Around 3 weeks ago I found two, wild, rat kittens lying on a path whilst birds swooped down and pecked at them, not to eat but to eliminate a perceived threat. It was apparent that the modeling of these particular bird brains did not allow them to discern the different levels of threat between a baby and adult rat, only that all rats are a threat. At first I couldn’t make out what lay on the path, I walked over to find a little body laying there with eyes still firmly closed and a cut to the side of it’s abdomen in the shape of a bird peak. I instinctively picked him up. A little way to the side lay his brother with a bigger cut to his head. I carried them around in my hands for a while, attempting to keep them warm whilst trying to decipher where they’d come from and was there any possibility of returning them to their nest. With the threat of birds overhead it wasn’t feasible to leave them on the path for their mother to retrieve them. Unfortunately no nest could be located so I took them in and spent the next two weeks nursing them first with baby formula and then gradually weaning them onto solid foods. Gradually their eyes and ears opened and they began exploring their purpose-built cage to house them until they were old enough to be released back into the wild. What I found most surprising was the distance and speed they moved at when still totally blind, as though they were simply too impatient to wait for their eyes to open and would get on with exploring anyhow. Perhaps they were precocious learners.
At the 3 week mark, it seemed like we had made it. They were fully weaned, growing in size, and were far more balanced with their movements. And yet, Pip’s breathing had changed. Each time he breathed in he produced a clicking sound and his breathing rate was ever so fast. He had pulled himself out of his nest box one morning and was laying in what I would have considered too exposed an area for a rat and everything about his behaviour was muted and diminished. By the late afternoon he had passed away.
I had the rare opportunity of holding him in my hands during the final couple of hours. I witnessed the transition from life into death. This experience raised several questions in myself both during and after the event. Would it be right to interfere with the process and take him to a vet to “save” his life? What is the relevance of his body once he’s died and where is “he” now?
Should I have attempted to “save” Pip with medical intervention?
The answer to this question depends very much on which culture you have been raised in. It also depends on what your belief system is. For simplicity’s sake, I will define the West as containing the Christian, Muslim, and Judaism faiths. The East includes Buddhism, Taoism, Hinduism, Jainism, etc.
The Western faiths believe that there is only one life. Once you die, you head either to heaven or hell. This belief gives you two options of living. You can make the most of it, as time is running out. Alternatively, you can rely on Heaven as the ultimate goal. It is viewed as an everlasting life. This makes what happens on Earth seem irrelevant. The East believes something very different. They believe you have infinite lives. You are constantly reborn once one life has ended. This cycle continues to increase your level of consciousness until you reach enlightenment and return to the Source. In the West, religion has been steadily declining. What’s interesting is that even if you’re an atheist with a strong disdain for religion, you have been socially conditioned. You still believe there is only one life. This is because religion is so deeply embedded in our societies. This permeates deeply through all levels of our behaviour, so imagine how differently you might behave if you not only believed but knew that your life force/energy/soul was brought back into a living body after each death. Perhaps life wouldn’t be such a rush to reach the top, feeling like time was always running out; perhaps you wouldn’t be filled with anxiety of having to achieve things earlier in life in order to have time and money to enjoy and experience things as you age. What about your job? What about your body? Think about your responsibilities. How do these all change when you consider that perhaps there isn’t one life only for each of us? #YOLO (You Only Live Once) sounds like a pretty ridiculous handle but an unfortunate representation of how people can and do behave with that belief system. For those unfamiliar with #YOLO, it is an abbreviation used for behaving recklessly under the assumption that you only live once so should make the most out of life, whether it’s binge drinking and drug sessions, unprotected sex, dangerous stunts, you get the drift.
Osho very succinctly puts into words our Western social conditioning on death.
“We have been taught for centuries that death is against life, that death is the enemy of life, that death is the end of life. Of course, we are scared and cannot relax, cannot be in a let-go. And if you cannot be in a let-go with death, you will remain tense in your life, because death is not separate from life.”
To speak of death in the West in terms other than how to increase longevity and achieve immortality is seen as taboo, perverse, religious or spiritual nonsense or farcical, such is the fear and lack of understanding of it. My experience with Pip and my own personal exploration into Eastern philosophy and the Buddhist understanding of the mind has led me to question the truth of a “one life only” paradigm. At this stage I am still full of questions and so the idea that your life force is reseeded in another body is still something to be further explored, to find my own understanding and experience this for myself by way of meditation, yet I have a strong sense of knowing that I’m on the right path.
My exploration into all of this led me onto something really interesting on how we have been socially conditioned to believe in either one life or many.
Jesus, Mohammed, Buddha, Krishna, etc. were all great teachers of their times and the manner in which they shared their teachings was dependent upon the social behaviours of their societies in their eras and regions. It’s worth noting that religions did not attach themselves to their teachings until after their deaths, in the case of Buddha, some 500 years after his death and one should therefore be careful not to confuse religious dogma and agenda with the pure teachings of these men. In the case of the Eastern teachers they had known for thousands of years that reincarnation was true, it wasn’t only a theory that was taught but had anecdotal evidence to support it. Jesus and Moses were known to have traveled to India and would have therefore come across these teachings and evidence and yet upon their return to the West they didn’t share this with their disciples. The reason was that they had noted how the theory of reincarnation had made the Indians very lethargic in life; when you know you will have multiple lives, what is the rush in doing anything. This wasn’t the case though when Buddha and Krishna originally shared their teachings hundreds of years previously, in fact, India was a rich country then with very bored people, so they painted a picture of having to live with the same boredom life after life, whipping people into shape and encouraging them to pursue meditation and enlightenment. But then India entered into a period of poverty, still grasping on the theory of reincarnation, they now found themselves hoping for an escape in their next life. This life hasn’t worked out, maybe the next one will. This escapism resulted in avoidance of living to the fullest and the postponement of living. Jesus and Moses saw this and realised the strategy was no longer working, so on their return to the West they shared a different story, one where you only have one life so if you want to enlighten, if you want to meditate, do it now, don’t put it off till tomorrow, time is ticking. And it is through this mechanism that the West has now become pathological with it’s concept of time and linear living. Just like with Buddha and Krishna, Jesus, Mohammed and Moses’ teachings worked for the era that they lived but there comes a time when the framework of society shifts and holding onto old teachings can be detrimental. It is for this reason that you shouldn’t accept any belief you hold without having first questioned it fully.
