Nothing hidden is lost. Nothing found is new. To reveal is to re-veil what is found, to put it into a new guise. Reality is a solid, eternal amidst the flicker of firelight and thought.
— Frater Aujen Tetari, erro scholasticus, /\|_/\, Tenshin Abbatia Mystica.
///
Spiritualists imagine a spirit realm in which human-shaped spirits exist in a world that mirrors our own. Adherents of the desert religions scam pretend our spirits are human-shaped and rise to be in paradise or heaven, where they enjoy earth-like pleasures and eternal joy or bliss.
Consider that human beings have been in existence for only a brief time. In our present form, a few hundred thousand years at most. As a more-or-less upright primate, for perhaps six million years. Earth is four billion years old. For most of our planet’s existence there were no beings we could call even humanoid.
If we are, as many religions assert, the ghost in the machine, the spirit in the material, if in fact we are not a body with a soul but a soul with a body, manifesting energy in matter, electricity and not the light bulb, then it is demonstrable and obvious our manifested form changes continually. This means any energy caught in the antenna of a body would certainly not maintain any kind of form we would recognize as human-like, or earthly, when not being made coherent by that body.
If we are energy beings, we are signal in a field. Our bodies are antenna. Matter itself is an antenna array for energy.
Science tells us matter is energy. Science is merely the study of reality, a method of inquiring into what the world is and how it works. The deeper we go, the more we find that everything is energy and almost nothing more.
God, heaven, hell, the afterlife, any existence beyond this physical incarnation we cherish and waste, are concepts, not facts. They are not beings or places. They are simply ideas we came up with to structure our experience into a form or set of patterns we can comprehend.
String theory in physics asserts that our cosmology is merely a projection from a few dimensions into a set of higher ones, up to ten. Those who have seen the movie THE MATRIX and its sequels, or who study Hindu and Buddhist philosophy, seize upon this as validation of their conceptual framework but in fact string theory is, like other cosmologies, a theory, not a fact. Proof against it currently counterbalances evidence for it, in fact.
We are sentient beings. Are we sentience? Do we exist or are we but echoes of processes at a far lower vibration of strings infinitessimal and unproven?
No one yet knows.
What reason tells us seems bleak to some, that we are simply not ghosts in vaguely human form waiting in a world very like ours to join in the fun ride of matter. Logic tells us we are a spark in timeless darkness. A vast universe fourteen billion years in existence, resulting from a singularity expanding for unknown reasons probably having to do with a slight flaw or wobble or irregularity of some kind, is as good as we can do so far, with us the merest fleeting flicker of self-awareness. If indeed we are actually self aware.
If there is an aspect of consciousness that extends beyond the corporeal, we have as yet devised no way to demonstrate it that is not obviously subjective and most likely a desperate kind of projection.
All of which should teach us to be here now. To be alive and do things while we can.
This is a short ride and it can end any time for any of us.
Wake up.
Existence is the spark of respite amidst the eternal suffering of nonexistence. Make it count for something among your fellow flickers; add to the light we make and see if we can shine it brightly enough to glimpse what is really around us.
/// /// ///
