Wish there was someone who could share and describe the experience after their death. As much as it is scary, life-after-death is equally thrilling to talk about. Though almost all cultures on Earth believe that the story doesn’t end with one’s death, none of them shows a solid proof of what will really happen after one's death.
(If you were wondering, Sirius is nothing but Mirigasirisha nakshatra. Remember the comedy sequence from the movie Chandramukhi where Rajinikanth tells Vadivelu that it is demons' favorite star?)
While these cultures had such intriguing beliefs, no wonder Indians had even more elaborate beliefs. As per Garudapurana, which is one of the 18 Puranas of Hindu Mythology, there is a dreaded river called
Vaitarani which is located midway between the world that we live in, and Naraka, the
City of Yama Raja, the God of Death. A soul that has departed its body has to
cross this river, after which it is judged at Yama’s place. Once the souls
are judged, they get to proceed to either the Heaven or the Hell. While a
righteous soul sees the Vaitarani river as though it is filled with nectar, it
is a totally different case for the sinful souls. For them, it is said that the
Vaitarani river is very frightening, filled with blood and heaps of bones on
the bank. It is crowded with huge crocodiles and flesh eating birds, and filthy
with faeces and urine. The souls that are left astray on the river will have to
go through the torture without even getting a chance to go to the Hell and to be born again in some form at a later time. These souls that
have not passed the Vaitarani are considered as “ghosts” who have not passed on
for the next “journey”, and are stuck midway. And wait, that is not all.
Garudapurana also lists 28 different terrifying punishments used in the Hell
based on the sins committed by the souls. Just for the sake of sanity, I would
like to refrain from elaborately explaining the punishments. If you still
insist on knowing more, click on the below picture.
Quite interesting from everything above, there is an interpretation (or perhaps not an interpretation at all, but just based on pure
"knowing") from the ancient yogis about what happens after death. As
per the spiritual tradition, what is oneself is just the soul, but not the body or
the mind. During the moment of death, when a soul departs its physical body, it loses the discretionary mind which usually helps someone spring back to routine
after anything. Hence after losing the discretionary mind, whatever the
tendency at the moment of death is, it multiplies. If someone dies in peace,
the peacefulness grows exponentially within the soul. On the other hand, if someone leaves unwillingly
or in sorrow, this will multiply into something terrible within them that it
feels “Hell-like” and lasts much longer. (Now you know why they wish the dead, “RIP- Rest In Peace”!) So basically, Heaven and Hell are just
experiential realities of the soul that departed the body, rather than “geographical
entities”, such as underworld, higher worlds etc. And this makes much sense,
and perhaps the stories in Garudapurana were all allegorical to this fact!
~
