Death is the hopeless end of all our aspirations of success
and happiness at the material level of reality. At that final moment of our
life, all that we have accumulated and aspired for is taken away from us
irrevocably.
Indeed, the finality of death is so grim, so cruel, and so
hopeless that we often prefer not to think about it at all. Just as an ostrich
hopes to evade danger by putting its head into an owl, so too do we hope to
evade the hopeless end of death. But just as the ostrich’s strategy fails, so
does our strategy.
For countering death’s ghastly finality, spiritual knowledge
offers us a more fruitful strategy: raise our consciousness to the level of
reality that is beyond destruction – spiritual level. We are at our core souls,
indestructible spiritual beings. The Bhagavad-gita (02.30) declares that the
soul which pervades and animates all living beings is indestructible.
For us as souls, death is not a termination, but a
transition – not the termination of our very existence, but the transition of
our existence from one level to another. Understanding this changes our vision
of life: life is not doomed to end, but is destined for endlessness.
To elevate our understanding of life from endless to endless
hopeful, we need to gain a further spiritual realization – the realization of
eternal, unfailing love in the spiritual arena. We are not just eternal beings,
but are also eternal parts of the supreme spiritual being, Krishna. He loves us
eternally and in realizing his unfailing love, we gain undying hope.
Understanding that he loves us always, irrespective of what we have or don’t
have, what we do or don’t, who we are or aren’t, fills us with a hope that
nothing can steal from us.
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