How much time do you spend in a day thinking about eternal things?
Most of us, due to prevailing winds of thought these last few decades, are almost subconsciously trained to think that nothing we see is eternal - whether 'natural' or man-made. Of course we know nothing man-made lasts forever, but we don't even wonder about 'natural' things.
We spend our moments thinking hard about the here and now, and sometimes the future, mostly in terms of laying up for it. But as the 'future' becomes the present and as time rolls on, our lives end in death. Death we dread, but rarely think about. We live like we're going to live forever and never die.
What do I really mean when I say 'eternal things'?
I mean, does anything we see last forever? Well beyond a time when the earthly story of humankind has long gone? Is there something that transcends the story of humankind, which will continue to exist even if humankind and life on earth ceased to exist?
One typical response to such questions is, who cares. Why think about a time when I may not even exist. It's stupidity. A waste of precious time (never mind the answer to the question "precious exactly for doing what? something which might last forever?")
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As I look around me (and even within me), I see a very unique dichotomy. We live by sight - by what we can see, touch, feel, hear. But there are those parts of us that are not seen. Have I seen my feelings? Have I seen my emotions? These are intangibles, but no one would deny they really exist. Yet, each of us lives as if we only were a physical body. It's a strange dichotomy.
We work hard for something that will sustain our physical lives. At the same time, we seem to have some intangible life within us - something (or better, some-ONE) that thinks, feels, emotes, cares, hates, loves, hopes, dreams. Has any of us ever SEEN these things tangibly? Can we PROVE they exist? It's a stupid, rhetorical question, isn't it? We do not need to prove these things exist because we KNOW they do and we're not asking for proof.
And yet. And yet, we live as if only the physical body exists. When someone dies, we grieve for a time and then forget they ever existed. That is, as long as we can remember a physical body, the person exists; but when the body is gone, the memories also slowly fade to a point where we may not remember the person who once existed.
We either deny, ignore, explain away, suppress the inner "us". We behave like it does not exist. We know that it exists, but we spend precious little time tending to it or even offering it companionship. Are you your friend? It's a very valid question isn't it.
Simply put, we think that the life of a human being is in the human being's physical body, and nothing else. We either deny or are not aware that there is an inner being, an inner ME, who thinks, feels, prefers, judges, loves, hates, etc etc.
Why am I making this distinction? Isn't the inner me inseparably part of the physical me? Why accord it a seemingly 'separate' existence? Does it have an existence of its own, apart from my physical body? A very good, worthwhile question.
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I won't attempt answers to the question. But I do ask, where DID we get this notion of words like "forever" and "eternity"? We know that the physical body has an end. If everything we ever were were only part of the physical body, wouldn't the inner me die with the physical me? Another worthwhile question. However, why do we even define words like "forever" and "eternity"? Where does that idea come from, if not from the inner us? And if it indeed comes from the inner me, how can the inner me, which we believe also dies with the physical me, think of such a thing? Where did the inner me get this idea of "forever"?
Or is "forever" just a notion, an idea, a figment of our imagination, a flight of fancy? Many of us indeed think so. Like we think that there are worlds out there which are also inhabited but (curiously and humourously, as a matter of fact) by creatures that cannot be beautiful like some of us are. I have NEVER seen aliens in any comic portrayed as being more beautiful than human beings. It's curious, but think about it. We seem to think we're beautiful. Another idea whose origin can only be the inner you, the inner me. "Everyone is beautiful on the INSIDE", we say. What (or who) is this "INSIDE"?
When someone dies, prayers are offered for the 'soul' of the person. "May his/her soul rest in peace" is almost a universally offered condolence. How does this 'condole'? By offering the idea (a mere chance, is what most of us believe) that PERHAPS the INNER PERSON does in fact live "forever", and if so, may that "inner person", now free of the constraints of the physical body, live in the peace that the person never knew while he/she inhabited the physical body.
So. Whether we like it or not, whether we believe it or not, as a race, we human beings have got some conception of something called a "soul", an "inner person", who, we hope, lives on beyond the time our physical bodies stop breathing. It's a remarkable conception because, if we only thought that what we see exists, such an idea would make absolutely and logically no sense whatsoever; and yet, even so, many of us think it's true.
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And SO, SO, I come back to my original question. If indeed there is an "inner me" that lives on beyond the physical me, why do I spend my time on earth thinking only of the physical me? Back to my original question. "How much time do you spend in a day thinking of eternal things, like the "eternal" inner me?"
