The hospital monitors emitted a continuous tone, nurses frantically worked on CPR as I watched the room from above.  My family was distraught as realization sank in that the inevitable had happened. I was suffocating with remorse due to responsibilities that I had left unfulfilled after my departure from the physical world. This was however short lived as my senses withdrew from the mournful hospital ward and I was drawn towards a celestial music. Light was smothered out, and I was only left with a feeling of peace and benevolence around me.

I was conscious but I did not have a body, I had no need to breathe yet I was in some way alive, I had no means to move yet I can be anywhere, I was active and more awake then ever before. I was living in the present, I had no interest in the past or the future, time stood still for me. Space collapsed around me as I could go anywhere, I wanted on just a thought. I had no hands or feet or physical form, yet I existed, as a point.

I found that I was pretty much lonely. Yet the entire cosmos was within my reach. Still, I did not have anyone to converse with. If my emotions became despondent, things get more rigid and darker around me. If I accept my situation, stay contended my environment gets lighter and less rigid.

Being in that space, I started to get the urge to return to physical space. Opportunities knock sometimes to return the consciousness to the physical space. This one time a priest was using black sesame seeds and I found refuse in one of them. The seed was casted away along with other puja flowers on the banks of a river. My seed got lodged on the fertile silt and after a few days I was overjoyed that the seed germinated. As a sesame plant I had absolutely no senses of hearing or sight or even feeling. The hot sun didn’t make me feel hot, I actually grew better. My only concerns were setting a future for my offsprings and self preservation. At one point I bore flowers and then pods of sesame seeds which dried and popped spreading hundreds of sesame seeds on the ground. My body gradually grew weaker and merged with the elements.

Next time, I was born as a kitten. Being a member of a large litter, my cat mother had little time to spare for me. One day, I aimlessly wandered through the alleyways of my neighbourhood avoiding dogs, when I got lost. I lay down by the side of the road trying to figure a way out of my predicament, when two lads on a bike stopped on seeing me. One lad opened a bottle of water and gave me a sip, other cuddled me and took me home. There I played with human children who took good care of me. I had absolutely no recollection of being a human, and I was happy being a cat. Again as a cat two things were at the top of my agenda : reproduction and self-preservation.  Everything that I did was motivated by these two goals, nothing else mattered.

My life as a cat ended with old age. As my age increased, I was ridden by pain and disease. My owners took me to a doctor one day who euthanised me.

This time I was born in a remote village in Nepal. Surrounded on all sides by towering mountains, a narrow arduous pass led to the world outside. My village had a gurgling brook running through it, this was the main source of drinking and irrigation water. Everyone farmed or reared animals for meat and milk. During my childhood I played with a group of children with whom I grew up. Life in my village had to run like clockwork, there were times to sow seeds, the farm needs to be hoed on time, cows need to be milked on time, the farm had to be watered on time, and so on. I never ventured out of my village in my entire life.

My entire life became dedicated to finding a suitable partner, supporting the family and sustaining life. Being a communicative human, I not only took care of finding my own partner, I went further to find partners for my children and even my grandchildren.  I had no time to think of anything else. I had nowhere to go to. I never ventured out of my village in my entire life. My dharma was my karma, to do work to sustain life. As I grew older, my life became miserable as pain and disease riddled my body. This gave me time to reflect on my life and my achievements. In my small world, I was a top achiever. Everyone respected me and adored me.

Then one day a Japanese couple trekking through the Himalayas happened to stumble upon our hamlet. Being the oldest surviving member of the village, they were brought over to my hut. The person spoke of wonderous things how people can talk over thousands of miles and fly in the sky. To dispel our incredulous looks, he fished out various spectacular gadgets from his bag. He stayed on for several days, we discussed our way of life and he coined a new idea called Purpose of Life.

The obvious motivation for life is to reproduce and to preserve life. However, death is an anomaly which gets us thinking what do we achieve in the end, because once we die it wont matter. There should be something that matters. There should be something we can do which defines the purpose of our lives.

The Japanese person also mentioned a war in China, where Japanese tortured and killed uncountable number of innocent citizens. He did not want to be a part of the system. He and his wife thought differently, they left Japan and started wandering through the mountains. He mentioned that the guilty would eventually be punished by god, divine retribution awaits.

Like other births I passed away that time too. This time my consciousness was awaken. I started searching for God. I started searching for the guilty Japanese who were being punished by God. I was mistaken, everything is God. From a stone to a king, everything is God. Stone isn’t conscious that it is God, but some humans are conscious that they are God. What differs in us is the level of consciousness. There were no celestial policemen punishing the guilty Japanese. Someone who can commit heinous crimes did not have the consciousness evolved. They suffer in the dark, they are not able to rise to the light and freedom because their consciousness need to evolve more through reincarnation.

Next time I was born to a wealthy family in Japan. I grew around gadgets and machinery, a very modern world. Life was demanding. I had to work hard on studies to win in competition for getting a seat in higher studies. I had to slog like a working bull through my graduate school. This landed me a prized job in an automotive company where I rose to become the CEO.

My life revolved around work and work alone. I had a beautiful wife, two beautiful and intelligent children and lots of money. If time permits, I would splurge my millions on various things I could have done without, but I wanted to possess them because someone I knew had them. With time, my marriage began to fail as work commitments kept me away from my family. I needed to work to sustain my family, I had given my entire life for my family. However, my wife needed me to support her raising the family, I was not there. She took solace discussing philosophy with a male friend. This relationship though initially platonic, eventually evolved into an affair. It tore my heart, the day she confided to me about her relationship. I felt that I was working towards a wrong purpose in life. Nothing made sense.

My wife and I eventually resolved our differences. I took up a less demanding role which allowed me to spend more time with my family. In my quest for the purpose in life I read numerous books, had intellectual discussions with several holy people and visited numerous temples, mosques and churches around the world. I was not prepared to even accept that god existed or life existed after death.

One winter evening, I was shovelling snow from our driveway when I felt a shearing pain in my chest. I rushed in and collapsed on the floor. My wife called an ambulance. The nurses conducted CPR on me and revived me. Something strange happened all this while, I was standing outside my body and watched intently as people worked on my lifeless body in an attempt to revive me. My quest for knowledge was answered through an experience so vivid that I would never forget. I underwent a bypass surgery shortly thereafter and decided to retire from work.