Life After Death

by Jay Paul 

The last two weeks on this blog I have discussed visions that I have when I lay down on my living room floor and follow the path of an initiatory image. Strange things happen in these visions, which are like waking dreams. Prepare yourself for what I'm about to say. In some of them, I have even been eaten by giants, traveled through their intestines, and come out alive on the other end. Interestingly, some biologists believe that fish came to populate isolated mountain lakes in a similar manner: eggs survived being eaten by waterfowl who then left the eggs in those lakes when defecating.

Visions such as this one have caused me to reflect on death and immortality. I have also been helped by reading Thich Nhat Hanh on "interbeing," especially in his discussion of The Heart Sutra. I have come to believe in a kind of immortality that does not invoke a spiritual realm of any sort—no heaven, no hell, no reincarnation. I want to think through what death is by attending to what we have right in front of us, with no reference to things we can only believe in. I will, in my discussion, rely on some of the knowledge produced by biology and chemistry. This is not because I believe the natural sciences are the Truth in any simple way, but I do believe they clearly create some knowledge.

What will be different in the lives of the people around me after I die? The immediate answer is that I will not be around to engage with. But how am I around, now? I live alone, so I only see my closest relatives and friends about once or twice a week. It follows that they see me about five hours a week. There are 168 hours in a week. The overwhelming amount of time, they do not see me. When they think about me, I imagine, they rely on various memories which have coalesced into certain ideas about who I am.

Perhaps they come across a book I once gave them. Seeing and feeling the book triggers thoughts about me, all based on memory. Hopefully, the memories will be positive and create a feeling of warmth. The memories may also remind them of something irksome that I did. But the present moment of seeing that book is in dialogue with the memories and ideas they may have of me. 

After I die, seeing the book may give them a pang because I will not be around to be interacted with anymore. How is this different from what happens now, when I am alive? They only see me about five hours a week. They know me now mostly through memory and idea, not from face-to-face interactions, even if they are over the phone or computer. The difference between life and death is not as great as we may think. Where am I while I live? In the memories and ideas of those close to me. Where am I when I am dead? In the memories and ideas of those close to me.

Yes, there is a difference between life and death. This is obvious. But they are closer than we imagine.

Some may object that the memories and ideas about me by those around me can change while I am alive through future interaction with me. This is true. But those ideas and memories may change a lot even after I am dead. I know a man who said that he came to realize who his father was only in the middle of giving a eulogy for him. It hit him like lightning, and he improvised the rest of the eulogy off of this new insight. My guess is that this man's idea of his father continued to evolve over the years, even when the father is not around for face-to-face encounters.

In this way, we live after death. We live on as an evolving ideas and memories in the minds of those who knew us, just as we did when we were alive.

We are immortal in other ways right now. For instance, we are all walking and talking ecosystems. Various bacteria and viruses and other microorganisms live in our bodies. In fact, our bodies have evolved to depend on certain parasites in order to function properly. Without them, we would get sick. Our immune system also fends off dangerous viruses and bacteria with every breath we take. In addition, this system attacks the dangerous stuff in the food we eat.

In reference to food, after I die, I will be eaten by something, even if I am cremated. But I am being eaten right now, while living. In addition to the microorganisms, mosquitoes and flies feed on me. Other insects as well.  Is the difference between life and death as great as we assume?

The big difference between life and death, however, seems to be conscious awareness. Don't I lose this awareness upon death? In a way. But we need to examine what this conscious awareness is. The most apparent aspect of it, to me, is contradiction. I am a bundle of beliefs, habits, and feelings, many of which are inconsistent with each other. For instance, I recently came to realize, through meditation, that I held out an absurd hope for a life of peace and tranquility without problems. I deeply believed this. Yet I consciously knew that life is problems, and that to hope for no problems is to hope for life to be fundamentally different than it is. I believed both of these completely incompatible ideas at one and the same time.

I could use other examples to show that consciousness is full of contradictions. In college I was writing two different papers at the same time for different classes. In one, I analyzed the family as part and parcel of social tensions and conflicts. What you get outside the family, you get inside the family. In the other paper, I romanticized the family as a place of respite away from the difficulties of the wider world. These two views of the family are utterly incompatible. Yet I believed both of them and consciously argued for each at the same time.

These examples show that there is no center to my consciousness. There is no gatekeeper that makes sure my beliefs, and the feelings that are wrapped up with them, have any consistency. Ideas and beliefs come in my ear and out my mouth or onto the keyboard with no internal vetting. This may seem like a bad thing, but it's not. We are not internally consistent machines. Instead, we respond to the needs of the present moment in a dialogue between our memories, beliefs, feelings and what is happening in front of us right now. Internal consistency is not needed. It's just a dream we have about ourselves.

Where do my beliefs come from? From those I relate to. My family, my friends, even authors through books. And these come into dialogue with my experience. Possibly, this interaction may even produce a few original ideas, I don't know. The point is that my consciousness does not set me apart from others. It is others. And this is good. An absolutely independent person would be a horror.

That said, aren't people unique? Of course. But not as much as we often suppose. We not only rely on each other, we fundamentally are each other. In this way, I will live on after my death in the very beliefs and feelings that passed through me and rubbed off on those close to me. They will also be affected by the beliefs and feelings that came to me that I didn't pass on. And what I do pass on the most will probably be feelings and beliefs so intimate to me that I don't even know I have them. 

I am immortal in the sense that various feelings, attitudes, beliefs, and ideas that flowed through me while I was alive affect and continue to affect those around me. And this is what happened while I was alive, too. My physical presence is not needed for me to affect others. I have affected those closest to me to the very point of how their muscles move. I am in their sinew. 

I once heard it said that with each breath we take in on average six atoms that were once in Ceasar's body. This shows how interconnected we are physically. Our minds are equally interconnected. There is no me without a community. In this community that I help forge, I live after death.

But something nags at me. I have heard grieving people say they feel like they have lost a limb when someone close to them dies. If the line between life and death is thinner than we suppose, how can I account for such a response? Perhaps this is a weak point in my presentation. I'm not sure. For now, I believe it shows the profundity of how we are interconnected. Feeling physically hurt by the loss of a close friend or relative is understandable. On a subconscious level, they have become a part of the very way we move through the world.

And doesn't this physical hurt point to a kind of life after death? Even after we die, we can make people hurt, just as we could when alive. Physically, mentally, and socially we continue to affect those around us in profound ways after death. This is a kind of life after death.