What Hinduism Says About Life After Death

So you don't have time to consume an entire podcast, that's okay. Enjoy the highlights on TRS Clips. Make sure you subscribe, make sure you hit that bell icon. I'm actually just getting back from a trip from Banaras. We explored it, we absorbed it. We went to a place called Manikarnika Ghat on the banks of the Ganga where it's basically like an, I mean for lack of a better way to describe it, it's sort of an ancient crematorium. Where bodies of people are burnt. The one thing I noticed about seeing death there was that people didn't have a negative association with death in Banaras for some reason. As in specifically on Manikarnika Ghat. There was emotions flying around, there was sadness, but there was also this kind of strained emptiness. I can't exactly explain or maybe that's the way I absorbed it. So when I went around asking people, I asked a friend of mine who's very well read, I was told that there's something very humbling about that place, Manikarnika. And anyone who goes there realizes that you know this is what all your efforts, all your goals, all your journeys end with. You end on a funeral pile, you end being cremated. So my question is one, what do you think of the moment of death? And two, what do you carry beyond death? I know spirituality says that you carry your karma beyond death, but there has to be some other stuff that you're taking beyond. Death is the reality of life. And it's the only thing that is certain in life. That is why they say in English, as sure as death. And life is literally a dead end because we're all going to end in death. So people are disturbed about it because they don't accept that reality. However, when the sun rises, we know it's going to set one day. And when it sets, we are not disturbed. So when we see the phenomenon of death, rather than be shocked by it or be troubled by it, we should accept it and adopt it into our worldview. That is what the Buddha did. You know, he was living in a palace in the midst of so much of luxury. And astrologers had told his parents, don't let him see life or he will become detached. So they tried to protect him. But then one day he went out walking and he saw a dead person. He said, oh, so death is a reality of life. I will die one day. And we all know he saw a sick person, an old person. So death is a fact of life. But our scriptures teach us to understand it from the perspective of knowledge. So the Bhagavad Gita says, Lord Krishna says, Arjun, every day when you wake up in the morning, you take off your old clothes, have a bath, put on new clothes, but you remain the same person. Likewise, death is merely the soul changing bodies. And somebody in knowledge is not disturbed by it. So factually, our body is changing in this life itself. We had the body of a little child, then a youth, then an adult. Likewise, at the time of death, we will again change bodies. So we should decide that it is not something to be disturbed about. But what are we going to carry with us? At the time of death, the gross body is left behind. And there are two other bodies that are enveloping the soul that it carries along with it. The first is or causal body. It has our sanskars, our karmas of endless lifetimes. And the second is the subtle body. Astonishingly, the mind, the intellect, the ego, these constitute the subtle body, they continue with the soul. So our mind is not of one lifetime. It's coming from past lives. And that is why in childhood, sometimes you get the feeling of deja vu. Oh my God, I have seen this before. Why does this seem so familiar? Right? So the French have this term deja vu. And we have an explanation for it. That the mind is continuing from the past. So some of the images, etc, from the past are embedded in the subconscious. So that is also continuing with the soul.