Musings On Life and Death - A Mystical View

This view is largely based on Hermetical thought.... something that predates Christianity by hundreds of years.

I am a happy man. I have love, life, and an awesome wife, Sandra.  I have all of this, and do not believe in a god, at least in the Judeo-Christian sense.  The idea of an old man, a god, watching over my every move I find not just silly, but repugnant.

That god will send you to eternal torment if you do not follow his rules.   Just ask some of his rabid followers.  But he “loves" you as long as you follow his rules!  It is this kind of stuff that makes me be, one day an atheist, the next day agnostic, and the following day pagan.   But all the while, I cannot wonder if there could be an after-life without a god, without some form of deity.

In the Judeo-Christian tradition, as in many others, the idea of an after-life, the place to go after you die, is attributed to that particular deity/deities creation of the world; it is a part of the myth.   And, because of this, the deity(s) is linked, in one way or another, to whom goes where.   But, what if there was no god or goddess that brought about creation and an afterlife still existed?    What if something else was in play?
The myths and legends of many cultures describe a void and in that void, there existed two separate and opposing forces.  Please note the word “forces” and not gods.  Those two forces eventually collided or influenced each other, and created want amounted to basic matter, the building blocks of creation.   In those stories, gods were created, and became the first families of creation. From that  point forward, creation expands on an evolutionary track.

The word “evolution” in this essay, I want to give another meaning, a different slant.   Within evolution, everything is growing and progressing, to what – perfection?   Maybe.   But in so doing, cyclical events need to occur, like tearing down the old to make room for the new; destruction and chaos clear the way for a new beginning. If creation/evolution is a cyclical event, destruction of the old is a part of the cycle of life, something that many folks have a hard time understanding.

We can see that point in history and all of nature.   Seeds are planted, yield their bounty and die, only to be re-born again.  Kingdoms have risen and fell.   Mankind has progressed from its earliest beginnings to the stone-age to our present time, through the process of re-birth and evolution, while all of this experience is imprinted on our DNA.   But let’s go a step further, and look at those creative forces I mentioned earlier.

Those two forces, call them positive and negative, male and female, or fire and ice; it does not matter.  If we consider two opposing forces coming together to begin creation, we must assume two things.   One, these are forces and not deities or entities as we understand them.   Secondly, since these are forces, they do not have a personal interest in our day-to-day lives.  Again, this is something many folk have a hard time understanding (this is due to being immersed in the Judeo-Christian Tradition of an absolute god who gave up his "son" for salvation, among other things).  Some of our founding fathers were Deists, and they held to a similar belief ( they also grew Hemp, a staple crop at that time in the colonies).  They looked upon  creation as something that was set in motion, like a clock, and up to us to deal with.   If we hold on to that assumption, where do we go from this point?  This is where it can get dicey for many people.

Evolution demands change, adaptation, progression, and upward mobility, and in a certain sense, recycling.  Science has shown us how various life-forms have evolved to survive.  That includes humans and the common cock-roach.   But what about all the experience and memories that one human accumulates in a lifetime?   Where does all of that go, down a cosmic toilet?    I do not think so.   That would be a waste and something contrary to the evolutionary ideal.  Those experiences, those memories, have to go somewhere.   I am not a genius, just a man who may have a glimmer of an answer.

Let’s assume that those two forces have created matter.  We know from science that matter in its many forms has different weights.   We also know from science that energy is matter and matter is energy, the difference is in the vibratory rates and weights.  Science has also demonstrated that a living human weighs more than a dead human.  The fabled soul has now moved from illusion to fact.  Is it possible that the soul is matter, just lighter and a different polarity that the heavier human body?  This is a distinct possibility.   When you consider that two opposing forces combined or collided to bring about creation, we must consider the human soul and body in a similar manner.   They are attracted to each other and joined, like a magnet.  The soul and body make a creation of one life experience.  That joining, that attraction is severed at death when the human body can no longer be sustained.   Just like two opposites brought about creation, a man and a woman make a child, and the soul and that body make a human life experience.  And, what about the experiences and memories of humans that have come down the evolutionary trail?  They must be retained in some way by the individual soul.

If we consider that the soul is light-weight energy/matter, is it possible that the soul has a “home?”   The human body, the soul’s heavier counterpart, returns to the earth as base matter.  The soul then, must have a home.  When you dig into the various mythologies and philosophies, you come up with the concept of the Oversoul and THE ALL.   In both of these concepts, the Oversoul and THE ALL contain the entirety of creation, the original Void now populated with all forms of matter.   If that is even remotely true, there has to be a place for the soul to return to, a home base, after it separates from the body at death.  That place has to be somewhere in the Oversoul, THE ALL.  When the soul re-unites with this place, it deposits its life experiences.  THE ALL, the Oversoul, grows and evolves and that growth radiates into the rest of creation.   Is that the end?  This cannot be the end - hardly.

The soul returns to gather more experience and develops what some would call a personality and character.  Perfection in a human sense is an ultimate, an end, and evolution is something that does not end. Evolution had a beginning, but it is continuous and ongoing.  Therefore, perfection as a state of being, a Utopian ideal, is a static condition that exists only in our finite human brain.  Life in all its forms never stops growing and evolving; another point that  many have a hard time wrapping their heads around.

If we consider that to be true, the soul is continually returning to a heavy-matter existence because it is a part of THE ALL, the Oversoul, just like everything else.  There cannot be a final stop, a final resting place, just interludes for pause and reflection.   Finality, perfection, means completion and that is not the point of evolution or THE ALL, the Oversoul.  But can there be an after-life, a momentary blink in the cosmic eye of things?  Within the above context, yes.   But remember, as humans, we deal with the infinite with our finite minds.

As I think about these words that I have written and how they will upset and offend the god-fearing religious, I laugh softly to myself.   They all strive for a make believe silly after-life while I strive to make the most of my present.

Author's Note:  As stated in the beginning of this post, these thoughts are hermetical in nature.  But I believe that our Multiverse to be complex in nature.  Waxing hermetical, as above, so below, so too must the soul-body multiverse.  More on this in a future post.



                                             Copyright 2011 & 2012  Terry Unger