WOLF MUSING ON DEATH

Mum’s the Word

Or should it be Mummy’s the Word?

Photo by Grant Whitty on Unsplash

I think Death must be the best there ever was at keeping a secret

It amazes me often. Whenever I stop to reflect (which is not often enough, I must admit — I’m usually ensconced in the same time groove as everyone else and just go — as in live — with the flow). But when I do stop, and do reflect, every once in a while: it floors me. Every time.

What floors me is that, all things told and considered, no one really knows (as in precisely, with 100% certainty) what death is and does. If some he or some she does, well, neither is letting on very well.

No one knows what actually happens to the person at death; where, if anywhere, the person goes. If there’s such a thing, mind you, as person.

This, to my thinking, is especially curious (if not insane) given that all of our major religions posit (and preach — or threaten us with) an afterlife.

So, let’s say there is an afterlife (which, naturally, also posits a beforelife), and let’s say that all nearly eight billion citizens on Earth arrived here from a previous existence and are eventually (at death) going to take off for another, brand new existence. How come not a single person remembers?

Yes, there is the odd memory-wielding wonder exception that proves the rule (a saying that doesn’t make any sense to me), but on balance, I don’t think I’m lying when I say that not a single, normal, planetary denizen remembers (or cares, until they reach three — more like four, these days — score and ten, or so). And that, if you muse on it a while, is incredibly odd.

Of course, a lot of brilliant people: scholars, philosophers, priests, monks, writers, directors, you name them, have pondered the question and have offered their takes on this issue, but no one seems to actually KNOW.

If each and every one of us is a unique and enduring self (something Gotama Buddha and Ramana Maharshi refute), then this shared amnesia is nothing if not both very total and very suspect.

Prince Elron of Scientology fame (aka L. Ron Hubbard) proposed a solution: he not only suggested but taught that there are such things as in-between-lives implant stations (apparently there’s one on Venus) whose sole purpose is to cater to each recently-dead spirit and electronically (or otherwise — whatever their current technology) block any and all recall of previous lives before they are ferried off to Earth and reborn.

And successfully so, by the look (or non-look rather) of things.

And, of course, Elron very much proclaimed the notion of an eternally enduring spiritual self: we are all individuals, individual spirits, he said. We did not come from the same “pool of life,” as he put it. No, sir.

We don’t remember our previous lives because these in-between-lives implanters make sure we don’t, he said.

It must be a very busy place, this Venus operation, since on average about 180,000 humans die each day — and each and every one of them undergoes this forgetting treatment according to Prince Elron.

I, for one, do not buy that particular proposition. Prince Elron was fond of and told many a soaring though dubious tale.

Then again, begging to differ from Elron, Gotama Buddha (whom Elron actually claimed to have been in a prior life, go figure) said there is no such thing as an enduring self, hence it makes sense that the “new” individual doesn’t remember the “old” since they’re not the same person — though Karma does carry over from one life to the next.

This, in a way, explains the amnesia phenomenon, except, except, and this is a huge except, the first thing Gotama Buddha realized during the night of his enlightenment, the first thing he saw and knew were his previous lives: ALL of them, according to the Pali Canon.

So, the Venus operation must have bungled Gotama’s treatment for quite some time — or he knew how to steer clear.

Oh, well. But wait a minute. How does that even compute?

It doesn’t. Not on the surface anyway. Yet, this is stressed throughout the Canon; the Buddha remembered all his prior lives. It was one of the hailed Three knowledges (the other two being knowing how each being dies and is reborn according to their Karma, and how to wholly eradicate the deepest spiritual illnesses — Vasanas).

Of course, Buddha-discernment would be in a class of its own. I am not yet in a spiritual position to argue the point.

That said, the mystery still remains: why this utter ignorance when it comes to Death? How come Death has remained mum for so long and keeps it up so well?

For the Buddha to know and for us to find out, apparently.

© Wolfstuff

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