Anoopa Sharma

Jim Brown is a colleague of Anoopa's father. He spoke at the memorial, inspired by a dream the night before in which he saw Anoopa. After the memorial he wrote this email to his three daughters:

April 2, 2005

My Daughters,

Yesterday I went to the Hindu funeral for the 24 year-old daughter of a colleague. Her name is Anoopa Sharma. A wonderful website has been created for her by her friends, www.anoopa.net. Please visit it.

Although I did not personally know her, what I have learned of her indicates she was in many ways a remarkable girl. Since you are about the same age, I found myself moved deeply by the event – I mourned for the parents and sister (she was very close to her 25 year old sister), for whom the sense of loss is enormous and will never end – I mourned for the girl, who obviously had so much promise.

Friends and relatives spoke during the service. I was asked by the mother to speak too because I told her I had dreamed about Anoopa the night before and dreams are very important in Asia. The speakers talked about Anoopa and what her death meant. Your Mother and I also talked about it both before and after.

Because it moved me deeply, I want to share some of my thinking with you. I hope you will share some of your thinking on this subject with me.

The central question of course is if there is a God, and this God loves us, why would He take such a young, promising person? The typical Christian and Islamic answer to this is “We cannot know the ways of God which are inscrutable to mere humans. He knows what He is doing.”

My response to this is that this notion is very primitive anthropomorphism. Through religious history, we have tended to see our gods as extensions of ourselves. We make images of gods that look like us or like animals.

I believe something quite different. I think there is an organizing Principle. This Principle makes everything work. However, this is not a merely mechanical Principle, such as Hobbes created. I believe this Principle is conscious (although any concept we might have of consciousness would be very primitive relative to the consciousness of this Principle). I believe for instance that Love emanates from the consciousness of this Principle. I believe that each of us somehow is part of this consciousness. We are part of a whole, yet we are also individual. Also as part of the consciousness of this Principle, we do not die. We persist.

I believe another aspect of this Principle is change and growth. As a result, as elements of this Principle, we are always changing and growing. Often the changing and growing of the infinite numbers of individual consciousnesses seem to result in their colliding and destroying each other. However, this is an illusion. Just as in physics, the collisions are part of the growth. Since as individuals, we can’t see the whole, we cannot tell what the result of the impact is, just as when one element in an atom hits another and shoots off at an angle, we cannot tell what the result will be. Neither element is destroyed. It is just deflected.

Modern physics seems to support this theory. Energy and matter are not destroyed. They are just changed back and forth. We have no proof in science that anything is ever destroyed. Growth is everywhere manifested. The universe is expanding. Everything in nature over the millennia has become more complex.

So where does that leave Anoopa? Just where she was and where she has always been! The Buddhists and the Hindus believe that the soul never dies but is reborn until it achieves “Enlightenment.” They believe life is a dream. They believe the rebirth is on this earth, within this dream. I agree. I think life goes on forever. I believe it is a dream. However, I believe because it is a dream, the next life can be ANY dream, not necessarily this one. Also, I believe that since growth is an organizing aspect of Principle, that you never reach Enlightenment. Growth continues forever.

A related interesting question deriving from the above explanation is: if this life is illusion, as the Hindus and Buddhists believe, where does this illusion come from? Does Principle create it? I think not. The illusion exists in our individual minds and emanates from our limited perspective and level of development. As we grow and change, so does the illusion.

Many religions have a concept of Hell and Purgatory. I believe THIS life is the only Hell or Purgatory we will ever experience. We make this illusion either Heaven or Hell, but most often, a combination of each. But I believe the Hell aspect is just as important, perhaps MORE important than the Heaven part. My experience is that the Heaven part is a resting period. We grow little if at all. It is the Hell part that imparts growth, as we are deflected by life’s collisions. And since growth is the basic aspect of Principle, Hell is the important part of our illusion.

Another fascinating question is what relationship do we as individual entities have to each other? The Buddhists believe that you children we born to us because we owed you a debt from our past life. I believe something a bit different. I believe some of the individual entities have relationships with each other because although we are all parts of a single consciousness, we are all individual as well. As such, we have particularly strong connectedness with certain other individuals because in some way we are particularly well suited to support each other’s growth. I think this special connectedness persists through eternity. Thus, the parents, children, friends, husbands we have in this life have been connected to us forever and will continue to be forever.

What does all this have to do with Anoopa? First, Anoopa persists. We do not see her, because she has collided with another and has been sent off in another trajectory. The collision has resulted not only in change but in growth. Just because we cannot see her any longer in the illusion we have created does not mean she is not present for her family and friends. She is part of consciousness, which is everywhere. She will remain a part of the relationships of her parents, sister, and friends through eternity. They will “see” her again as illusion succeeds illusion succeeds illusion, succeeds illusion.

In the meantime, they experience the pain of parting, which will not end but will subside. Her parents and sister experienced this illusion as Heaven when they experienced the joys of having Anoopa physically with them. Now they will experience the Hell of not having Anoopa physically with them. This will pass. Then they will experience the Heaven of having Anoopa physically with them again in a different illusion. Then they will experience the Hell of not having her physically with them. So the wheel of illusion turns. Perhaps the stage of “Enlightenment” comes when we reach some stage in our growth when we can actually understand that life is illusion and that our individuality persists and that our relatedness remains through eternity. However, for now and perhaps for eternity, the pain and suffering we experience is somehow one of the main motive forces which lead to our growth. The constant collision between individuals in the universe of consciousness hurts, but it provides the impulse for change.

Here is an interesting question that derives from the above argument: is the young boy who physically collided with and killed Anoopa one of those particularly connected to her growth through eternity? I think that if you accept the argument of these pages, he is.

I love you through Eternity.

Dad

Thank you for sharing this.