Raja Ratnam [0] is the author of several books on migrant settlement, ethnic affairs, and the associated issues of citizenship, national identity, and refugee and humanitarian entry. His most recent book, The Dance of Destiny [1] (a personal story which seeks to understand the determinants of human lives) was published earlier this year. Thank you so much, Raja, for your latest contribution to Webdiary.

Till death doth join
by Raja Ratnam

Waiting! Waiting! To die! To be called! To be taken! To what end? Born into a collective, and sustained until maturity by that genetic collective; then transposed into an attenuated collective composed of a diversity of linkages, which requires a substantial self-supporting capability. Finally, awaiting a transition to that ethereal (that is, insubstantial) collective beyond Earth. Would that be the end? End of what?

The universe began (so it is claimed) with a Big Bang. A human being too begins with a bang (or is it a whoosh?) There was nothing before the Big Bang, it is also asserted. More honestly, it is meaningless to ask that necessary question “How or why did that happen.” Since the currently accepted methodology of science cannot prove that something can really, truly, come out of nothing, we rely upon statements of faith reflecting the current limits of the paths to knowledge.

In a parallel manner, the Western world of science says little useful about the following issues: does the human being have a soul; if so, when does it enter the body, and what happens to it when the body dies. However, the theology of the 3 principal ‘desert’ religions seems to accept the involvement of spirit or soul in human life; and that this spirit or soul proceeds to the Celestial Abode of the Heavenly Father, God or the universal Creator of all that is when it leaves the body. A host of statements of belief in this vein is upheld by the body of religious institutions offering guidance to seekers.

The above beliefs in science and institutional religion can be contrasted with beliefs arising from the ‘forest’ religions. According to some unnamed Hindu philosophers of old, the universe is without beginning or end. Its life is cyclical, being renewed every 8,640 billion years. Is this belief more heart warming than the belief that the Big Bang predicates a Big Crunch?

In terms of the human soul, the ‘forest’ faiths offer an ongoing existence. The soul is reborn repeatedly, until it reaches ‘maturity’. It is then allowed to return to that Ocean of Consciousness from which it once arose. Is this belief more comforting than the visions of Heaven offered by the ‘desert’ faiths?

Then ... then ... does anyone really care about these issues of contrasting and unprovable faiths until they face the reality of old age and its infirmities? Until they find themselves waiting, waiting for death, but not allowed to die yet - by God, the medical/surgical professions, and the priesthood?

As the great Chinese philosopher Lin Yu Tang might have said to his porcine pet, “Where now, old sow?”