The first and the most important thing is to know that life is one and immortal. Only the forms, countless in number, are transient and brittle. The life everlasting is independent of any form but manifests itself in all forms. Life then does not die but the forms are dissolved.

Sri Aurobindo

What rises always falls: the sun, the waves of the ocean, the ever-expanding branches of the tree, or the multiplying animals that walk on the Earth. Every time they rise, they fall and return to their source. This is the ultimate beauty of creation: to shapeshift, to create sequences, patterns, and cycles that complete themselves. Existence is mathematical.

Every occurrence is a well-calculated symphony that strikes when the celestial beings are in accordance. The elements that have conjured the creation around us have arrived here from vast distances, crossing gigantic stars, to shape our animal skin and forms.

Everything around us is created by the confluence of elements. When one element collides with another, they lose their individuality. In some manner, this is also an end, a death of kind; yet the collision creates novelty, and with a new shape emerges a new beginning, a new entity.

Whether it is day or night, or life or death, all events are merely a sum of the play of the elements. We are participating in cycles of nature, both in life and in death.

According to the Vedas, the human body is made of five elements, collectively called the ‘panchtatva’; panch signifies five, and tatva (elements)—water, earth, air, fire, and space. They follow a hierarchy.

The continents were formed on the primordial water; the land thus is above the water. The land releases the air; above all these elements is the constant burning fire of the sun, which feeds everything through its life-giving energy. The sun is aflame, amid a vast cosmic space.

As the Earth dances around the Sun in space, we experience our existence. This space also reflects in our being; it shows itself through yearnings, through desires, and through the distance between where we are and where we will be. It’s a cyclic passage of creation and destruction, and becoming and unbecoming.

At the confluence of elements, we are born, and at their divergence, we dismantle to reincarnate.

The human body participates in the great cosmic cycles by gradually melting. Our skin begins to shrink; what is not felt in days accumulates and becomes visible in years. We age, with every year our physical self diminishes as our intellectual and spiritual self expands with experiences. Another beautiful equilibrium of loss and gain.

We are sustaining ourselves by consuming the Sun’s fire; it’s running through our veins and burning in our belly. The sun is feeding everything that is growing on this earth—from the grass to the antelope to the lion. In the wild, the predator is chasing the manifestation of the sun in the prey. After hunting and tearing the flesh of all the prey that the predator will consume in his lifetime, after all is done and dusted, he is destined to feed the next generations of prey through his decomposing body, fertilising the grass.

In 5 billion years, the Sun will expand into a red giant, possibly engulfing and swallowing the Earth. This creation that is set in motion by the light of the sun will return to it.

This is the law of balance, of equanimity. This is the cycle, the circle, the dance of death, birth, and recreation, and we are part of this grand masterpiece.

Our tiny human forms are well-equipped to take pleasure in fathoming this magnanimous creation. Our senses are attuned to hear the sounds, to smell the ground, to create intimacy with skin and spirit, to see life unfold, and to taste the sun before we feed it.

We must take delight now, since we cannot truly calculate how our existence is engraved in the sequence of the whole and in this particular space and time. We cannot know how long we are destined to breathe or when death will call upon us. The departure of loved ones will always be a moment of grief. When this moment arrives, it is a mystery of nature and must be left to her.

We are only indebted to life to live fully and to understand the sacredness of our connections. Even our connection to death is created by our connection to life.

We have now tilted the ecological balance in our favour; the human life expectancy has doubled in the last two centuries. Medical science has created elixirs of life; medicines and technology are keeping us younger and vital. It is certain that we will see far more suns than our ancestors could have dreamed of.

We are living longer, so what shall we do with this fortune and abundance? Since the odds are in our favor, how shall we reciprocate?

Is there a possibility that prolonged human life can bring bliss to all the lives that connect with it—the human and more-than-human?

According to the Upanishads, reciprocation leads to liberation (Moksha). We can attain moksha by giving back to deities, ancestors, educators, plants and animals, and humanity. These are the spiritual debts, known as rin in Sanskrit, and by fulfilling these, we experience liberation.

The idea that our tiny human form can somehow even reciprocate to the deities and the cosmic forces that create us invites us to rise to the occasion and shows us the mirror of the divine forces that live within us. In this practical reverence, we can enter into a symbiosis with each of them. With deities by taking good care of the natural resources, with ancestors by honouring family bonds and our own bodies, with educators by taking forward and sharing the knowledge, with plants and animals by harvesting with mindfulness, ensuring their renewal and well-being, and with humanity by practicing compassion and creating stronger community.

The extractivist belief system of material loss, gain, supremacy, and competition would never outdo the calculations of nature. There are even sacred cosmic commitments between the stars themselves, between the Sun and the Earth. The flesh and the spirit are meant for reciprocation.

There is even reciprocation in death. We are obliged to return our flesh to the earth. I believe that somehow we are not afraid of letting go of the body; we are afraid of forgetting and not remembering. The difficulty of death is concealed in memories. Death asks us for the memory of a lifetime; in this final passage of right, we are asked to trust the unknown. The element of space here creates a certain uncertainty.

Our pilgrimage on Earth concludes with us becoming the Earth.

We create rituals for our departed ones; we pray for their spirit. What if they pray back for us?

We resonate with the light of the moon and the stars, and we find comfort in the blooming flowers. We glimpse at nature, and we do not know who is glimpsing back at us.

The ones who have long left their human form are with the Earth now. They are the whispers of the wind. They are guides of our pilgrimage, calling us to rise, to reciprocate, to revere our own flesh and spirit. Perhaps we exist now because we are in the necessities of nature. The mathematics of creation is far too intelligent for an anomaly. We shall rise until we have to fall back. We are a manifestation of immortal elements, and to those, we shall return.

“I have not come into being by my own power. It would be the highest absurdity to suppose that I was before I came into existence, in order to bring myself into existence. I have, then, been called into being by another power beyond myself.”

Fichte, Johann Gottlieb

Words by Priyanka Singh Parihar 

Cover Artwork by Andreea Hraja