What happens to the flame when the candle burns out?

Recently after my grandfather’s passing I had a lot of time to think and reflect on things, about life. It was a quiet, slow morning a few days back. Winter is around the corner, it’s starting to get chilly. I was just pondering about various things and I was building off of how I remember my grandfather via his physical self the most. But his physical body isn’t the only thing that made up the being I called my grandfather.

It is perhaps the soul? that is the other half of us beings that gives us life. The reason I believe that is because science now can restore a deceased human body back to it’s former alive glory by patching up the wounds, using artificial heart and other things that can mimic the state of a living person but despite that… once a person’s breath goes away we can’t get them back.

So that to me on some level validates the idea of a soul. Following a similar trail of thoughts I came to ask myself….

“So are we humans are just a small spark of life?”

The word there… Spark reminded me of a video where it said that at conception when a sperm reaches the egg there is a small flash, a small spark.

Then I stumbled on the analogy of a candle. Our bodies are like the candle, that when ignited with a spark born of the ether… when 2 elements collide, we start the raging fire that lasts as long as the candle is there. Once the candle goes out, so does the flame…

So I asked myself again…
“What happens to the flame when the candle goes out? Where does the flame go?”

I think on some level I thought to myself if I figured out where the flame goes after the candle burns out, I would begin to understand where my grandfather went and where he would be now. Or where his soul would be now.

I continued questioning myself…

“What if I stopped the candle burning half way, blew it out and reignited it… Would it be the ‘same’ flame that was there before or is it a ‘new’ flame… If it the new flame, what happens to the old one?”

I am a deep thinker but I also do understand the way we view the world or the way that we are allowed to view the world is limited, it is bound by time and the physical reality we exist in. Regardless of how much we think on a matter that we aren’t allowed to know about, we will not figure it out. The one who allows us to see or understand or not to is God, at least for me. You are free to choose what you believe.

Just like how a super smart AI can only see the world in binary or how it would be able to understand how coarse or smooth a leaf feels not on the basis of physical tough but via binary code. For we have made it so it’s reality exists only amongst circuits and binaries. So the question remains…

“What happens to the flame when the candle goes out? Where does the flame go?”

I understand that my grandfather’s body isn’t here anymore. It just occurred to me while writing this that he was cremated so it was a one giant flame of which I am trying to understand the reality that took away his physical body.

I just choose to believe that he is now one with the universe. He is one with it, he is what I cannot see and what I cannot fathom but I choose to believe he is there in the vastness of ether that surrounds us. I think he still sees me and I choose to use his memory as an undying motivation to become better and make him proud.

After this revelation some coincidences or as Jung liked to call it, synchronicities have come around… Candles being mentioned in memes shared by my friends or ads of candles and mentions of ‘spark’ or things of that nature comes around and sticks to the mind like granules of sand to a burning rubber.

Knowing I will never understand it, I give it a nod and I live daily to the fullest. Remembering my Grandfather, Chudamani Sharma. Me – Siddhi Mani Sharma.