To take this back to the question then of whether medical intervention was necessary depends, partly, on how strongly you believe in one life vs many. In the West it seems now more than ever that we cannot accept that people die, everyone must be saved and strong, violence-based terms are used to combat, attack, fight, destroy illnesses or diseases as though death is the enemy rather than a natural process. It is as though people have forgotten that we are nature and nature can end this life at any time. As such, people are not dying naturally at home like they might have done only some 150 years ago but instead make frequent hospital trips for intensive and extensive treatment up to the day they die. Personally this sounds incredibly stressful and a fight to avoid death means fear will hold strong in those final moments, dying at home or in nature is the way I want to go.
I recall a news report a few years back in Australia of a young man who died as a result of a shark attack when he was out surfing. As he was sat on his board with his legs dangling over the sides, a sizeable shark bit his legs. His friends around him went to grab him and pull him ashore and uncharacteristically the shark didn’t let go as they normally would when making an error in food source. There was a tug of war and eventually the shark swam off, leaving the friends to pull the young man ashore. On the beach it was evident he’d lost at least one of his legs and was bleeding profusely. All of this sounds horrific, like a scene of out Jaws (a film that plays our your fear of dying violently) and yet his friends recounted that he was totally calm and asked that they pass along his love to his loved ones before dying. It was highly likely that his body had responded to the shock of the attack preventing him from feeling pain and allowing him to peacefully move on which in one sense was perfect. It was those that had witnessed the event that most likely suffered the worst of it and without the wisdom of an elder it will only reinforce that death is something to be feared.
I should probably make it clear that I do believe in medical intervention, however there is a fine line between knowing when to let go and when you are simply avoiding dying out of fear of death and I think the ease of finding this line can only be put down to how enlightened both the person dying is as well as the person caring for them. Having said this if you live a life close to nature following it’s natural rhythms with a healthy attitude towards death, there shouldn’t be too much opportunity for medical intervention as you lead a life of preventative care.
Does your body make you you?
Imagine for a moment that the essence, the life force, the soul, whichever term you feel is relevant, of your loved one was moved out of their body and into another and into their body was placed another life force. Which body would you feel that same connection to, would it be the body that looks like them, or the body that contains their energy, their personality, behavioural patterns etc?
In the process of Pip passing away in my hands, his breathing became slower and slower until finally he breathed in but didn’t breathe out again. Almost instantly he became unrecognisable, something drastically had changed and yet all the identifiable features of his body remained. The scar of the bird beak on his head was still there. Yet after that moment of dying his body was that of any rat which lead me to truly knowing that his body wasn’t HIM, it was merely a meat suit or a shell that housed his true essence. What that true essence is though I know only to describe as his energy force which vibrated at a specific frequency, a fingerprint unique to him.
On a basic level your body is little more than an assimilation of memory based around the framework of a genetic blueprint heralding back from all your ancestors and evolutionary history (more than a few terabytes of data there.) As you operate your body through life it picks up more memory through the environments you expose it to, the substances it consumes, the knowledge it acquires and then should you have offspring, this memory is passed on through genetics. I am not suggesting that you should disregard your body as little more than a vessel, in fact, I am of the view that the body should be well looked after with and understanding of how to maintain homeostatic internal process through allostasis and that through doing this you can use your body to further your process of enlightenment, however it is not to believe that your body IS you.
So if your body doesn’t make you you, then what does and if you’ve spent your life defining yourself by your appearance how will this affect you?
This requires an even deeper dive into a fundamental understanding of the mind and the Eastern philosophies that I shall perhaps cover in another blog if anyone is interested. However if I mention something in short, it would be that the ultimate goal is to achieve enlightenment, in doing so you free yourself from the Earthly realm. To go about achieving enlightenment is to basically work through your issues. Every single thing you think you know about yourself needs to be overturned and examined and by doing this you slowly rid yourself of your conditioned beliefs, your angry outbursts, your patterns of cheating on your partner, your need to consume alcohol to get through life etc. Every time you rid yourself of one of these patterns you’ve taken a step closer to enlightenment. My understanding is that during each lifetime, you work through as much as you can and when you’re reborn in your next life you start from where you left off. Therefore if you spend a lifetime believing you are your body you have in one sense wasted a life and will be born at the same level of consciousness that you died, finding yourself in an endless loop of suffering.
And so I find that little Pip who only graced my life for two short weeks has helped me shape my views on dying and living, perhaps I’ll meet him again.
This blog is not force you to believe anything different to what you already know and understand but to have you question those beliefs and to question how you’ve come to believe what you believe – has it been through personal enquiry or because “that’s what I’ve always known”, and therefore, social conditioning?
“It’s an absolute certain fact that people die, animals die, trees die, birds die. How can you avoid the fact that you are also going to die – maybe tomorrow, maybe the day after tomorrow? It is only a question of time. But still, those who are aware of their being know that nobody dies. Death is an illusion”. Osho, Death: The Greatest Fiction.
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