In August, I was guest for a week in Swami Bhoomananda's ashram in Thrissur in the southwest of India and discovered a great book in the library of the ashram which I would like to share with you:

"Insights into Bhagavad Gita" by Swami Bhoomananda Tirtha (ed. 2019).

The Bhagavad Gita is an important scripture in Hinduism, which comprises 700 verses and was written in the first or second century after Christ. It contains the well-known dialogue between prince Arjuna and Krishna in the roles of student and teacher exchanging important pearls of wisdom in the middle of a battlefield. Many people in India have studied these verses thoroughly and many Swamis have written books about it with comments on the verses.

Swami Bhoomananda is a now 90-year-old man with a razor-sharp mind, who wears a large round golden dot on his forehead, no longer hears so well and whose favorite color is orange (everything in the ashram is orange: the clothes of the Swamijis, the color of the house walls, the curtains, the chairs, the microphones, even the trash cans are orange...). He leads the Ashram together with his two companions and former students Swamini Ma Guruprija (the only female Swami I met in 5 months of India and who has an impressively matured (leadership) personality) and Swami Nirviseshananda Tirtha.

When I first meet Swami Bhoomananda, his eyes lit up when I ask him how he is doing (mostly he has to listen to others how they are doing). I am telling him that I find the big dot on his forehead very pretty and that orange is also my favorite color. Swami Bhoomananda enthusiastically tells me that orange is the color of purity and wants to explain more, but then we are interrupted by his employees because his global live broadcast for the Satsang is just about to start and his YouTube followers are waiting for him.

Let's talk about a taboo topic: DEATH

This much in advance: I do not want to start a big discussion about death and certainly do not want to advise anything or, even worse, teach what attitude and perspective one should have in relation to death. This is a deeply subjective topic where everyone must find their own truth. I can say this because I lost my father and mother as a young woman and therefore know from experience what loss feels like. I know what horrible pain you go through when the person dies who is most important to you on earth. I have already thought a lot about death in my life. But just as Buddhism also recommends, everyone should form their own opinion which feels coherent and then deal with the consequences of this attitude. In this opinion-forming process, however, it is valuable to get to know different perspectives.

When leafing through the book "Insights into Bhagavad Gita", I discovered on page 64 a comment by Swami Bhoomananda on the subject of death which I find very beautiful. He offers an alternative concept to the widespread dogma "Death-is-the-end-and-then-comes-nothing-anymore":

He is writing that death is not a final stop, but a transition. As an example, he cites that our body is also exposed to lifelong transitions. In the course of our lives, our body visibly changes, as we first are born as a small baby with maybe 50cm and then grow up to a person of 170cm height by average within a decade and a half. This means that our body size quadruples over the course of our lives. With every breath we take we change, with every breath we take we get a fraction older. We are never static beings, neither in biological terms, nor in psychological terms, nor in any other way. The steady flow of energy is a natural state.

Death is not a final stop, but a transition

You can also observe it well with a tree because its growth cycle is visible to the naked eye. Every day the tree looks a little different, first there are buds on its branches, then a few days later flowers, then they become small green apples and at some point we walk past the tree and the apples are red. But here, too, the cycle does not stop, because the apples shrink, they fall off, the branch loses its leaves and appears bald and dead at the beginning of winter. But hidden from our eye are the inner forces of the tree, which it preserves and uses deep in its trunk to produce new forms of magnificent flowers in spring. Would we ever say that the tree stands still, or is dead, even if it looks bald in winter?

A dead tree as metaphor...

And when the tree gets very old, its branches break one day and it collapses into dust and decays: Would the fungus, which now grows happily on the broken tree bark, say that the tree is dead and no longer gives energy? Would the flowers that bloom in the humus of the fallen tree say that the tree is dead and no longer gives them energy? Would the small tree that slumbers in the ground as a seed from the old tree say that the tree is dead and no longer gives it energy, even though it has already taken root and a small green germ is sprouting out of it?

The verse of the Bhagavad Gita on page 73 says impressively: "As clothes that are put on the body are discarded and new ones worn instead, so the indwelling spirit leaves aging bodies, and takes up new ones." Change is everlasting and there is never an end to change, even death is not an end, but a transition to something new. We humans are beings that are constantly changing and our energy is never lost. The Indians say "Prana", the cosmic primal energy or life energy that is inherent in every living being and exists for all time. Basic physics also confirms that energy can never be lost, it only changes its form. The exciting conclusion from this realisation:

“No one will ever die […] The wise people do not grieve over death. […] Think beyond what the eyes show.” 

(Insights into Bhagavad Gita, Swami Bhoomananda Tirtha, page 64)

Hidden at this point is our opportunity for growth and knowledge as humanity, exactly here we have a blind spot in my opinion, because we often only believe what we see with the naked eye or can prove with the currently available scientific methods. I wonder when did we collectively decided as society to move away from a spiritual way of life and eradicate all that is hidden from the eye only relying only on our sensory capacity for perception? When exactly did we lose the spiritual roots of our Celtic and Germanic forefathers and mothers, who partly were so much broader in their consciousness than we are today? How about taking note that energy is never lost, not even the energy that is inherent in the bodies of our loved ones because it finds another form of existence after the biological death?

How about thinking about this thought and finding out that death cannot be a final stop, but rather a new beginning?

Enjoy looking at this perspective with curiosity.

Lots of Love,

Your Salome