Imaginations of Death and the Beyond in India and Europe by Günter Blamberger & Sudhir Kakar

Author:Günter Blamberger & Sudhir Kakar
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Springer Singapore, Singapore

2 Rassundari Devi Experiencing Her Own Death

Now we go more than a century back to a nineteenth century Bengali autobiography written and published by Rassundari Devi (see Sarkar, 2010, Chap. 3). In this remarkably candid book written by an 88-year-old well-to-do housewife who had 12 children and died in 1900, there is an amazing chapter called “Imagining Death” (Devi 1897/1956, pp. 83–85; my translations). “Failing to understand death,” Rassundari writes, “people live anxiously in constant fear of death. But I have seen it distinctly through direct perception that there is nothing scary about death at all. I shall never forget that experience in this life.” After a few days’ high fever, one afternoon she felt all her limbs becoming limp, losing all sensation. But she was in a perfectly conscious state. Her tongue and voice felt too paralyzed to utter any word but she had an urge to communicate. Two of her young sons were crying “Ma! Ma!” and she could not figure out why she was not responding. Many people gathered in the room were screaming “There! There! She is sinking, she is dying!” She writes:My husband appears at the door of the room and says, “Has she died? Well, then let her go!” A courtyard full of people all start weeping, as they carried me out of my bedroom and laid my body down in the middle of the courtyard. How strange! I am seeing all these happenings quite clearly and even my own corpse, lying over there though my eyes are totally shut. I have the awareness that I should be consoling those who are grieving for me, but I cannot understand why I am unable to communicate with them.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.