For some time, being retired, I have been thinking about such
ultimate questions as: why are we here, what is life all about, what
happens when we die, and do we continue to exist after we die. Drawing
on a lifetime of reading and experience, I think I’ve arrived at some
unusual answers.
To begin building a foundation for those answers, I first wondered
about just who I am; what is it that is me? I don’t believe I’m the
reflection I see in the mirror. No. If I lost an arm or leg, I still
believe I would be 100% me. It seems that the real me, then, is the
consciousness that is within my body. Hmmm. How might I check this?
How about my memory. During part of my working career I was involved
with data storage and encoding, the object being to pack as much
information into as little storage as possible. If you think about all
the things you remember – scenes, happenings, conversations, other
sounds, smells, numbers, taught information, etc. – and the capacity
of the human brain, it is clear that the human brain can remember at
most only a day or two of recent events. So where are the things I
remember stored?
I happen to have had a couple of out-of-body experiences. I recall
being conscious of looking at my body lying on a bed, and of being
able to look around the room and out the window. Each time the
experience scared me, and I quickly returned to my body. But while out-
of-body I now realize that I could recall everything I could think of
while in my body; the me that was in my body was still the me that was
out of my body.
Many books describe out-of-body experiences. The best, I think, is
Thirty Years Among the Dead by Dr. Carl Wickland. In it, he discusses
numerous examples of patients who had died yet whose spirit was still
“here,” entwined with another body. In each case, the spirit of the
now dead person had what seems to be a perfectly normal memory of
their life, and exhibited the personality quirks they had while alive.
So it seems that the human memory resides elsewhere that in the human
body.
Fine, but still why am I here? Indeed, why is anybody or anything
here? Consider what “here” is. We know that this world, and everything
else in the universe, is matter disbursed in an almost infinite amount
of space. But then we also know that E=mc². In words, this "here" can
be reduced to the simple statement that all is energy, even matter. So
“here” is a vast pool of energy, a pool that includes each of us as
well as everything else in this physical universe. Yet it seems that
our memory does not reside in this physical universe, given that it is
not the me in the mirror but is present in out-of-body experiences.
Could it be that there is a consciousness, what might be called an
infinite consciousness, that contains each of our memories as well as
everything else that has ever happened anywhere in the universe at any
time, and maybe even a lot more than that? I don’t know of anything to
disprove this possibility, so let’s assume for now that it might be
correct.
So why am I here? Well, all that is in the universe might be here
simply because it pleases the infinite consciousness that this is so.
It is simply an exercise of an attribute of that consciousness. Fine.
But why am I here? Assume that the infinite consciousness wishes to
experience this physical universe. Of course this could be done by
endowing each thing in the universe with its own consciousness. That
consciousness would know that it was part of a much greater whole. But
it would also know that it was discrete in and of itself. Yet we don’t
know that – each of us believes that we are complete and separate from
all others; we have the freedom to be whatever we choose and do
whatever we want. It’s as if there is a veil or curtain between our
discrete consciousness and the infinite consciousness, this veil
concealing our connection to the whole. (Unless we ponder such things
as where our memories are stored.) Put differently, the only way the
infinite consciousness can experience this universe from within the
universe is to use such a veil to conceal from the individual’s
consciousness his connection to the whole. Could that be why we are
here? I think so.
So what happens at death? Drawing on this view of consciousness, both
individual and infinite, it would seem that all that happens at death
is that the physical body ceases to function. The individual
consciousness continues. And that is just what books like Dr.
Wickland’s report. If you want to know what happens beyond death, the
Seth books by Jane Roberts gives one view, or answer, a view that
seems to build on that expressed by Dr. Wickland.
I would welcome reading your reaction to all this. Does it make sense
to you? Is this a rational and sufficient explanation of the ultimate
questions, or of why we are here? Or not?
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