PRETAS Hungry Ghosts - Where DO The Dead Go ?
And When the Need to Eat Endangers the Balance of Nature
by Stephen Hartwell
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INTRODUCTION
Thru-out human history, and probably before that, every culture has had a name for 'them'. The most common north American name is 'ghost lights', but, the most appropriate name is that in the Tibetan Buddhist Book of the Dead,
PRETAS - which means 'Hungry Ghost', because they 'feed' off the negative emotions and energy of the living.
Do They Exist
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First, we must address the question of whether there is Life-After-Death,
does something of what is 'me' survive the death of my 'current' body ?
It's one of those questions, albeit a very major issue, that is still open to anyone's opinion, and varying degrees and theories thereof.
I am inclined to 'believe' that the answer is most definitely - yes.
Until now, we've had no choice but to struggle with this question in terms that are totally unacceptable as conclusive scientific-method proof. We've been using terms such as spirit, soul, higher plane, another dimension, heaven, cloud 9, hell, and many similar vague descriptives.
We are today, so far as we officially acknowledge, the 1st to have the scientific and technological knowledge and equipment, to prove it.
And our science is proving that Life-After-Death is perfectly 'natural', in complete accordance with all that we call the Laws of 'Normal' Physics and Quantum Physics.
A lot of research evidence is exponentially mounting to substantiate this, as has been superbly presented by such notable documentary producers, like Canadian Steven Rumbellow of Renegade Productions, in his 1995 production, 'Ghosts'.
NATURE
Nature Of Every Day Human Perspective
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Nature, our meaning of that word, encompasses far more than the average person ordinarily considers on a regular daily basis, when we do contemplate it at all.
Most of us tend to think of trees, flowers, animals, insects, even rocks, The average person tends not to contemplate things like bacteria, let alone quarks, or stars, but in fact, the Universe itself, and everything in it, is Nature, and the marvel is, for the most part, even by common every day limited human perceptions, it all operates the same way, in all the major aspects of continuing existence and the 'cycle' process.
Everything in our Universe exists, continues to exist, in one 'form' or another, by what could all be referred to as -
The need to eat to survive.
Whether it be on a time scale of milliseconds, or millennia, everything eats to survive, including stars and galaxies, and conversely, everything gets eaten, one way or another, sooner or later.
Which of course means that for one thing to live, another must die.
We humans understand this, for we too must eat to survive. And, though some of us may not particularly like it, we also understand why a lion must kill and eat a lamb, because many of us, who are not vegetarians, do likewise; that is -- eat lamb, though few actually do the killing.
However, many vegetarians frequently kill their prey to eat, but vegetarians are extremely loathe to see it in that perspective.
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Nature can be thought of as a collective of un-countable interactive,
inter-dependant, ecosystems.
When those ecosystems are, with fluctuation margins built in, operating within balanced parameters, all is well, despite any one individual's perspective, for although the about-to-be-eaten may feel otherwise, it is after all, - nature's way.
An individual can potentially avoid being 'lunch', though not eventual death, and that too, is - nature's way.
Nothing in Nature is intrinsically evil, nor even good for that matter, it just is.
Good and Evil is our own personal interpretation of whatever something is.
For example - Almost everybody thinks Maggots are very - icky evil things, because we don't like the thought of them eating us. People who eat maggots do not feel that way about them. I wonder how the maggots feel about people who eat maggots.
When maggots eat carcasses - dead bodies - they are helping to decompose that carcass, and the by-products they leave behind can be eaten by micro-organisms, which all life, including humans, and stars, galaxies, and the Universe itself, depend on.
Maggots are the larvae of hatched eggs of flies. While a dead carcass does attract flies, which lay eggs in it, which soon hatch as maggot larvae,
We actually also 'carry' the eggs of flies around in our bodies while we live,
and when we die, they too are triggered to hatch in to maggot larvae, which then eat our flesh.
This is one major way that forensic investigators use to tell how long something's been dead, by the comparisons of stages between internal, and external sources of maggots.
If internal source maggots were to Eat you while you're still trying to live your life, then this would be an ecosystem imbalance, nature-out-of-whack. It is only when overwhelming imbalances occur in an ecosystem that there is a problem.
Maggot eggs are not the only things in our bodies that want to eat us, far from it.
In fact, this is most likely what the dead do to us too.
That is the problem-perspective we have with Hungry Ghosts, more about which later on in this article.