So, I finally figured it out... I think I figured out what happens when we die. What's up with my fascination with death as of late you ask? Well for one thing, I have come rather close to death many times throughout my lifetime. Yet for whatever reason I am still here, and that is what fascinates me. What exactly am I still here for???
The ancient Egyptians believed that you had to earn your way into your afterlife by doing good deeds while you were alive. The more good deeds you did, the lighter your heart became. Upon death you would enter into the hall of judgement and declare your innocence from wrongful deeds. If your heart was not lighter than a feather, you could not sail away into your afterlife and you were stuck in your tomb forever. But if your heart was lighter than a feather, you had a free pass in your afterlife where your soul could come and go as it pleased.
The ancient Egyptians wealth of knowledge was passed on for millennia yet nowadays many of those beliefs have been forgotten. To the Egyptians, the heart was the seed of all human emotion, will, intellect, and morality. I truly believe this to be the case and I also think that our heart is our moral compass.
But first, let me tell you about a conversation I once had with a cardiovascular surgeon. We were on the subject of transhumanism and I asked him if he thought man will be merging with machine anytime soon. He said that this has already been done once the first artificial heart surgery took place in the 1980s. One interesting statement he made was in relation to the patient after the artificial heart was 'installed'. Evidently, the patient no longer felt 'human', he felt absolutely nothing even though he was still alive. This did not surprise me because the heart is where mankind carries their bond to god and eternal life. There are countless sayings recognizing the beauty and importance of our heart:
The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched.
They must be felt with the heart.
- Hellen Keller
Your visions will become clear only when you look into your heart.
Who looks outside, dreams. Who looks inside, awakens.
- Carl Jung
That feeling in your heart when you see something horrendous, or when you are doing harm to another being. That dull yet nagging heaviness inside of you that nothing can shake-off. The term "heavy heart" describes this best because it refers to the 'weight of guilt' bound up in your heart, weighing you down and eating at you like a cancer.
I believe that when we die, our heart truly is weighed. Not on an actual scale against a feather per se, but it is weighed on a scale of heaviness where guilt and regret are measured. If you lived your life following your ego and not caring for anyone or anything beyond yourself, then your heart will be heavily weighted with guilt. Whereas if you lived 'beyond your self' and you offered more good to others than bad, then you will have a very light heart.
In Mahayana Buddhism there is something called the 'Heart Sutra' (or The Heart of the Perfection of Wisdom). In this ancient sutra, I believe the heart is where your life's guilt is stored. And if your heart is 'empty' (or very 'light') and you have NOT succumb to your ego and you have truly gone beyond your 'self', then you have attained enlightenment and you can go on to nirvana.
Ill-being, the Causes of Ill-being,
the End of Ill-being, the Path,
insight and attainment,
are also not separate self entities.
Whoever can see this
no longer needs anything to attain.
Therefore, the moral of this story is simply to attempt to live with a light heart. Because having a light heart when you die will enable you to live in the afterlife and frolic in nirvana!
