There is always that distinct possibility of
life after death, the concept that our souls and core
ego should persevere in some form after the
expiration of our
physical shell. Then again, there's always the
possibility that we
die, and
that's all folks.
Realistically, there's only
one way to find out. Now, in discussing these
virtues of
life and
death, one must inevitably come to contemplate the
ultimate reality of a
god unit, whatever you wanna call him (
Jehovah,
Allah,
Brahman,
whatever). Now personally, I'll just say right now that I believe in some
cosmic force that makes things happen
for better or worse, the closest things I've been able to find is the
dao (mostly because it can't be
explained), so in that respect maybe you could call me
agnostic. But, I don't necessarilly
believe that because there is a cosmic force in the
universe, we as
mortals are ensured an
afterlife.
Originally, it is
thought mankind created
deities to explain
two major
curiosities of life: One, natural phenomena of nature (i.e., the
sun,
thunder, etc), which our
primitive race had yet to
grasp. And Two: What happens after
death?
So, with these things in mind, I sometimes wonder,
Do you think mankind sometimes assures each other of an afterlife out of selfish pride? That somehow, we as a race feel we deserve to ensue after our mortal flame is put out?.
Yes, now I know that saying something like
that is a bit
accusational, not to mention selfish in itself,
so sue me. But I seriously think this thought deserves a bit of
entertainment. As blasphemous as it sounds, I think there could seriously be a
possibility that after we die,
that's it. Because if all
matter, and hence
energy, in this
universe is
constant, then that doesn't really
ensure our exsistance, from a
physics standpoint. It could just mean that when we die, the "energy" that was "us" (i.e., our
ego,
soul, or
whatever), is mearly
diverted to the creation of a
new soul.
The next possibility I'd like to entertain is
reincarnation, which in its nature is a
direct contradiction of the previous
concept I presented. It makes a bit more sense though, considering I've met a few people I often-times thought of as "
old souls". So, we go through life over and over and over, each time getting just a bit
closer to the ultimate
understanding of the cosmos as it stands, and in the
process move further and further away from the material wants and pits of
depravity that seems to cover
this island earth (pardon the movie
reference). So, that in the end, in our "final life", we actually transcend this plane of existence and
extinguish our mortal flame willingly (no, not
suicide), that is to say that when we finally understand what this cosmos is all about, who needs to live in it, eh? So we croak, yadda yadda yadda, and the next step is theoretically end up in
Nirvana, where we exsist in a state of non-being (
Zen,
Mu, whatever you'd like to call it), where we're beyond all needs or concerns, and by nature,
illumed.
The third and most boring possibility, is, of course,
Heaven. But the problem I see with
Heaven, by nature, is its polarity. It represents good. Only good people goto
Heaven. So by its nature alone,
Hell is created to house the
wicked,
perverted masses. Now, in
Heaven, no man is supposed to need things like
tobacco or
women (or big hunky
studs if you're a hetero
fem/
homosexual), because we're there, with
God, and everything's cool. Now, for a bit of the flipside, the
Islamic Paradise and the
Norse Valhalla are much more "pleasure-bound" type afterlives, with all the
carnal pleasures of this world times thirty-gabillion.
...
I figure
different strokes for different folksThis write-up is a cut and paste of some things I wrote in
Warning: You will die someday, that I feel should get their own write-up.