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64
KARMA - THE MECHANISM
SUTRAS
These excessive actions and attitudes and also revengeful, cruel thoughts and emotions at the time of death 24 lead to birth(s) in the nether, 'infernal' regions. This manifests the deep desire of the respective person for further attachment to matter and for the experience of cruel, revengeful behavior. Since the nether, 'infernal' regions are inhabited by beings with similar attitudes, this desire can be satisfied without disturbing other beings who have different objectives of life. 25
24 Most people hold fast onto the belief that their time of death is far
away. We abhor to think that we will confront death with inevitable certainty.
We further tend to regard thoughts and emotions as of little consequence since we experience them in such abundance.
Anything we may feel or think in that 'far away' and supposedly 'brief' moment when we ultimately leave our body, we therefore regard of minor importance for our current life.
Yet the fact that we evaluate this moment' as unimportant does not in the least diminish its profound impact on our future conditions of life. The point of our death is an extremely intense experience. Here we condense all unfulfilled desires and all our ideas of what we still would like to experience into one intense feeling, into one intense longing. And this deep longing draws us into exactly that (new) environment that enables us to experience the physically manifestation of these desires in the best possible way.
At the point of our physical death all we only pretended to be, all we only made up before ourselves and others, falls off like a discarded shell. What remains is raw and real yearning deep within us that dynamically attracts exactly those components we still want to experience. This tendency to new or 'renewed' experiences we only shape ourselves through the way we conduct all our current life.
It certainly is everyone's own decision to regard his or her moment of death as irrelevant or to envisage it so far in the future as if it would never occur. Yet death is inevitable. And once we experience this event in all its intensity, there is no opportunity left to alter the tendencies
that then propel us into our new environment. 25 The Tattvarthasutra distinguishes four classes of beings:
1 - devas - beings residing in celestial areas 2 - narakas - beings residing in infernal areas
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