February 19 2012

Life After Death

Category: Ask Deepak

Question:

I'm an academic neuropsychiatrist with deep interest in brain and mind. I only read 2 of your books, Buddha and Muhammad. What impressed me the most is your thorough understanding of the person in these figures. For me you seem to know that what is sacred is every moment we spend existing and not in what is "out there".

I don't believe in god/gods or in religion and I feel that humans are miserable because they developed "consciousness", an extension of the frontal lobe function that allowed awareness of time, what has passed and what to come, which created this eternal anxiety about life and death and all the complexity that followed. I think that the Buddha figured it out and gave us the only way to go through it with the least suffering. But when we die, we blend back to the energy in this universe, our soul is the set of experiences that we had and left traces behind, the noise of the working machine of our body and the products of that machine that is left behind. How far am I from the "Truth"!

Answer:

I don’t presume to know Truth with a capital “T”, but Buddha’s doctrine of freedom from suffering is premised on the idea of awakening from ignorance. This ignorance is the energetic pattern of our identity that keeps us in the cycle of reincarnation until we are fully enlightened. So while the raw material of our bodies is recycled on death, the energy of our individual consciousness is not united with the consciousness of the universe until the body of the enlightened person dies. As for what exactly that experience will be or won’t be, we’ll have to see.

Love,
Deepak

Top comments

We won`t know it until we die and no-one has come back to tell us. Everyone who actually claims to be able to tap into the universal consciousness cannot prove this. One can only `know` for him/herself on account of one`s own experience. That is why there is art in so many different aspects trying to explain the unexplainable. I myself may be convinced of a universal conscious field from which I arise and into which I fold back. Am actually able to put it in rhyme and video, yet no-one understands it like I do.We all have a small part of the puzzle and to me this makes life a rich experience. But on this earth and in this duality there simply is the good and the bad and we just have to "wirtschaft" with that until evolution evolves us, which takes millions of our perceived years. And we have already come a long way but there is still a long way and lots of generations to go... Simply my believe which is as good as any other`s.....
heartphone // 2012-02-19 16:27:08 // 7 Like(s) // Like
And all this talk about the coming of a golden age can plainly be explained by the fact that the first big generation after worldwar II is pensioned as from this year. It is the first generation that (at least in the West) has managed to live their lives without a major war going on and with a certain freedom they created themselves. Our offspring is already better off than we were,man and women already work more together. What more can we expect in the few generations that have built society as it is now? Our grandkids will be on a yet higher level and so evolution goes on and on. Why do we think we have reached an end? Or, for that matter why do we think there needs to come a huge quantum leap? Through means of the Internet we are now enabled to improve our communication skills. We are only at the very beginning of this...
heartphone // 2012-02-19 16:36:37 // 6 Like(s) // Like

