A close family died last week, so I thought I’d share a few of my ideas about what we call death.
Death As Life
How would we know we were alive if it were not for death? In the same way, we can’t say what is ‘good’ if we didn’t have the opposite reference of ‘bad’. Take a look all around you. ‘Things’ are dying continually and have been forever. Death is a requirement for life.
Death is not simply ‘a part of life’, as many people say. Life is reliant upon it. If we take the famous Einstein quote, “Energy cannot be created or destroyed, it can only be changed from one form to another.”
Death, then, when considered holistically, is only a concept of the mind. It isn’t apart from life; it is a part of it. It is life.
The Physical Body
Suppose we were to contemplate on what we know for sure. We would say that the only immortal ‘part’ of the human is the body. When the physical body has no more electricity running through it, the meat suit decays and gives itself back to the natural world. Even if the body is cremated and the ashes spread, the remnants nourish the soil to ‘create’ ‘new’ life.
There seems to be an aversion to this radical truth. Perhaps (once again) it is due to the religious fabric of culture that we ‘sacrifice’ the here and now and the material existence for a more ‘heavenly’ life after death. Let’s not lose all sense of reason – the physical body (as far as we know) is natures highest creation and should be revered as such. The undertones of this sacrifice have led to a seemingly degenerative society.
Afterlife/Reincarnation
It’s considered in many faiths across the planet that the soul maintains its existence upon death, and only the body ‘dies’. This assumes a couple of things that should be questioned.
1 – The soul is an actual thing.
The ‘soul’ has never been proven to exist. It’s a nice-sounding theory and comforts many people to think that there is something else above and beyond what is contained within the human body. But we are not talking here about what sounds nice. We are getting away from historical dogma, which has trapped the mind of people into immature ideologies.
2 – There is ‘somewhere’ that the soul goes to.
Heaven and hell is, of course, a concept that has been created based on ‘good and evil’. They’re ideas that arise at an apparent level of human development. The church and other religious institutions have used the concept of heaven and hell for thousands of years to control masses of people.
Maybe at some point, humans will grow up and stop relying on controlling mechanisms such as the church to influence their life.
Where is this place that the soul goes to?
I think it’s important also to say that I have no idea or concern whether the soul (if there is one) goes elsewhere upon death; it might do. I’m just imparting the reality that we are merely repeating information and knowledge that has been passed down to us for thousands of years. How do we know if there is any truth in it? Are we expected to take it at face value?