Thursday 28 October 2010

Beyond the Veil

This post on Frank Wilson's blog and the interesting piece to which it links have started a lively comment strand. For myself, I've never seen the attraction of any kind of personal survival after death. Compared to the thorough extinction of 'me', it seems a hellish prospect. Imagine coming out at the other side of death, still yourself, surviving to see your life whole, to repine and regret and be powerless to change anything, to look on helplessly at the grief caused by your death, and at all that follows, including of course the gradual extinction of your memory (Nige? Who was he?) and to have no way of ceasing to be 'me'. If, however, there is no 'I' at the far side of death, there is nothing to fear, as there will be no 'me' to do the fearing, or to experience anything. Therefore I hope that if there is any survival, it is not of the 'me' I now know, it is not in any normal sense 'personal'.
The experiment described in the piece can hardly tell us anything about 'life after death', but it could throw light on the fascinating possibility that consciousness can operate independently of the brain, that 'I' am not my brain. There seems to be evidence in some forms of hysteria, hallucinations and hypnagogic or hypnopompic states (at either edge of sleep) that consciousness can roam free of the brain. Consciousness is certainly the least scientifically understood human phenomenon - and perhaps can never be scientifically understood (there's ultimately no place to stand outside consciousness from which to examine it). Meanwhile, I entirely agree with Frank that simple gratitude for being should be our focus, rather than speculation about what might come next. As the Iris de Ment song puts it, 'Let the mystery be.'

16 comments:

  1. Interesting post Nige, though I must admit I find your dread of the afterlife a bit baffling, but perhaps it's an age thing... if there is an afterlife, I hope I wouldn't spend it looking at the life I'd just finished and regretting things, or looking at people grieving for me - I think I'd rather move onto a new adventure!

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  2. And what is your opinion about ghosts?

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  3. Strangely this very blog may well be your afterlife. Who knows how long your thoughts, enquiries and rambles through the Surrey countryside will circle through the ether?

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  4. I'm certainly prepared to give these tales some credence, but there is one thing that troubles me about seeing them as objectively real (assuming the objective/subjective divide means anything at this point), and that is that the consistently blissful descriptions of peace and light are perfectly consistent with what we just spent three score years and ten yearning for. I know the seers and prophets told us it would be so, but how could they have been quite so bang on? It makes me think a bit of how people used to imagine uncharted lands, i.e. either Arcadia or "There be Dragons!". When they actually got there, they had to worry about the plumbing. Similarly with aliens, who are always either incredibly wise, benevolent types come to save us or monsters come to eat us. Is it not possible they are actually boring nerds? Still, it's worthwhile believing just to give Dawkins & co. fits of the vapours.

    Nige, is it possible your distaste for the afterlife can be put down to a fear of boredom? I can't remember who first said it, but humans can be very creative and concrete in conceiving of the unimaginably horrific tortures of hell, but frustratingly clumsy and vague about the bliss of paradise.

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  5. I'm with Kate. Here's to The New Adventure. And the mystery.

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  6. Thanks for all those.
    Kate - if I survived still as 'me' I don't see how I'd avoid that melancholy fate, or that I'd be in any mood for a new adventure! Far better to have the whole thing over and done with.
    Ghosts, Magpie - I don't know. People see/experience them, that's for sure, and they may have some significance but I don't know what. Happy to let that mystery be too.
    Worm - that's a lovely thought. It's occurred to me before that one day my great-great-great grandchildren or whatever might be poring over my online ramblings. I rather like the idea. What will remain of us is Blog!
    Peter - I'm sure you're right about our dubious projections onto future/other states, and yes boredom's a real problem with any kind of personal survival. I console myself that only that part of me - if there is one - that is not extended in time and space could survive death, and whatever that might be it certainly wouldn't be 'me' in the sense that I, as at present constituted, am 'me'.
    Tricia - Yes!

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  7. That should be 'survive of us' of course!

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  8. Nige, you don't fool us with all this ethereal talk of sense and time and space and the "real" you. We know your problem began the day the vicar told you butterflies don't go to Heaven.

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  9. Ah Peter - butterflies come from heaven! There's probably little else there...

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  10. Bloggers are immortal. Unfortunately so are Tweeters.

    I tend to your view on these matters, Nige, which isn't the same as atheism. The one concept that in this area that strikes me as completely incoherent is reincarnation. If 'I' am anything it is the product of my genetic parents and my experiences. To call something before or after that 'me' is meaningless. If I can't remember a previous me, then what good is it to have been Caesar or Ug the Caveman, and even if somebody in 3000AD thinks he or she can remember being Brit in 2010, then what good does that do me anyway?

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  11. Butterflies are our afterlife, at least metaphorically. Or so it was explained to me on a sunny day a long time ago by the vicar of Down Ampney in his church's graveyard.

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  12. Bloggers are immortal. Unfortunately so are Tweeters.

    Surely that has to be the brilliant opening of a bestseller. "Call me Ishmael" for the 21st century.

