WHAT IS DEATH?

 

Death Is Not The End Of Life

The individual souls or Jivas build various bodies to display their activities and gain experience from this world. They enter the bodies and leave them when they become unfit to live in. They build new bodies again and leave them again in the same manner. This is known as transmigration of souls. The entrance of a soul into a body is called birth. The soul’s departure from the body is called death. A body is dead if the soul is absent.

The conception of a human child in the womb of the mother is the fusion of sperm of man into ovum of woman. Spermatozoon and ovum are microscopic living cells. They cannot be seen through the naked eye. This fusion is generally known as conception and technically as fertilization of the ovum. In the mother’s womb sperm (Sukla) and ovum (Sonita) are fused into one single cell. This single cell after fertilization develops into an embryo and further in course of ten months into a complete human child. Man has always tried to tear aside the veil and know the course of events subsequent to the death of an individual. Various theories have been put forward, but it cannot be said that he has succeeded in tearing aside the veil that covers the life beyond. Science has been struggling to unravel the mystery, but so far no data have been furnished which can form the basis of a theory. But experiments in this direction have yielded many an interesting fact.

Natural death, it is said, is unknown to unicellular organization. When life on earth consisted of these creatures, death was unknown. The phenomenon appeared only when from unicellular the multicellular evolved. Experiments conducted in laboratories have shown that whole organs such as thyroid glands, the ovary, suprarenal gland, the spleen, the heart and the kidneys isolated from the body of a cat or a fowl, can be kept alive in vitro to show increase in size or weight due to the appearance of new cells or tissues. It is also known that after the cessation of individuality, parts of the organization can continue to function. The white blood-corpuscles of the blood, if cared for, can live for months after the body from which they were withdrawn has been cremated. But the life, it is true, is the life of blood-corpuscles; it is not the life of the individual.

Death is not the end of life. It is merely cessation of an important individuality. Life flows on to achieve its conquest of the universal; life flows on till it merges in the Eternal.