All comments

So, the question is: as we reincarnate, do we bring withthat reincarnation, the `truths/lessons` we learned/obtained in prior incarnations? To me it would seem so, otherwise one might not `ever` arrive at enlightenment/bliss. Please respond and share your insights. Namaste :-)
Minnesotan // 2012-05-03 21:21:16 // 0 Like(s) // Like
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MRjimvinbur at TOUT // 2012-02-25 03:45:37 // 1 Like(s) // Like
I do believe in the resurrection of Jesus Christ. and his disciples witness he was alive after he died on the cross as he appeared onto them on a physical stage of presence. He showed that Live is in Spirit. and that we are spiritual being not material being. That Spirit is supreme and the body cannot take life away as Life is eternal as spirit is. we dont die. only our stage of ignorance disappear in consciousness. there is non life after death because there is non death. there is only continuity of life. but suppose we need to realize our consciousness in the contrast of discontinuity. death only must serve us to glorify the life we have now. we can experience today that spirit our pure essence renew us each day. then if we have a pure mind in the moment we pass over ¿will we not be renewed in our experience of life?
Valery // 2012-02-23 18:37:30 // 0 Like(s) // Like
"the energy of our individual consciousness is not united with the consciousness of the universe until the body of the enlightened person dies." ?? Sounds imaginary, or linear? -- Is this energy not united in the now-moment? Only upon disembarking from the flesh-container? If time is an illusion, and embodiment in form is an activity occurring WITHIN the Self, why the "wait" implied here? A wave doesn`t "return" to the ocean, it cannot return to That which was never left. The material body need not & cannot seperate one from innate "divine Nature, the Self, The All-inclusive Field. Atman...infinite...everpresent...leaving & returning illusory? Tho real to ego-consciousness.
iamuami // 2012-02-21 01:44:24 // 1 Like(s) // Like
Consciousness lies (literally!) within the domain of ego...ego was an accomodation to the experience of separation...which is not our natural state...we have been trying to `follow the breadcrumbs home` ever since...
Blue Sun Energetics // 2012-02-20 17:34:56 // 0 Like(s) // Like
God seems to be self-evident to me. What is not, is how it is possible for me not to have this warm Parent-Child relationship with the source of my Being. I yearn for, I long for, I pray for, I meditate on. As Deepak Chopra suggests all these outside activities cause separateness, and I will look only for the answer from the oneness with God within my Being.
Hans Rugullies // 2012-02-19 21:32:58 // 0 Like(s) // Like
Where does evolution end up... or does it go on forever. Will we continue to evovle until we become living light? In an infinite universe could there already be a race of individuals who have already evolved into light? Will we become living thought?
Mark // 2012-02-19 19:26:57 // 3 Like(s) // Like
A ongoing journey of ever unfoldment experiencing that which is and the myriads of possible creation which rise from source, it is infinite. Words will never fully be able to define fully, we can only eber dive into the experiential. I am so happy to be in this life and its dance with u all for eternity
Naturesmelody // 2012-02-19 19:01:47 // 0 Like(s) // Like
The Afterlife has so much more.... I work with Life Between Lives hypnosis
Carolyn Ann ORiley CHt // 2012-02-19 16:44:54 // 1 Like(s) // Like
And all this talk about the coming of a golden age can plainly be explained by the fact that the first big generation after worldwar II is pensioned as from this year. It is the first generation that (at least in the West) has managed to live their lives without a major war going on and with a certain freedom they created themselves. Our offspring is already better off than we were,man and women already work more together. What more can we expect in the few generations that have built society as it is now? Our grandkids will be on a yet higher level and so evolution goes on and on. Why do we think we have reached an end? Or, for that matter why do we think there needs to come a huge quantum leap? Through means of the Internet we are now enabled to improve our communication skills. We are only at the very beginning of this...
heartphone // 2012-02-19 16:36:37 // 6 Like(s) // Like
Do you belive in GOD? Sutha
Suthakar Sundralingam // 2012-02-19 16:29:37 // 0 Like(s) // Like
We won`t know it until we die and no-one has come back to tell us. Everyone who actually claims to be able to tap into the universal consciousness cannot prove this. One can only `know` for him/herself on account of one`s own experience. That is why there is art in so many different aspects trying to explain the unexplainable. I myself may be convinced of a universal conscious field from which I arise and into which I fold back. Am actually able to put it in rhyme and video, yet no-one understands it like I do.We all have a small part of the puzzle and to me this makes life a rich experience. But on this earth and in this duality there simply is the good and the bad and we just have to "wirtschaft" with that until evolution evolves us, which takes millions of our perceived years. And we have already come a long way but there is still a long way and lots of generations to go... Simply my believe which is as good as any other`s.....
heartphone // 2012-02-19 16:27:08 // 7 Like(s) // Like
Just the other day I was having a bit of a philosophical discussion about a similar reasoning of consciousness. Believing in God is a personal faith thing and I am spiritual but not religious. The discussion went on about good and evil in the world and the perception of what is good and what is evil and what is god and where is this entity in this world gone mad. My belief is that the entity is neither good nor evil. It cannot be since it is all things. It is all things good and all things evil. Quetzacoatl and Tezcatlipoca, the Aztec spirit of time symbols, are just quantities of the whole entity and we as free thinking organism lead one another to either side of that equation. The perfect form of the creative entity is a balance of all the chakras that form the light beings. That very concept is so big that few, if any humans, comprehend that untime nature of being. Somehow humans were told, according to some scriptures, that we would be made to feel time because we had taken knowledge from the the forbidden tree. That`s the Adam and Eve complex. That IMO is when us as singularity male-female beings became duality driven. We, like the creator of all things, did not think in linear time. We learned to quantify good and evil, which is outside the realm of cosmic divinity, and thus we play god by saying one thing is good while another is evil. If so, does that mean that after the Kali Yuga cycle we will return to a state of divine consciousness and be whole with the creative entity that is time untime. Your guess is as good as mine.
in2fx // 2012-02-19 16:06:23 // 1 Like(s) // Like
This is an interesting picture when you think about how in the main Quantum picture, it is consciousness that somehow "freezes" matter into a definite state, that matter "responds" to consciousness. And everyone has had that experience where something truly amazing, or at least what they want happens, when they "take their mind off it" If every possible vibration and wave function exists, then somehow "taking our `mind`" off it for a while allows for more possibilities to "freeze" But I`m still not sure why having our mind on things usually `freezes` negative outcomes, while `stilling` the mind or consciouness, seems to bring forth mostly positive experiences.
Pickering // 2012-02-19 15:41:41 // 1 Like(s) // Like
???????????
Catalina Perez // 2012-02-19 15:28:57 // 0 Like(s) // Like