I Am Dying, But Don't Be Alarmed

The statement 'I am dying' looks a bit dramatic and appears to have the implication that, I son of such and such parents, am busy in the act of dying  at Lahore, this 27th of August, 2.30am PST. But certainly it is not the case. At least this is not what I intend to do, right now.

However, the fact remains not only that I am busy dying now  but have been doing so persistently and whole heartedly, but very gradually and imperceptibly, all the time during most of my sixty five years of age. Let me elaborate.

We have a date of birth, all of us. But were we really born on that date? The birth of a child does not start happening with a mother's pains nor does it culminate with the end of those pains. Every one knows, and the mother knows best, that birth is not an instant event that takes place on a certain calendar date. In reality birth is an evolutionary process which takes some nine months to complete. As regards the calendar date of birth, it is increasingly being determined by the attending gynecologist. So we started being born long before the date on which our existence became legally recognized. Again, ask the Mother!

Death is likewise, with exceptions, a long drawn and gradual process. We start dying at some indefinite moment, after our physical and mental growth has peaked, during early thirties or around; and we continue to endure this process ever after.

A part of me had already been dead, I remember quiet visibly, at the start of my forties. I had lost a bit of my eye sight. Then, during early fifties I developed backache. The ortho told me it was the result of an 'ageing' bone. What I really understood was that some of my bone had died. Then came memory, And so forth. And I am now in an advanced stage of the dying process. I do not know when and how it is going to culminate. I have only very limited control in this regard.

It is curious that we are so sentimental about death. I think here is a need to change the way we think about this. We should treat 'life' as a resource given  by God with more or less autonomous power, and duty, to use that resource in an economic way with the aim of getting optimal results in order to fulfill the divine purpose. This resource being limited, gets smaller and smaller through continuous expenditure and waste. So with every bit of expenditure of the given resource, a part of us has died.

Life is, as I look upon it, some higher type of potential energy packed into us by the supreme Creator. We have been given the option to use this stored energy constructively to generate maximum happiness for ourself and for those around us. We also have the choice to squander our wealth of energy on worthless deeds or even misuse it and create unhealthy conditions for ourselves, for our children and for community at large. Whichever way we choose to go, we keep expending ourself continuously, keep dying by the millimeter.

Thus our perception of Death as a definite event, which lies  in some mysterious, dreadful and remote future, seems to be a self deception. Death is not an event. And death does not lie in the future. Death is a process, and the process of dying is running concurrently with life. We die as we live on. This is true generally with some exceptions!

There are times death comes as an event. We call it an untimely death. Death through war and widely spreading disease and death caused by accidents and natural disasters can be cited as examples. The modern method of  killing unsuspecting, innocent (or not so innocent?) persons through suicide bombing or target hitting is a note worthy example of the most 'eventful' of deaths.

Dear friends and visitors,

Here is the home where every fair minded , free thinking and kind hearted individual can take residence. Here every law abiding citizen of humanity has the right to contribute and share. No hate and universal love is the way. Here we make a solemn resolution, and a firm promise, that we will not say anything nor do anything that is likely to hurt any human being. We further resolve and undertake that we will do every thing in our power, by sacrificing our time, comfort and money, to help bring a positive change in our environment.