My earliest exposure to death was in my early childhood when we lived in an old bungalow adjacent to the city medical college. The only dividing line was a deep natural drain that remained dry except during monsoons.
Usually that part of the college building that faced us remained quiet and forlorn except on certain days when one could see a lot of activity around a small yellow cabin with dark windows. It was the post-mortem room, I learnt later. Sometimes we heard women crying outside the cabin and saw bodies wrapped in white shrouds being moved in and out.
We all saw flickering lights inside the cabin and heard whispers at night, but the thought that it belonged to some phantom or banshee never occurred to us.
I often think that a few years later, when I was in college, what I spotted was the ghost of my schoolmate. This girl was my classmate and incidentally sat next to me. I still remember the goodies that I brought for her after festivals, as she stayed in the school boarding house. We joined the same college and remained in touch till, all of a sudden, I learnt that she committed suicide. It came as a shock and I failed to understand the reasons for her taking such an extreme step.
I was getting used to her absence when one day I spotted her amidst a crowd of girls. She was wearing a brown dress and was looking down. When I realized what I had seen, I swirled back and she had vanished! I would have believed that I had seen a ghost had not another incident changed my perception.
We had an old maid working at our place since long. One day while coming down the stairs I thought I saw her wiping the floor. After a while my mom told me that she was on leave that day. It was amazing! I had seen a living person’s ghost! And then it dawned upon me that Ghosts are shadows lurking in the mind. We see that which we want to see or that which we are used to seeing.
My belief in the theory that nothing exists beyond what eyes can see was also because my parents were rationalists and they had taught me that rather than fearing the unknown it was always better to go forward and check it out.
But my father, however, believed in Vaastu and spoke of a house in Kathmandu where they stayed in initial years and my mother used to get sacred of strange noises, automatic shutting and closing of doors and a dog letting out a pitiful wail just outside the window, everyday of their 6 months stay.
He spoke of another house which had a strange smell emanating from one of its rooms. My mother fell ill, and when they left the house they learnt that a woman had died in the same room a few years ago. “The moment I left the house I felt as if a cloud moved away from my mind,” he had said.
At one point of time in my life I really wished to believe in apparition. It was after my parents died one after another within a short span of two years, at very unripe ages. I was the youngest child and an object of concern for them till their final moments. My longing for them was so intense that I was ready to see them in any form. I wished to touch them, hold them cry before them and cuddle them…here love had displaced all fears!
In this age of technology, while some things may escape the eyes, nothing really escapes the lens. No wonder Jackson’s shadow was caught roaming in Neverland! Was it really Jacko wandering in the corridors of the place where his heart longed to stay all through his life or just an illusion created by television lighting and some person’s shadow who was moving about?
We all at some point of our lives have heard of the experiment where a dying man was kept in a glass cabin and when he did die, the glass broke to release, what is believed to be his soul. It could have been anything, heat, gas or energy. But honestly I have no idea where this experiment took place and I seriously doubt its veracity.
But is there an other-worldly life? Are we surrounded by unseen spectres and goblins? Will all of us become ghosts? Spooky literature(that’s what I love calling it) has its own theories about ghosts.
Actually all of us can’t qualify for “ghost-ship”. It takes quite a lot to become a ghost. If you think you can take revenge on your classmates, neighbours, colleagues and boss by becoming a blood thirsty vampire or a scary wraith- wake up! It is popular belief that dying and crossing over to the next dimension won’t make you a ghost. It happens only when you come back and make your presence felt. Ghosts have highly energetic souls and it is because of this they are able to breach one dimension to enter into another.
Ghosts are wandering souls with a message to convey. Unfinished business, pure love, revenge and abrupt violent end to life are the reasons that keep them tied to their previous lives.
In fact to prevent this all religions have their own safeguards. In Hinduism after the Shraddha rituals, relatives are believed to send the soul to the path of salvation. Washing hands with milk after all the rituals are over symbolises washing the hands off the deceased.
Ancient Greek mythology refers to Lithe, the river of forgetfulness, drinking from which helps the dead forget all about their past lives.
Islam has no concept of spirits coming out of graves and roaming about, however prayers are offered and lamps are lighted for the peace of the departed soul.
The veracity of the mediums that talk to ghosts cannot be doubted unless we have concrete evidence to prove their falsehood. After all there is no denying the fact that some senses in some individuals are extra sharp. Just as some of us can smell odours or hear sounds that go unnoticed by others, in the same way there are some who can tune their frequencies to the band of the otherworldly. I have heard of my grand-aunt speaking of a child ghost (brahma-raksha) who told her about the cause of his death and of an aunt who died but came back to tell her husband the place where she had hoarded the family jewellery!
Religious and spiritual literature says that ghosts belong to various creeds and genres.
Apparitions appear solid, visible or slightly invisible. Most of the time, they appear as they did when they were living. They can be both friendly and unfriendly. They are thought to have unfinished business in this world and attain peace once the job is done.
Common Ghosts like to stay in proximity of the earth and can acquire any form and colour. When they want to frighten people, they can take an amorphous form. Extreme variation of their shape is limited as their spiritual energy is quite low.
Poltergeist probably are the most famous type of ghosts. All they do is to scare people by making all sorts of noises and sometimes they push people and cause small fires.
Demons are powerful ghosts that prefer living in solitary places. They are fond of possessing people. They are arrogant, lethargic and lusty. Their presence is marked by a very foul smell.
Serpent (Kaala naag) is green in colour. They possess black energy which they use to harm mankind. Due to their tremendous spiritual practice, they have the spiritual energy to gain control over an individual's seven chakras. Chakras have something to do with Kundaliniyoga, which I fail to understand.
Female Goblins (Hadal) have a strong odour around them like that of a rotten egg. Generally, they affect the person without possessing him, i.e. they do not enter the body of an individual.
Jaakhin is a superior variety of female ghost. They are experts in the knowledge of mantras. They tie up subtle bodies with the help of mantras or they take control them by using mantras and force them to do various jobs. The Female goblins
(Hadals) work under
Jaakhins. They give
Jaakhins information about the dead person.
Witch (Chetkin) :A foul smell is associated with the presence of Witches. People possessed by Witches
(Chetkins) laugh continuously. They are skilled in assuming various forms. They enter a person's body and cause accidents. They are capable of taking complete control of a house and can then devastate the entire family living there.
Spirits (Pischaacha) are very lazy and therefore the likelihood of them causing distress to people is low. Mostly they possess a person to use his body just to get a habitat. They assume the form of the person they enter into.
With such a diaspora of Ghosts around us, isn’t it a wonder that we don’t bump into them time and again? I don’t know if the earth is big enough to hold trillions and zillions of souls, but I know that it is the mind that notices them and it is the mind that doesn’t.
I am a disbeliever and also an atheist to some extent. For me nothing exists beyond what eyes can see…but honestly as Matthew Arnold has said:
“We light half-believers of our casual creeds… Who never deeply felt, nor clearly will'd……”
Who knows there actually exists a world unseen by our eyes and unperceived by our senses. And may be a dark shadowy specter is staring into my laptop, as I write and a long nailed, dark wrinkled hand moves towards your neck as you read this…..
(The views expressed by the author in the blog are his/her own)