On Death

Let me say at the beginning, this narrative is not for everyone.  It was pointed out to me yesterday that one should write as if writing to one person. I have taken this to heart and here it is.  The personal audience for this missive will know who they are and why I am writing it.  To anyone else who is squeamish reading about death, dying and religion; maybe you should check out another blog.  I suggest  Chip Martins - Chip off the block  and you can thank The Dale Brown for making it available.

That said, you have been notified and metaphorically clicked the box that agrees with TWIAS “terms of agreement”. 

Rather than watch television speeches last night I went to Happy Hour at Larsens (my favorited neighborhood hang) with some dear friends.  The conversation wandered around every topic except politics. It eventually settled on “Death and Dying”.  One of my friends admitted to being afraid of the process and ultimate results of their own death.   In an effort to belay the fears of my friend I found myself expressing my own inner thoughts about the subject. The one thing that I am NOT afraid of is my own death. I wanted to re-express my feelings in “hard copy” to remind not only my friend but myself.  

It is hard to even mention death without touching on religion.  It is, however, the third rail in any discussion.  Death has been around a lot longer than any religion. People have been dying and seeing things die around them much longer than there have been savior surrogates.  Death has been a reality long before there were philosophies to even attempt an explanation.  To my thinking religion was created mainly to deal with the idea and result of death.  

My friend was raised Catholic.  I was raised Methodist, so most of what we know about the “afterlife” is a concept embraced and drilled into us  by the practitioners of these philosophies. And none of the people telling us how to get to heaven have ever experienced it before.  So what we have been taught about life after death is no more valid than what we know about Santa’s North Pole headquarters.  For my thinking, none of the Judo-Christian stories about heaven, hell and how you get there, make any logical sense. If there is only one thing I believe regarding Omniscience, it would be this: it operates absolutely.

To contemplate what happens after death you have to think about what we are when we’re alive. I do not believe like the “right to life people”  that life is created at conception.  If life is created when a human sperm and a human egg come together... then we should worship the sperm and the egg since they are capable of creating a human soul that lives forever.    Logic and science tell us that energy can  be neither created nor destroyed it simply changes form. I believe that is absolutely true of human life as well.  We “were” before this body and we “are” after this body has worn out.  The body is a vehicle used by our consciousness to explore the a physical universe.  It is the same as driving a car we use to get around.  A car is controlled by a human, but it is not the human.  Same idea with a physical body.  

Rather than a soul, I like to think of my identity as “consciousness”.  I believe my consciousness was around before I took over this body, and it will be around after this body wears out.  When my consciousness no longer embraces a physical body or relative universe it exists in a state of Absolute constant. In the state of Absolute, consciousness (man) and Omniscience (God) are codependent.  One can not exist without the other.  Omniscience is all knowledge (God) and consciousness (man) is the acknowledgement of all knowledge.  Knowledge can not exist without the “knowing” of its own existence.  Therefore God is always knowing and Man is always acknowledging, eternally. 

Why we need to be here on this level of human existence will not be dealt with in this blog.  I have my own theory but I have only a short time on this soap box.  With this writing I am only trying to explain to a friend that death is neither the beginning nor end of  life. As a caterpillar changes (dies) in one form the Butterfly appears (is born) in another form.  They are the same and they are completely different they are one but unrecognizable to each other.  I do not believe that a caterpillar can only change into a butterfly because a butterfly who lived 2000 years ago died “for” all other caterpillars.  

That is “mystory” you may feel differently... someday we will all know the truth. 

As you were,

Jay