Life After Death

By J.P. Vaswani

Death is the one eternal verity of life. One thing is certain— we shall cease to live on this earth one day. But what is death? What follows after? Is death the absolute end? These are all unanswered questions.

This book will dispel your fears and doubts and cast a light over the darkness of death. Lucidly, with anecdotes, stories and real-life incidents, Dada J.P. Vaswani shows us that death is not to be feared, but it is an aspect of existence that we have to come to terms with. In his inimitable words, we have to “cultivate friendship with death”.

Inspiring and comforting this book will give you a profound understanding of the mystery that is death.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Gita Publishing House
• Release date: Mar 17, 2020
• ISBN: 9789386004307

J.P. Vaswani

Dada J. P. Vaswani is the author of over 200 self-help and inspirational titles, including the bestselling Daily Appointment with God and Why Do Good People Suffer? One of contemporary India’s leading nonsectarian spiritual leaders, his books are filled with enlightening anecdotes from world traditions and practical wisdom that helps many people to start living confident, fulfilling, and connected lives. Dada, as he is known to his admirers and followers, has held audiences with prominent world leaders, including the Dalai Lama, Mother Teresa, and Pope John Paul II. As the spiritual head of the Sadhu Vaswani Mission, he has been a tireless advocate for animal rights and non-violence for the past half century. Visit him online at www.sadhuvaswani.org. One of India’s foremost spiritual leaders, J. P. Vaswani is the author of more than two hundred inspirational and self-help books, most of them bestsellers. A scientist-turned-philosopher, he is widely admired all over the world for his message of practical optimism.

Book preview

THERE IS NO DEATH!

*

Have you ever asked yourselves the question: What is this world, this earth on which you and I find ourselves? What is it? To this question a number of answers have been given. One of the answers which, to me, appears to be significant, is: "The world is a travellers’ inn. The world is a musafirkhana, a caravanserai." We all are travellers. We are here on a short visit. Life at its longest is so brief. You may live to be centenarians. Yet the day will come in the life of everyone when, bidding adieu to his wife and children, his friends and relatives, his kith and kin, his properties and possessions, the institutions he has founded and nourished with the love of his heart— man will quit the scenes of life. Man is here as a traveller.

There is a significant little story told us concerning the king of Balkh. Ibrahim was his name. He was a great king. He had everything that the world could give. He was a master of pleasures and possessions and power. But his heart was not happy: there was within him a sense of emptiness. His soul was in quest. Of what— he did not know.

One day, suddenly, a stranger enters the king’s court and, quietly spreading his carpet on the floor, lies down on it. The king is naturally offended at his strange conduct and says to him: What do you take my palace to be?

Quietly says the stranger to the king: I thought this is a travellers’ inn!

What do you mean by calling my palace a travellers’ inn? asks the king.

And the stranger says to him, O king, pray do not get angry with me. But do answer my question. Tell me who lived in this palace before you occupied it?

And the king says: Before me, my father lived in the palace.

Where is your father now? asks the stranger.

And the king says: He is dead and gone!

And who lived in the palace before your father occupied it?

The king answers: My grandfather occupied the palace before my father lived in it.

And where is your grandfather, now? asks the stranger.

The king answers: My grandfather is dead and gone!

And who lived in the palace before your grandfather occupied it?

The king says: My great grandfather lived in the palace before my grandfather occupied it.

And where is your great grandfather now? asks the stranger.

Again the king answers: My great grandfather is dead and gone!

Then surely, says the stranger, this is a travellers’ inn. For people come here, occupy this place for a while, then move on! You, too, O king, will have to move on!

So saying, the stranger vanished as suddenly as he had appeared. But the words of the stranger lingered long in the heart of the king. And he said to himself: This is not a palace: this is a travellers’ inn. Indeed, the whole world is a travellers’ inn. So many are born everyday; so many die everyday. This earth is not our Home. Where, then, is our true Home, leaving which we have come to this earth plane for a special purpose? Alas! we have forgotten the purpose, and we keep on chasing the shadow-shapes of pleasures and possessions and power!

These and other thoughts come to the king. And sometimes you find him keeping awake in the middle of the night, asking himself the question: What is the purpose of my visit to the earth plane? Why am I here? And where is my Home?

One night, he hears a Voice. It says to him: O king, if you want an answer to your questions, renounce, renounce!

The king renounces the palace: he renounces the throne. Like the Buddha, he puts off his royal robes and puts on the garments of a fakir, a wandering mendicant. Donning the robes of a fakir, he moves on from place to place. Within him is the question: "What is the meaning of the mystery of this endless adventure of existence? What is life? And what is death?

We are told he comes to India and spends some years in the company of a holy man. I have not the time to give you the moving, thrilling story of this monarch who becomes a mystic, this sovereign who becomes a saint. I merely wished to tell you that his awakening began with the thought that this world is a travellers’ inn. We all are travellers. Our stay on earth is for a limited period. As we came to this earth plane, one day, we shall have to move out of it.

Farid was a great saint of Multan. He has left a number of wonderful slokas which still are sung in many homes. In one of his slokas, he says: O Farid! Your father and your elder brother have already passed on! Soon, your turn will come! The children that are left behind— they, too, will have to move on to the Other Shore!

No one has stayed on the earth forever. No one can stay on the earth forever. Leaving the earth is what we call death, even as coming to the earth is called birth. Death is a natural phenomenon. For whosoever is born must surely die. Why, then, are we afraid of death?

* Notes of a Lecture

DEATH IS SWEET AS SLEEP

A sister said to me: Whenever I think of death, my whole body begins to tremble in fear. We, many of us, I know, are afraid of death. And the very first thought that I would wish to pass on to you today is: Let us not be afraid of death. Death is a natural phenomenon. Moreover, death is a very pleasant experience. Death is just like going off to sleep.

Of all the experiences with which we are familiar, the sweetest is that of sleep. There is nothing sweeter than sleep. Sleep is such a sweet experience that the thought of it made the great English poet, Coleridge, exclaim: O sleep! It is a gentle thing, beloved from pole to pole! And Tennyson, who was gifted with deeper insight, tells us, in his In Memorium, that sleep is death’s twin brother. Death is as sweet as going off to sleep. And death is a natural phenomenon. Why, then, must we fear death?

In a number of messages that have been received from the spirit world, we are told that the state of death is utterly painless. Before death, a man might have passed through a serious illness, on account of which his body might have experienced great physical pain: but in the few moments before death occurs, all pain ceases, and man has the most pleasant of sensations that he has ever experienced. We are also told that, after death, man continues to be what he was before death. Man remains unchanged. All his characteristics— his thoughts, his emotions, his desires, his memories— are the same; they are unchanged.

A spirit is reported to have said: We feel the change just as a serpent might feel, perhaps, when it has left the slough. Serpents change their outer coverings which are called slough. The serpent continues to live in a new skin. The serpent is the same: it has only put off its old skin and worn a new one. That is just what happens to man in death. He puts off his outer body, the phyisical body.

Everyone of us, right now, has more than one body. To give you an illustration which you may easily understand, a man wears a shirt: over it he wears a coat: and over it, in the cold of winter, he wears an overcoat. When the man puts off the overcoat, he continues to be the same man: only instead of being clothed in an overcoat, we see him clothed in a coat.

This is what happens to man in death. He puts off his overcoat, or what we call the physical, the gross body, and he is clothed in what, for the time being, I would call the astral body. The man continues to be the same, even as I would continue to be the same, if I took off this shawl. I would then appear to you in my shirt, but I would continue to be the same man.

Man