“Eternity is not something that begins after you are dead. It is going on all the time. We are in it now.”
– Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860–1935) – American writer
I recently lost a very dear friend. She was coming up on her 91st birthday, so I can’t say her “leave taking” (as I prefer to think of our bodily demise) was unlikely, not at all ill-timed or unexpected. Nevertheless, I miss her uniqueness and her absolute goodness.
These departures we call “death” almost always stir the eternal questions, and to the inevitable pondering about immortality and “life after death” this one-time undergrad philosophy major and now retired minister had some intriguing thoughts and speculations. Indulge me, please.
I believe the “I Am” of us (the quintessential Self) returns to the “Ground of Being” (the God Head) out of which all things (physical manifestations) come. But “Being” and “Living” are not the same thing. “Living” is the out pressing of “Being”–so “living” is “Being” made manifest. Our true “Being” is Intelligence or Mind–in philosophical terms, what the Greeks call “Noumena.” We exercise Mind in living, and return it to the “Ground of Being” when we give up life. The Intelligence or Mind that we are continues on in the realm of unmanifest “Being” and is put into service in new experiences of living should we so choose.
We may think of “Living” as the playground of “Being.” We enter and reenter “Life” (Jesus describes this phenomenon in John 10:18, telling us he can put the body down and pick it up again–and in John 14:10-12 tells us that “the works that I do ye shall do also…and greater than these shall ye do…”).
Why do we reenter life? Some of the happier reasons suggest it’s because life can be fun, interesting, an adventure, a creative endeavor. We “put the body down” when it no longer serves us, when we’ve outgrown our context, when living in the manifest realm has become a drag on our Spirit.
So my dearest friend Elaine– “…the only person I’ve ever known about whom I never had a moment’s ambivalent feeling…”–Godspeed. I feel you in my heart always, and know I’ll see you again.
Come, let us manifest together!