April 14, 2005 "Ether"

What happens to what we are? I mean, what we really are. I know what happens to our bodies. I know what happens to our money, our posessions, etc. I'm talking about the animating force that we are, the thing that lives on in other people's memories, the thing that touches the world and changes it for the better or (most cases, and) the worse.

Scientists, skeptics and atheists would say that all that we are is contained in our body. When it ceases to be, so do we. Hmm, maybe, but I doubt it. It's so easy just to believe in what you can see and hear and feel. The more challenging task, and I would argue, the braver position, is to be able to see and think beyond the physical and look into "the real". By that, I mean the intuitive reality that we all feel but cannot really touch or confirm with any of our present operating senses.

We have all had the experience, for example, of thinking of someone and then having them immediately call soon afterwards. And I would bet that most of us also have at least one story about a strange coincidence regarding the death of a loved one, i.e. timing, something prophetic the loved one said or did, etc. Many of us have even had the experience of seeing something they can't really identify using any known classification. It could be a UFO, a spiritual sighting, or some kind of strange, unknown animal. Whatever the case, my point is that most of us have the sense that there is more to our reality than is readily accessible to our current senses, but have no proof, or means to provide proof, of its existence.

That is where faith comes in I suppose. But I think faith is often too soft a term to describe belief. Faith conjures up images of sheep fawning at the knee of a master, or primitives bowing in awe of the thunder. I guess I like the term "belief" more because it is at least grounded in something. Belief, to me, connotes, evidence on one side and counter evidence on the other, and someone making an informed decision to choose between the two. The power is in the individual, and is not imposed from without. We are free to believe whatever we want, and that is an important distinction. Now one could argue that one is also free to have faith in whatever you want, but again, faith seems to connote belief without corresponding accountability. Faith always seems more like "wishful thinking" than belief, which places higher demands upon the believer, at least in terms of responsibility. If I have faith that my loved one will get better, that seems to ignore the possibility that they might not. Belief says, "I believe my loved one will get better", which to me requires a bit more; research, consultation, mediation and prayer. Faith seems more like a get out of jail free card than a hard fought for spiritual conviction.

All of which brings me back to my original question, where does what we are go? Is it enough to say that we live on in the minds of the people who remember us, in the physical and emotional changes our lives have brought to the world? Or is there truly something more, some kind of essential "us" that slips between the bonds of this earth and resides in a realm we cannot reach? Obviously, no one on this planet can definitively answer that question. I guess for me the most important thing is to keep an open mind. I don't presume to know the answers to much of anything, let alone this age old question, but I do leave myself open to all possibilities and listen with interest to stories that seem to point to evidence of life after death. Can it all be just wishful thinking, humanity's inability to accept its eventual non-existence? Am I projecting my own hope that someday I will see my loved ones again, so many of whom have already left this plane? I recognize that as a possibility, while at the same time noting that millions of others have had experiences that lend credence to the belief in life after death.

In the TV show, "The X-Files", Fox Mulder has a poster that says "I want to believe". I guess that's true of me, as well. I won't believe out of sheer need, but there is a real hope that there is something more, something beyond this life. This theme informs much of my thoughts, my writing, my day to day living. I don't think it all ends at the grave. But the larger question involves what form that afterlife takes. Are we angels, ghosts, viewers of this reality through a dark, misty glass wall? Do we see, hear, feel, talk? Do we have bodies, or are we just pure energy, pure thought? These are the questions that haunt me, and challenge me.

None of us will ever know the answers to these questions, at least not until we die. The quest to understand them, however, is something that we cannot avoid in this life, no matter how futile that quest may seem. Perhaps the only way to find peace with our "unknowing" is to realize that we are all in the same philosophical boat, all seeking answers to the same questions and all doomed to have to wait for the answers.