit people of Alaska. Jesus too has implied in his speech according to John 11.25: “I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, even though he dies: and whoever lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?”. Our thoughts, actions and their fruitions in our life time leaves impressions in our deep memeory, which we may forget over a period in our life time. But those good and evil thoughts,actions,fruitions and their residual impressions cause rebirth. Such a conscience is always witnessed by ‘Pure awareness’. This cycle of life, birth and death continues indefinitely until we realize the eternal truth that only ‘Iswara’ exists and everything else is an illusion or ‘Maya’. Every thought and action born out of ‘avdidya’ or ‘ignornce’ leads to failure to distinguish the difference between ‘conscience’ and “pure awareness”. The reincarnation will come to an end once the difference between the ‘ conscience and the pure awareness’ is clearly understood by witnessing one’s life experience. By using past life therapy one can understand those deep seated, dormant memories of their past and the cause of their birth. The ultimate realization leads to the fact that the ‘Seer, the Seen and the process of seeing’ is just one piece of continuum without any separation. “Pure awareness stands alone”, as explained by Patanjali under ‘Kaivalya Pada’ the final section of ‘Yoga sutra’.