For many reasons, I suppose, I have always been fascinated by the theories and concepts of what actually constitutes “Life”, that essence, that vivifying factor that is present when something is “alive”, but is absent when that same something is now “dead”.
The thing is – nobody knows!!
In a book of short stories, “Like the flowing river”, by Paulo Coelho, there is a thought provoking passage, in fact two – from different stories – that I will quote as they appeal to my ideas about Life (with a capital “L”).
In the first quote Coelho was in a forested area on the French side of the Pyrenees, practicing his archery, when a French Colonel, exercising with his troops in the area, recognizes Coelho and admits that he too is a writer – about life matters. Once this Colonel asked children in various schools to write down anything they would like to know about life.
He summarized what the children wanted to know:-
Where do we go after we die?
Why are we afraid of foreigners?
Do Martians and extraterrestrial beings really exist?
Why do accidents happen even to people who believe in God?
What does God mean?
Why are we born if we all die in the end?
How many stars are there in the sky?
Who invented war and happiness?
Does God listen to people who don’t believe in the same (Catholic) God?
Why are there poor people and ill people?
Why did God create mosquitoes and flies?
Why isn’t our guardian angel next to us when we are sad?
Why do we love some people and hate others?
Who named the different colours?
If God is in Heaven and my mother is there too because she died, how come He’s alive?
All, to my mind, very valid questions!
Those questions lead me easily to my next quote, also by Coelho, which is actually an abbreviated summary of a passage from Chapter II of the Hindu scripture, the “Bhagavad Gita”:-
“Man is not born, nor does he die. Having come into existence, he will never cease to be, because he is eternal and permanent.
Just as a man discards old clothes and puts on new clothes, so the soul discards the old body and puts on a new one.
But the soul is indestructible, swords cannot pierce it, fire cannot burn it, water cannot wet it, the wind cannot dry it. It is beyond the power of all these things.
Since man is always indestructible, he is always victorious (even in his defeats), and that is why he should not mourn.”
It’s easy to see that I am not a Christian!! Though I do, I think, have a profound belief in a Higher Power. This brings me comfort.
Now I don’t mourn, but I do grieve. I know that time has passed by – four years actually – since Magucha died, so the grief is not quite so “sharp”. But it is still there as it will always be. I miss her companionship. I miss her as a friend. I also know, deep down, that the essence – her soul, if you like – is out there somewhere. I will never believe that Magucha’s intelligence, her love, her humour, her compassion, have just disappeared into nothing.
So, together with what in written in the Bhagavad Gita, and what others have written, I like to think that life is eternal. That there is a never-ending cycle of birth and death.
To support this here are the first two verses of a poem, “A Creed”, by John Masefield:-
I hold that when a person dies
His soul returns again to earth;
Arrayed in some new flesh-disguise
Another mother gives him birth.
With sturdier limbs and brighter brain
The old soul takes the road again.
Such is my own belief and trust;
This hand, this hand that holds the pen,
Has many a hundred times been dust
And turned, as dust, to dust again;
These eyes of mine have blinked and shown
In Thebes, in Troy, in Babylon.
