Talking about after life, what do we carry with us from this life to the next or for that matter have carried forward from the last life to this one? The mind, the heart, the brain, the unfulfilled wishes or just only the soul? Do the memories, the histories and all the learnings acquired over so many years accompany us? Can the mind change completely so much so that the intrinsic type gets altered? If one’s mind is always full of good wishes for others in this life, can he/she become a criminal in the next?
Apparently, we travel luggage-free. Neither carry-on nor check-in, absolutely nothing. Just the starting point and the class of transport are handed over to us. If you are lucky (what is luck by the way? but I will come to that later), you probably get a business class ticket with a facility to lie down full-length but more often than not you just manage to stand on one foot in an overcrowded bus. From there a life-long journey ensues through the ups and downs and twists and turns and everything gets lost when you get down or thrown out from the bus. A new set boards before you are out and gets to know the past from you but for you in particular everything goes into oblivion once you are out of the game. It is again back to square one and you board the same bus sometime somewhere once again as a complete rookie and thus goes the eternal journey without any apparent purpose or destination.
So what does luck, the difference in the class of ticket, really mean? Is it that inexplicable factor which separates the haves and have-nots or is it the result of either good karma or bad karma? In that case we really carry something! So rather than indulgence, should we put all our energy and focus on creating a bank balance of good karma to get a good ticket for the next chance? But if I neither know who I’ll be next time nor I’ll remember anything about this life in the next and who had set aside his savings for me, will it really be the same “I”? And does it make sense to focus on a life-long recurring deposit for an unknown person who will never ever know you?
I started this post with the question about what we carry with us. But now I am confused about what is even meant by “us”! What about you?
Idle Sunday Readings 
If you think that you only have right to “Karma” without any expectation about the “result”, then many of these questions can be seen from a different light. And please remember no two states are same for you – there is always a delta change – and integration over those deltas actually gives ” eternal life “
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Thank you for visiting my blog. Yes, I agree to this but still it is not easy to fit all the blocks of this puzzle together. The connection or the lack of it between each state is what I am questioning here.
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What a thoughtful article you have written. I totally understand what you are asking here but don’t have a good answer. It is so confusing, isn’t it? Sometimes, I feel that if I look at myself as a third person, then I really become inconsequential or rather I am one with everyone. What “I” feel no longer matters, because there will be million others like me feeling the same “sadness” or “pain”. It helps me get through pain..being one with all the million others in pain. But yes, death, “I”, next life are so confusing.
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Thank you for your thoughts. Yes, how each of us fit together and relate to each other in this giant scheme of things is pretty interesting. We probabbly are supposed to graduate from “I” to “we” over the course of time and lives.
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Also wanted to say, I love your writing.
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Thank you so much.
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The questions you ask are eternal, and perhaps nobody has answers to them. May I recommend you the Upanishads, if you have not already read them, as one approach to seek the answers.
The trick is (from what I have understood in my readings of them with my rather limited intellect) is to get off the bus and never board it again. Breaking free of the cycle of Karma. And, that only happens when you let dissolve the “I” into the Eternal. As long as you are thinking that you are saving/investing for somebody…you have lost the plot 🙂 You will have it all once “You” cease to exist separately and see yourself in Everything. (That is as tautological as it gets I guess)
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