Death, identity and karma
East meets West
When it comes to death, rebirth, birth and life, or reincarnation, there’s an interesting polarity between East and West. If you have an eastern meta-physic (Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, Sikhism, and so on) then reincarnation is a fact of life, the physical body is a vessel, and karma moves you on through the various aspects of existence. However if you have a western meta-physic (Judaism, Islam, Christianity) then reincarnation is largely a taboo subject, shrouded, like death, in mystery. It’s still a fact of life, but you’re supposed to approach the subject giving reference to Jahweh, God, Allah, heaven and hell.
However taking religion and the various belief and philosophical systems out of the equation what you have is a collective of three human perspectives on life after death:
- There is no life after death. Death terminates your existence.
- Death changes the nature of your existence into a new state of permanent existence.
- Death is simply the transition from one physical body to another.
It doesn’t matter which of these three broad perspectives on life after death you personally believe, because these are all different interpretations of the exact same universal truth. There is such a thing as a life cycle, the so-called circle of life, and death in terms of our common understanding is an event on this cycle. Therefore death - the event - is both an ending and a beginning, and the cycle continues.
This is why the 13th marked card from the Major Arcana of the Tarot, the card named ‘Death’, implies change, not actual physical death.
Existence is consciousness, identity is just physical form
This is where we get to the existential truth of life and death. Consciousness is permanent and eternal, physical form, energy, physicality, our bodies, our thoughts, our emotions, our feelings, our actions, and our words, are impermanent.
Life is a purely physical experience. It’s physics, it’s biology, it’s psychology, it’s chemistry. Your body is a physical body, your senses are physical, your brain is physical, and your memory is physical. All these aspects of life are subject to change, constant change, just as they are part of a relationship and relative to everything else which has a physical dimension.
Yet consciousness exists, we know it exists, even if the nature of consciousness escapes definition in physical terms.
Then who is the real you?
You are the emerging consciousness of the universe in physical form, is the simple answer. Your mind through which you experience the physical aspects of life is the space for your existence.
Your physical identity, your body, your Ego, your personality, your thoughts, your beliefs, your feelings, these are all transient, illusory, impermanent. You were once a baby, but are you a baby now? You can remember being a small child, but are you still a small child? Memory is just a recording of all the sensations and experiences you have gone through in life, the information, or in-formation of your developing consciousness.
What you think of as your life, the experience of the sensations, this is all consciousness from a given perspective at the very centre of your universe. You breathe the air, and the air becomes you. You drink water, and the water becomes you. You eat food, and the food becomes you. Then when you die the body you have created becomes part of this planet or its atmosphere.
It’s all energy, it’s all physicality, and as such it’s all constantly changing in a complex relationship with everything else that is physical. Yet you never look at a bar of chocolate, or a hamburger or piece of fruit and think to yourself “I’d like that apple to become me.” do you? You think of the sensations, the taste, the flavour and the experience of eating instead. Unless of course, you’re being scientific about it all and counting calories.
Understanding the flow of life
So this is where we get to karma. Karma is a Sanskrit word which simply means ‘action’ and nothing more than that. You can also take karma to mean ‘physicality’ or ‘physical form’ because karma is everything you do, and everything that happens to you. Karma is quite simply any and all physical activity.
Karma goes hand in hand with reincarnation quite simply because life goes hand in hand with death. Unlike many people who see life and death as two completely different things I see life, death and love as all one thing - existence. You can see this from the image above of the common phrase ‘in loving memory’ when we speak about those who have died or passed away. What else is a funeral, a cremation, an obituary or a gravestone but a celebration of someone’s life and their relationship to the living?
You see all the mysteries of life after death fall away when you dig deeper into the mysticism behind the experience. From the perspective of most people death is the best example there is of mysticism - you have an experience which you know that other people go through, you know that one day you will go through the experience yourself, but you don’t know how or when or what. This is what mysticism is - it’s the mystery of not knowing from a given perspective.
The difference between consciousness and physicality
I’m not sure whether you’ve ever had the experience of seeing how you’ve physically changed, by looking in the mirror, but you don’t feel any older. This is more noticeable if you’re a teenager going through puberty or later in life. You notice facial hair. The first few grey hairs. Wrinkles around the eyes. This is the difference between physicality and consciousness.
Similarly there’s the experience of the death of someone you knew or someone close to you, a relative, a friend, or even a neighbour. You experience the shock of knowing that person is no longer around, then the grief, the remorse, the anger, and the sadness. But then you might have also noticed that, in among all this grief and the emotional trauma of being forced to let go of your emotional and psychological attachments, you also experience a ‘rush of consciousness’ and the sensation of reaffirmation of your own life. Have you ever wondered why this is so?
It’s simple. This reaffirmation of life during the experience of bereavement occurs because consciousness is timeless, and is not subject to death. All what you lose when someone dies is the physical presence of that person, the relationship to their physical identity, and physical intimacy. But the consciousness and the connection you shared remains, survives death, and redefines the nature of your being and your existence.
