Anyone who has seen a corpse I think must be struck by not just the absence of the signs of life, such as breathing and movement, but something subtler—it is the lack of life-energy and an indefinable finality. There is Newton’s maxim for conservation of energy[i], that energy cannot be gained or lost, it simply changes form. So, the body’s elements return to its source, From dust to dust, a few dollars’ worth of chemicals. But what of the life-force for one such as Newton, his ambition, intelligence and feeling-nature? Those undefinables we call soul? If they are simply products of biochemical reactions then they die with the chemistry-set of the body. However, if consciousness is more than body, the soul higher than electrical stimulations to neurons, if art and poetry is anything other than aberrations, and the pursuit of mathematics and science more than accidents of nature without design, then we must admit there is also more to religion than a philosophy driven by the fear of death, or the desire to control others through issuing an “opiate to the masses.”
Any thinking, sensitive soul knows that within the sensate being is something beyond adaptations to surviving a hostile environment. Religious expression through art, literature and song lifts the soul above grubby nature, offers sublimity of experience that can make one soar as on wings of angels. Where is there any survival need in such beautiful visions, to spend one’s life in reflection, being in service to humanity, or in the ultimate journey to realize God? There is a driving force in life to challenge the physical limits of consciousness; what happens to this drive when the body is no more?
If someone wedded to the body says, “I only know this body, this world, if there is more why do I not know it?” You might as well ask the mud worm what lies beyond its murky world, and he takes his own incomprehension of anything more as proof there is nothing more to the world than watery or dry soil. Or if you ask the fish about the sky, he might shudder with fear that sky is death and responds by swimming into deeper depths at the mere thought of airy vastness. And ask someone who’s world is his patch of earth about celebrating life by rising in a hot air balloon to see the curvature of the earth—and going further, all the way to the edge when blue sky turns black and reveals vast galaxies beyond—and he simply looks at you as if you are mad. Each one, the mud worm, fish, or earth-bound man is conditioned by his experience to think his world is all, and there is no other—or what is beyond is something to be feared.
However, the spiritual-adventurer chafes at artificially imposed limits. Just as a race horse gets his blood up looking at the racecourse, so does an aspirant for higher truth yearn to run the course, is straining to burst the bounds of his sense-shackles. Oh, to defy gravity that glues feet to earth, to rise above mundane matters and soar upon those angel’s wings! To go further than even what the poet paints in words, the artist seeks to invoke on canvas, to even go beyond the heights that song can inspire! And where does this energy, this power of mind, heart and spirit to transcend go when death claims its share? Soul cannot be created or destroyed, but only changes form.
To know what soul without body is does not require final death. This is the secret of religion. Krishna, Buddha, Jesus and Mohammed were explorers of what worm, fish and man knew not. They claimed this truth not just for themselves, but that we all have the capacity to go beyond where no man has gone. Man cannot know this ultimate Truth, because man is no longer man when he realizes he is more than body, more than mud or water. The power of quest transforms man into overarching Soul, free of the limits of body, name, sex or vocation; he or she is changed into something new. That power does not simply disappear—just the opposite—it becomes immortalized.
For the realized aspirant the eternality of Soul is just as plain of a fact as for the astronaut when the sky turns from blue to black and the earth transforms from flatness into being round—Self-realization reveals the Soul as it has always been, will always be. The tiny limits of human perspective which seemed all-powerful before are now broken forever. Life is not only eternal, but beautiful beyond compare. Is no longer filled with sorrow and despair, but joyously blissful. Is not dark and obscure, but enlightened, full of inspiration, meaning and wisdom. What has always been will always be—and that “always” part is the Essence of not only individual Soul but is the Essence of all that is. It is as if life before was a dark dream, a life lived in a cavern of shadows, and is now awakened to a world of light and color.
In that realization we may joyously sing with St. Paul, O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory? (1 Corinthians 15:55) For we now know the greater Reality in which nothing is lost: though the body may return its dust to dust, the Soul returns to its eternal life in God.
[i] In physics, the law of conservation of energy states that the total energy of an isolated system remains constant, it is said to be conserved over time. This law means that energy can neither be created nor destroyed; rather, it can only be transformed or transferred from one form to another.