1.Spirit against E=mc²

“The spirit world has no industry and no money changing hands, so there are no thoughts of greed or competition. The spirit body doesn’t require food, so thoughts about eating aren't created. The spirit body remains in perfect health, so there’s no need to think about diet or exercise. The materialist may think this sounds rather dull, as he can’t conceive of life without the pursuit of physical pleasure. Yet the spirit world is alive with thoughts of love directed towards the quest for knowledge. We are served by keeping our thoughts ones of beauty. We can be harmed by holding thoughts aimed at fulfilling physical pleasure.”

An excerpt from the book, “Life after Death” by Mary T. Browne has compelled me to contemplate on a subject which I have heard being discussed time and again but have refused to accept it as the truth. The Koran says that the spiritual life that will be bestowed on us after death is the ultimate truth. Both my grandmothers and my mother had almost hammered this thought into the deep recesses of my brain. It had stayed there undisturbed; till I read this book and memories were re-stirred.

Mary T. Browne explicitly chronicles her brush with departed spirits of the other world, who tells her if they are either happy or sad in the astral life. But most of the time, they tell her that they are either happy or worried about the people alive on Earth. It’s hard for anyone to believe that after we die and crumble to dust, how is it possible for the soul, which is said to stay alive even after the physical form is no longer there, can even think and connect with its life in the world? Does it have a mind? Can it think? Can it remember anything from its life on Earth? How is it possible for a spirit to exist after a human body changes into a different form of energy? Questions which are so very difficult to understand and answer.

But if I were to take explanations from science, then it says that E=mc²; meaning that all mass is equal to energy. So, if mass in its disintegration is converted to energy, then where and how does the soul exist? And that too, a miracle ‘visitation’ from the ‘other side’ to its family and friends through Mary, who claims that she can feel the presence of these spirits when their family meets her for a counselling session. Too far-fetched a story, don’t you think? Physics says that mass converts to different forms of energy depending on how it disintegrates. The fundamental energy particles discovered so far are quartz, gluon, neutrino and their counter particles.

So who are we to believe now? Metaphysics or physics? Mary T. Browne, who speaks almost like the Holy books or Albert Einstein who meticulously put together the greatest scientific formula of E=mc²?

On a softer plane, another excerpt from Mary’s book says, “We are not free if we are obsessed by anything, be it a substance or a person or a desire for material gain. All these imbalances are created by our thinking. Imagine that! We can change our lives by changing the way we think.” I do agree with her on this! “.....we would be well served if we started our positive thinking patterns right now. There’s nothing gained by delaying.” This I feel is one of the best parts of the book. What more can we people want than happiness? And if it comes from positive thinking, then nothing like it. But that doesn’t in any way mean that we are to alienate our mind from negative thoughts. Sometimes, these thoughts give us more energy than we can think of.

However, the best part of the book “Life after Death” was the chapter, “Prescription for Grief”.  One of Mary’s clients, Diana was diagnosed with inoperable cancer and the doctors gave her only 6 months to live. She took the news with great dignity and decided to spend what time she had left, enjoying herself. Diana was a workaholic who’d always found it difficult to take a vacation. Only on hearing the news of her impending death did she start to enjoy her life, travelling to Europe with her sister and doing other things she’d never given herself the time to do: In retrospect she would’ve lived her life differently. “I did nothing but work, putting in hours at the office and working at home at night. I might have been quite a bore: Work was all I talked about. Because of this, my life has passed by in a whirl. I never took time to have fun or to contemplate my spiritual beliefs. Now I deeply regret it. Please tell people that money and success are fine, but there’s more to life. Don’t wait until you’re dying to start living.”

I think the last line itself is self-explanatory. We all want to live and live life to the fullest. So why not start now, this very second instead of postponing it for a future date. I am sure Einstein too had his hiatus from formulating E=mc² and came back feeling fresh and ready to start where he stopped! We neither need Physics or Metaphysics to teach us this really easy formula of happiness and fulfilment!