It is this surviving connection that I wish to flag up and bring to your consciousness. I want to give you something to think about here. Let’s consider this for a moment. If the connection between you and someone else survives their death, yet everything that is lost is a matter of physical presence and identity, then is the death actually the end of the relationship?
This can only be the case if you are looking at life, death and bereavement from the perspective of just one life cycle. Think about this. Do you judge the nature and quality of your whole life from the experiences you have gone through in one single day? Or do you take into account everything you have experienced in your life from as far back as you can remember?
Trauma, attachment and flow
This is where we get to the whole point of mindfulness. Mindfulness is a vague, imprecise word and not many people understand what mindfulness actually is. The main reason why many people don’t quite understand what mindfulness is, and why mindfulness is absolutely necessary in life, is that quite often it is badly taught or badly explained.
Much of this comes down to the fact that there’s a very heavy emphasis in life on physicality, identity, belief and - in terms of Western society - logic and reasoning. Thinking alone makes up a large amount of the karma (physical activity) people create and generate in their lives and this is what shifts the emphasis onto identity, beliefs, reasoning, and attachments to physical form.
Throughout time there’s been a shift in the relationships religion has away from mysticism, which religion was originally developed to teach (so that you could learn mindfulness) and far more towards politics, doctrines, dogma and ideology. Politics is all about ideology, beliefs, and an emphasis on identity and physical form. As a result of this shift in emphasis away from teaching mysticism and mystical principles, and development through technology of a closer relationship with politics through doctrine, dogma and ideology, it’s fair to say that many people feel alienated from their environment, isolated, alone, and even marginalized from their communities and other people.
This is a recurring pattern throughout the course of human history. Taoism developed out of the tyranny of various dynasties in China. Buddhism also arose out of tyranny in India, Christianity out of the tyranny of the Roman Empire, Islam out of the tyranny in the Middle East, and Sikhism out of the tyranny of the Mughal (Islamic) occupation in India.
Mindfulness is liberation from attachment and past karma
Life, the experience, is very much like water - it’s meant to flow, not stagnate. Or air for that matter (think wind). The problem is that people generally become far too attached to physical form, identity, belief systems, even physical bodies and appearance, mainly because they’re socially and mentally conditioned to do so by other people, education, the Government, cultural icons, and so on and so forth.
This results in most people, and you might be one of these people (I know I was for quite a while) confusing mind and memory. This is where we all get stuck. The distinction between memory and mind is quite clear once you think about it. Your body is physical. Your brain is physical. Your memory is physical. Thinking and feeling are physical actions or activities. Therefore you have physical being and physical doing. Mind, or the mind, is the space in which all physical being and physical doing takes place. Mind is just playback for your sensory nervous system, it’s perception of sensation and experience, or the felt sense of immediate experience.
Now you might have heard of the expression ‘going out of your mind’, right? Well mindfulness is the exact opposite of going out of your mind. Mindfulness is when you move into your mind, give yourself space, and let go of your identity, beliefs, memories, and attachments to whatever physical phenomena is bothering you. Taking mindfulness to its extreme, it’s committing suicide without actually killing yourself or bringing about your physical death. Mindfulness in its extreme form is suicide of Ego, of identity, or if you prefer turning over a new leaf. Making a fresh start. That sort of thing.
If you dig through my other posts you will find a post about witnessing. I made the post some time ago when I was writing about Qultura methodology and preparing to write about Unmind. You see Buddhism and Taoism both advocate meditation and it’s not always made clear what the point of meditation actually is. Religion often advocates contemplation or prayer. The whole point of all this is to completely let go of your identity and attachments, let go completely of all physical form, and just be as you are in reality - consciousness.
Mindfulness is the simple path to humanity and empathy
You don’t have to take my word for it. This is something you can try out for yourself.
The next time you feel yourself consumed by some physical emotion - for example fear, anger, shock, disappointment, whatever - take yourself out of your identity and say to yourself “I am experiencing [whatever physical emotion or feeling]”. Do nothing. Simply be the witness to yourself and what you are going through.
What you should notice, as you step into witnessing, is that the power and intensity of the feeling or emotion dissipates completely and you immediately become fully conscious.
What you are doing is stepping out of memory and your thought process, and going into your mind. As you do this you create a relationship between your real self and your identity, you recover your humanity and through relationship become capable of empathy, because where you have relationship you also have a possibility of connection. This might seem counter-intuitive at first, but the key to exercising control over your thoughts, emotions and feelings is to surrender control by letting go of identity and memory. This is also known as being in the moment.
Mindfulness is the ability to separate yourself from your identity and physicality, recover your humanity and become fully conscious, and achieve a state where you can examine memory and resolve karma. Furthermore if you can do this with yourself, you can also do it in relationship with other people as well.
Try it out for yourself. Please feel free to come back and comment on your experiences.