Life after Life

[Endovelico]

We all die and most of us wonder what happens next, if anything. I take it that at any given moment, from all the individual consciousness around, there is one, and only one "I". Once I die, the universe will generate another consciousness who will be the then "I". For all ends and purposes that "I" will feel exactly as I feel, although there will be no connection between him/her and me. So, although the future I's will have no relation to me - as I have no relation to the previous historical I's - I will prevail. I will be around when Man goes to Mars, I will be around when Man departs for other stars, I will be around when the Sun explodes, I will be around when Man colonizes other planets, I will be around when Man becomes immortal, I will be around when Man meets other intelligent beings... Who cares those I's are not the same as I and will have no memories of the past. I will be forever around, and intend to have a lot of fun seeing what is going to happen. With the advantage that each time I will have the strength to be active and contribute to whatever is happening, which I increasingly have difficulty doing...

[manolo]

We all die and most of us wonder what happens next, if anything. I take it that at any given moment, from all the individual consciousness around, there is one, and only one "I". Once I die, the universe will generate another consciousness who will be the then "I". For all ends and purposes that "I" will feel exactly as I feel, although there will be no connection between him/her and me. So, although the future I's will have no relation to me - as I have no relation to the previous historical I's - I will prevail. I will be around when Man goes to Mars, I will be around when Man departs for other stars, I will be around when the Sun explodes, I will be around when Man colonizes other planets, I will be around when Man becomes immortal, I will be around when Man meets other intelligent beings... Who cares those I's are not the same as I and will have no memories of the past. I will be forever around, and intend to have a lot of fun seeing what is going to happen. With the advantage that each time I will have the strength to be active and contribute to whatever is happening, which I increasingly have difficulty doing...

Endo,

I have had a similar feeling about daffodils. We see one daffodil one year and then years later we see another daffodil. What's the difference? Maybe they are one and the same, just like the colour red is the same whoever bleeds.

Alex.

[kmich]

We all die and most of us wonder what happens next, if anything. I take it that at any given moment, from all the individual consciousness around, there is one, and only one "I". Once I die, the universe will generate another consciousness who will be the then "I". For all ends and purposes that "I" will feel exactly as I feel, although there will be no connection between him/her and me. So, although the future I's will have no relation to me - as I have no relation to the previous historical I's - I will prevail. I will be around when Man goes to Mars, I will be around when Man departs for other stars, I will be around when the Sun explodes, I will be around when Man colonizes other planets, I will be around when Man becomes immortal, I will be around when Man meets other intelligent beings... Who cares those I's are not the same as I and will have no memories of the past. I will be forever around, and intend to have a lot of fun seeing what is going to happen. With the advantage that each time I will have the strength to be active and contribute to whatever is happening, which I increasingly have difficulty doing...

Thanks, Endovelico, for sharing your personal reflections.

A few thoughts in response:

Having spent a career around death, I can say that the process of death has become very familiar to me. Still, there seems to be an inverse relationship between my familiarity with death, its overwhelming sense of being natural and normal, and my understanding of death. The more I have become familiar with death, the deeper the mystery has become for me. I do not believe that the ordinary mind can enter such a fathomless space, but with that extensive caveat, please consider the following:

How do we understand our end unless we understand what “I “is to begin with? Don’t we have to thoroughly understand where and what “we” are before “we” can at all consider where we go next and what "we" become? And how are we to know that?

Your reflections propose that there is no connection between what “I” is now and what “I” would be next. The only evidence we have regarding this is the work of Ian Stevenson, where hundreds of cases where meticulously investigation revealed connections between past and future lives that remain unexplained. I do not necessarily believe that this supports “reincarnation” as many do, but it does suggest an intimate, but deeply mysterious connection between past and future lives.

There is also the discovery of biological apoptosis, or programmed cell death, which allows for rejuvenated cell growth. Cells coordinate death for the emergence of life, and this is in the frontier of medical research now into cancer, HIV, and so on. Is that not a connection between life and death? How death makes life possible? How can we have life without death or death without life?

Finally, I would suggest that, while bodies die and decay, that death may be more present than we realize. What we consider inert matter may be no more than an entity where habits of existence remain impossible to change in any of the time frame that we are familiar with. If someone live within a set of unchanged conditions of mind, heart, and behavior are they living any more than inert matter? Any more than a rock or a mountain? How? What does it mean to be alive and to truly be human? I would suggest that It requires an unconditional opening of mind and heart, a space where their movements are unimpeded. In my own religious sense, this is how I allow God to work his will within me without my interference. In any case, this emptying has been what the dying has required of my own presence, and, very possibly, may well be the door to witnessing the true nature of death and life.

We all die, and all our strength will ebb from us over time, Endovelico. I can only state that I have witnessed a presence that holds the dying, a presence, that in some way is deeply familiar and unfathomably peaceful and loving...

All the best to you. K.