I have been thinking a lot about death recently. This is due to several reasons; the need to draw up a new Will; the impending inquest into my younger brother James’s death a year ago; the growing sense of growing older, with the days and weeks and years seeming to go by ever quicker, and my memory being sparked recently by re-reading my semi-philosophical musings on death and the concept of Heaven and Hell after my time in Indonesia 6 years ago.
My reflections are not morbid, but rather an acceptance that death awaits me and it is not something to be afraid of, but could indeed be welcomed as a relief after a difficult life. However, I must not dwell too much on this subject as it becomes self-fulfilling, and if my new young wife Kali knew that I was thinking about death, she would of course be extremely upset. In fact, it is my darling Kali who has given me a new lease of life, late in my life, and I owe it to her to be careful and maintain my health and vitality as long as possible.
In my musings on Heaven and Hell after talking to Pak Baha in Indonesia in 2008, I said that
“There is no Heaven except what we create in our minds and in this world;
There is no Hell except what we create in our minds and in this world”
What I did NOT say was:
“There is no God except what we create in our minds and in this world”. This is because I actually DO believe in God or Allah, despite my agnosticism or lack of faith in a particular RELIGION. I said to Pak Baha that I believed there was ONE God, that Christians and Muslims and Jews all worshipped the same God. Pak Baha said to me that if I believed in God, (it therefore followed that) one day I would believe in what He says (in the Qu’ran).
Pak Baha also said that Man always strives for Eternal Life (Immortality), he never wants to die. I now see that there are many circumstances in which death would actually be welcomed.
I pray to God when I am in difficulties, or someone close to me is ill or in trouble. I ask Him that something good will come from what I am doing in my work; I see God at work in many different people in many different ways. I believe, as John F Kennedy said in his Presidential Inauguration speech, that “here on earth God’s work must truly be our own.”
The more I look into the sky, and at the stars and galaxies in outer space, and the deeper we peer into the Universe with the most powerful radio telescopes, the more I believe there IS a God. I cannot believe this was all created by pure chance. Even that respected atheist Dr Stephen Hawking says there must be “God Particles”
I also re-read what I wrote regarding Paradise last year. In that writing I said that the concept of living for eternity was itself a form of Hell, I could not envisage living FOR EVER. But being dead forever is another matter.
I find it therefore relevant to quote W.B. Yeats from his poem “Under Ben Bulben”,
“Many times man lives and dies
Between his two Eternities”.
I understand just what he means.
C. Tim Taylor 2014