The immutable self within us

Abstract

Developments in modern medicine and health systems have resulted in a general increase in the life span of human beings. The average life span of human beings is now nearly 78 years. Despite this all living beings are subjected to an universal law, which any amount of scientific discovery cannot challenge. All of us inevitably go through the birth and death cycle. The only difference is the available span of time between these two events. Some live for long, in excess of 90 years and many live for about 60 – 65 years. When this thought overwhelms us it instills a sense of fear in us. We do not know when death will strike us, we also do not know what happens to us after death. Thus the fear of the unknown and the uncertainty of the event are both the source for our discomfort when we think about this issue. We also have another dimension to our life. Look at our aspirations and priorities in life. We make serious efforts and work hard to acquire greater wealth (bank balance, a carefully planned and closely monitored investment portfolio), immovable assets (couple of apartments in big cities, a farm house in the country side, time share in holiday resorts, some plots in a new layout in an upcoming city, agricultural land, to name a few), power, position and importance in the society, friendship with power centres, politicians, and police and proximity to religious heads and opinion makers. All these point to a tremendous sense of permanence we assume about life that death is almost an impossible event. If death can strike us at any time, then all these appear illogical given the magnitude of hardship we go through in attaining these..................