If the inner "I" am indeed going to outlive the physical "I", wouldn't it make sense to think about how the inner "I" is GOING TO LIVE? Is there something I can do now, while still in the physical me, that would make "life" easier for the inner me that will outlive the physical me?
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Let me change the vantage point a bit. Let's think of what we see around us. We have a world, an "earth", we are told, where we have these curious separations of "water" and "land". Of "earth" and "sky". Of the innumerable KINDS of physical life on earth. The plants, the animals, vertebrates, invertebrates, microbes, and so on. Have we ever wondered whether they HAD to be there? We take them for granted because they're there. But did it have to be a world like this? We are told that the largest planet, Jupiter, is nothing but a gigantic ball of dense gases, with no solid land. Why couldn't earth be like that? We are told that Mars indeed has both land and water (recently discovered), but they're still looking for something called "life" there. Why couldn't earth have been like that?
Curiously enough, among "life" on earth, only we can draw a map of it. Only we know about Jupiter. Ask a Rosy Starling about Jupiter, or a Green Mamba about Mars. A Three-Toed Sloth doesn't even know what the earth looks like from space! In fact, a Duck-billed Platypus doesn't even know we are human beings, or that it looks the way it looks. Can you "call" a Gharial (a fresh water crocodile found in India) and have it come over to you just because you called? A human being might call another human being by name and perhaps have that person come over just because the person was called.
Why do we have this knowledge? Why can we think? assimilate? reason? research? keep inventories? know everything?
Questions we've never thought of, perhaps; but worthwhile ones. It is indeed worth wondering why, among all the LIFE there is on planet earth, we human beings are the only ones who fully know what life is and how precious it is. The odds of this being mere coincidence belies the evidence. It really, actually looks like we were the only ones who were SUPPOSED to know what we know - this world, different kinds of life on it, the skies, the heavens, where Jupiter is, and also, curiously, the "inner me". We were SUPPOSED to know all of this, and ONLY WE were supposed to know.
That's how precious a human life really is. It has this curious streak of eternity about it; this "frisson", if you will - trapped inside a painfully mortal cocoon - a physical body. And this assemblage - the inner person and the physical - called a "man", was indeed, it seems, to rule over all life on earth. And when a man dies, the inner person outlives the physical body.
Why else would so many of us care so much about what gets written on our tombstones? Why do we go so hard after our accomplishments? Why we strive so hard to be remembered at least by people we love and who love us? Why are we careful to live in such a way as to be remembered by others when we die - that is, leave a "legacy"? The word has no meaning if, in some sense, nothing outlived the physical. If nothing outlived the physical, or if nothing existed but the physical, in one sense, there are no such things as memories, leave alone "precious" memories.
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And STILL. STILL, our everyday living is crowded with inessentials. Making a living, saving up for a future we may never live to see. It's a tragedy to see the best brains in the world using their enormous intelligence to help a select few on earth make more money.
It is rightly said about us, we live as if we will never die, and we die as if we never lived.
The supreme creature of life on earth, man, lives as if only today and only he matters. Knows and feels the tug of eternity and eternal longings on the inside, but lives daily only to satisfy physical needs and appetites. Living "hand to mouth" is not to be said only of the poor of the earth. Even the richest man on earth lives hand to mouth. If he has it in his hand, he is sure to immediately satisfy his appetite with it and deny it to someone else, if such is in his power.
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So, here again comes the original question. Do you think at all of eternal things? Life beyond death? A time when possibly a man might indeed live forever? Have no wants? No tears? no sorrows? no injustice? When every man has enough? Will there be a time like that? Not the way we live today, no.
And the land and sky - the water and the land - this earth, a speck of dust in an unimaginable universe - do we think why it had to be this way?
What about my parents? my children? Why is there family? Why do I care so much? or love so much? Is it only for life on li'l ole earth?
If there indeed were "eternity", would you want to be in it? If you do, how come you do? Where did that want come from?
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I have to conclude, in the end, that nothing about life on earth is WYSIWIG (what you see is what you get). The evidence is just too overwhelming to support the fact all we see is not all there is. In fact, we actually "see" very little of what really exists.
There must be something beyond life. But I provide no answers. I only ask the question, HOW MUCH TIME DID YOU SPEND TODAY THINKING ABOUT ETERNAL THINGS?
Because what is seen is indeed going to pass away.....but what is unseen, and still exists, will be revealed. What will it be like when that happens? What if it happens when I was not prepared for it?
Spend a little time each day asking the question WHY. Why does it all have to be arranged this way - this life on earth? It is a worthwhile question and a serious one, one whose answer might determine your eternity.
