You may not want to ask this of others, but it’s a good question to ask yourself
Introduction
Before we begin, I want to distinguish between the “soul” and you. I was raised Catholic. I was told that when I die, my soul would be saved. “Yeah that’s great!” I thought. “But what about me? What happens to me after I die?” The soul, I always thought, was something separate from me, so who cares what happens to it?
To avoid confusion I am going to use the word consciousness to describe the self-aware personality that wakes up every day, goes to work or play; the one who directly experiences life. No, not the body. The body is part of human consciousness, of course, because the body’s receptor cells automatically filter the electromagnetic spectrum and create what we experience as everyday reality. Our definition of consciousness goes beyond scientific materialism, which is the notion that only the physical universe exists.
The Question
Here’s the question: “What happens after you take your last breath?”
Why ask this question at all? Because the light of spirituality is dimming in our secular, atheist, and rage-a-holic society; a society that glorifies technology and science and deprecates the human connection to the beauty and love of the spiritual realm.
The spiritual realm is the seat of consciousness.
Science and technology are taking humanity down the road to a stultifying scientific materialism that regards human beings as easily controlled and directed stimulus-response digital machines.
Transhumanism is at the forefront of this movement. The goal of Transhumanism is essentially to cheat death and achieve immortality. I suppose that is an admirable goal, but what if the consciousness of every human being is already immortal?
The Prize
My wife and I are watching the Highlander series again. The Highlander was made in the 1990s, and depicts characters who are physically immortal – unless you take their head. The series is fascinating because the writers and producers made the most of a simple concept: A very small percentage of humanity has always been physically immortal. A Gathering of immortals will eventually take place until there is only one left. The prize? The winner becomes mortal and can die.
Why would the prize, after thousands of years of living, be the death of the body? Perhaps, as is made clear in the series, living forever in the same body builds up a lot of trauma. People become so jaded that they want to start over. The main actor, Adrian Paul, is superb at portraying a 400-year-old man and the challenges a person might face living so long.
Even if Transhumanists can create a body that never dies, would that solve the problem of living forever in the same body?
I doubt it. Living forever doesn’t guarantee happiness. Transhumanism doesn’t guarantee happiness. No, Transhumanism is an “out” for those who are petrified of taking their last breath.
Because, you know, what happens after that? Well, blackness I guess. You are snuffed out.
I don’t blame people who are afraid of this outcome, for it is terrifying.
Continuance
What if there was a spiritual system on the planet that made this question moot? We discussed such a system in a previous post. This system gives you a break every 80 years or so. Then you come back in the process of reincarnation. It’s you, just in a different body. Variety is the spice of life.
If consciousness doesn’t originate in the body, then it is independent of the physical universe. And that means that after you take your last breath, you continue.
Physical immortality a la the Highlander, or Transhumanism, is the process of unbroken, continuous consciousness. Reincarnation is the process of unbroken, continuous consciousness combined with a release of all the trauma of the last lifetime, and a re-start. Sounds pretty good to me.
Everyone has two choices: (1) belief in the continuance of consciousness, or (2) belief in the complete snuffing out of existence after the body takes its last breath.
The irony is that both options result in the same thing, but you won’t know for sure until the body breathes its last.
Most of us simply go through life without asking what we are doing here, and that’s fine. But eventually we must all face the Ultimate Question.
What I don’t understand are people who believe so thoroughly in their own demise. Hardcore materialists have consciously chosen (2), and have created an entire field of science/technology that is receiving massive funding. Apparently there are many on the planet who think this way.
The good news is that no matter who you are, at the end of life, all endings are happy endings: a return to the spiritual realm. It’s something to look forward to.