The Seventh Heaven

Aging is naturally linked with death. Some people, priests among them, will have us believe that life on earth should be looked upon as the highway to heaven. Logically, our desire to live in this world drives our lifestyles.

What happens after we die? Where do we go? Dust unto dust? Yes, that's physical death. Do we believe in the Soul? Many of us do, but most of us are skeptical about the concepts of afterlife, heaven and hell.

I did much research on the subject while writing the first edition of my book UNDERSTANDING HINDUISM (being enlarged as ESSENCE OF HINDUISM).

The early Hindus, contraryto general belief, never believed in heaven and never prayed to attain a permanent place there. The earliest concept of afterlife, say Vedic scholars, was that the souls of the dead reunite with Nature and live in some other form on earth.

As William Wordsworth wrote, "with rocks and stones and trees", whereas I add: "With the birds, the bees and the butterflies."

Reverting to the early Vedic hymns, one finds an eloquent invocation to the fire god (Agni), beseeching the deity to assimilate the dead in the natural world, the environment. Says the Rig Veda: "Burn him not, scorch him not, O Agni, consume him not entirely, afflict him not ... May his (or her) eye go to the Sun, to the world the soul or to the waters if it suits him there or abide by
his (or her) members in the plants."