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  13. Eeeh Nige - tha can be a right miserable boogger sometimes! And this from the man who brought us the Mitcham cabbages - second to none in his attention to the detail of life's rich tapestry!

    "Repine and regret" through eternity!! Bloomin' heck! Isn't that giving yourself a bit too much importance and a bit too little credit? Your sins of omission and commission won't amount to a hill of beans sub specie aeternitatis - probably don't now if truth be told - and there are plenty of us out here with every reason to be truly grateful that we shared some small part of the old time space continuum with you! So lighten up!Pity a James Stewart "It's a Wonderful Life" type epiphany can't be arranged.

    If there is a life outside the TSC it will be just that - not before or after any spell of time so there'll be no watching dear ones grieve - everyone past, present and future will be/are already at the eternal party, whooping it up, if Marilynne Robinson's idea of redemption for us all through grace is to be be believed (not sure she puts it quite like that!) - "all shall be well and all manner of things shall be well".

    With physics and neuroscience rendering all we do and all we are part of a cosmos and causal chain, capable of being random and determined, but not willed (except possibly from outside), the idea of life as some sort of test is (thankfully) meaningless, and concepts of eternal praise or blame, reward or punishment, redundant. So if there is another life it seems its purposes are utterly other. It's a mystery all right.

    Determined or not, this life feels purposive and its purposes are its own - human constructs with their own intrisic value - a kiss is still a kiss. We feel and live as if we are responsible and as if it matters what we do - so for us it does. And so the only only place for remorse and regret is the here and now, spurring us on to try and do better by our fellows.

    Marilynne would say that every day can be a redemption or something like that wouldn't she? And the Gospel of forgiveness applies to you too you know. It's a blessing that sets the necessary bounds to the human sense of blame and guilt.

    So keep on keeping on Nige, doing "good in minute particulars", and if you want to add to the store of things you can feel glad about there are always opportunities - like, for instance, finding a puny little half an hour every few months to drink a cup of tea, eat a biscuit - and give blood to save another human life?

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  14. Eeeh Nige - tha can be a right miserable boogger sometimes! And this from the man who brought us the Mitcham cabbages - second to none in his attention to the detail of life's rich tapestry!

    "Repine and regret" through eternity!! Bloomin' heck! Isn't that giving yourself a bit too much importance and a bit too little credit? Your sins of omission and commission won't amount to a hill of beans sub specie aeternitatis - probably don't now if truth be told - and there are plenty of us out here with every reason to be truly grateful that we shared some small part of the old time space continuum with you! So lighten up!Pity a James Stewart "It's a Wonderful Life" type epiphany can't be arranged.

    If there is a life outside the TSC it will be just that - not before or after any spell of time so there'll be no watching dear ones grieve - everyone past, present and future will be/are already at the eternal party, whooping it up, if Marilynne Robinson's idea of redemption for us all through grace is to be be believed (not sure she puts it quite like that!) - "all shall be well and all manner of things shall be well".

    With physics and neuroscience rendering all we do and all we are part of a cosmos and causal chain, capable of being random and determined, but not willed (except possibly from outside), the idea of life as some sort of test is (thankfully) meaningless, and concepts of eternal praise or blame, reward or punishment, redundant. So if there is another life it seems its purposes are utterly other. It's a mystery all right.

    Determined or not, this life feels purposive and its purposes are its own - human constructs with their own intrisic value - a kiss is still a kiss. We feel and live as if we are responsible and as if it matters what we do - so for us it does. And so the only only place for remorse and regret is the here and now, spurring us on to try and do better by our fellows.

    Marilynne would say that every day can be a redemption or something like that wouldn't she? And the Gospel of forgiveness applies to you too you know. It's a blessing that sets the necessary bounds to the human sense of blame and guilt.

    So keep on keeping on Nige, doing "good in minute particulars", and if you want to add to the store of things you can feel glad about there are always opportunities - like, for instance, finding a puny little half an hour every few months to drink a cup of tea, eat a biscuit - and give blood to save another human life?

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  15. Well Anonymous, I suppose that did come across a little miserable, compared to my normal sunny dsiposish - but I can assure you I look forward to whatever's to come with cheerful equanimity. 'Repine and regret' wasn't meant to imply that I'd led a life especially rich in things to repine and regret, and I wasn't thinking in terms of moral blame or guilt. I think to be dead and yet still yourself would give anyone plenty to repine and regret. But I console myself that this hellish state of affairs couldn't possibly be, as 'I' am a creature of space and time and can only exist as 'I' in that continuum. Eternity is clearly outside that and unknowable (expect perhaps through intimations and intuitions) - it cannot 'exist' in the sense that I/we exist. As some French bright spark put it, 'Dieu n'existe pas; it est eternel'. And now I resume my dogmatic slumbers...

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  16. Suppose, Nige, that when die we undergo a change comparable to how, in music, a theme can be transformed into something quite different while remaining composed of the same notes?

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