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Death: an exploration

So what happens when your time is up and you breath your last? I have been considering my mortality and find that I have many theories but few definites.

First I suppose I should define what life is before I think about what happens when its over. As I believe that all things are alive this might be trickier than I first thought. For me, all things in Nature are alive; it is just that some things move around more. What makes something alive is not limited to whether it has respiration or the ability to reproduce but whether that thing has within it a node of the all encompassing Divine Spirit. It is this spirit that gives life to and links all things together. It is also this spirit that defines what each 'thing' is. In a similar vein I also feel that some 'unnatural' (made) things gain a node of defining spirit through either their use or their crafting.

So that is how I define something as 'alive', now what happens when you pop your clogs?

Well my mum's view on death is that we are like a tin of beans; when the beans are gone, the tin is on the rubbish heap! ln many ways l can go along with this as I feel that once you die your defining spirit leaves behind what is now an empty container. The question is; what happens to the beans?

The first thing to get straight is that I feel death is more a change than an ending. Just as your flesh and blood will recycle into Nature, unless someone preserves your remains or keeps your ashes in an urn on the mantel, so too will your spirit. It is just what happens to your spirit, the bit that was 'you', that I will try to address here.

The first and easy option would be to take the 'can of beans' analogy to its limit and say that your spirit is just absorbed back into the Divine. I, though, think this is far too simple and feel it would be only likely in the passing of a simple or weak personality. In the case of a more complex spirit I feel some kind of progression is more probable. This could take the form of rebirth, translation or evolution.

Rebirth is quite easy to rationalise as each new life created would be a void ready to suck in the nearest spiritual pattern freshly liberated from the body of one who has passed on. But if it were so simple then why are children not born with the sum knowledge of their past lives?

Perhaps if we were to examine the structure of the spiritual construct, which forms, for ease of understanding, what may be termed a 'soul', we would find a complex pattern of spiritual energy that is largely held together by the material shell it inhabits?

If we therefore accept that the soul not only defines its body but is also shaped by it in turn, we can see that once free of its physical restraints its structure might begin to unravel so that the spirit that reincarnates may not be quite the same as before and once housed in its new body it would be subject to further remoulding by its new environment. As the 'new' individual grows then the pattern of its soul is rewoven to suit. That some may attest to recall their past lives might signify that some patterns have reformed or that the web of the Divine transcends the boundary of time.

So your soul may in part or as a whole pass into a new body or may completely unravel and be absorbed back into the greater Divine. Perhaps the key to the survival of a soul is due to the complexity, development and strength of self? A complex and well developed personality with a strong grasp of 'self' is more likely to persist within the matrix of the disembodied spirit and is therefore much more likely to maintain some degree of integrity. Now what would happen if at the point of death the strength of self were so strong that a soul was able to remain intact?

It is my opinion that any soul retaining its individuality after death would have only two avenues available to it: to pass to another 'plane' or to remain and evolve.

Do we accept that there are other planes of existence or levels of reality outside of our limited sphere of perception? There is no tangible proof, but there are indications within myth and theology not to mention anecdotal accounts from those who claim personal experience. So if we take this as fact, it is not beyond reason that the Divine Spirit permeates these other realms too, and that being the case the ability of souls to translate to other planes seems most reasonable.

Such 'extra perceptual' realms may not be bound by the physics that define our mundane world, but perhaps a soul entering such an environment would still experience it in familiar terms. If this were to imply that such domains are in turn shaped by the cultural mindsets of migrant souls, then perhaps we would truly find our Summerland. Valhalla and Elysium Fields. Maybe a Heaven and a Hell too!

If a soul retains its pre-death personality and hovers around 'old haunts', would you call it a ghost?

Whether an autonomic soul passes to another plane or continues to dwell on this the chances are that sooner or later it will have to change. This change could be a gradual degradation of integrity leading to eventual re-absorption or it could be evolution. A soul that grows into a self-contained spiritual entity and spends its time travelling throughout the various planes of existence must surely gain in knowledge and, one would hope, wisdom. With unlimited time could not the soul of a lowly human metamorphose into an entity we might interpret as a god?

Interestingly this also suggests a motive behind the relationships that some gods have with humanity. Imagine having a near infinite lifespan, even with access to multiple levels of existence and an unparalleled understanding of the Divine at some stage boredom must set in. In some circles it is proposed that a god needs worshippers in order to survive; the implication being that without worship gods fade. I suggest however that gods engage in a relationship with ephemeral beings such as us not to prolong their lives but instead to give their own existence some purpose. As usual the gods make no comment.

So in conclusion it is my belief that at death, though our bodies may return to the earth, our spirits face a future that while not certain in direction is certainly not an end. Does this mean we should not grieve the passing of a loved one? Of course not but while we mourn our loss we should also celebrate their past life and continued journey.

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