“Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
The Soul that rises with us, our life’s Star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar…”William Wordsworth, “Ode: Intimations of Immortality”, 1804
Saints, mystics, poets, seers and seekers in every culture have sought the secret of life eternal.
The ever-growing annals of Near-Death Experiences and the findings of quantum physics offer present-day support to the notion that at least a part of us lives on beyond death. If so, what part? Are we immortal?
Our bodies die and decompose into their original elements. So for anyone who identifies only as being the body: we are not immortal.
We know that our flow of life energy ceases after the body dies; and that our thoughts and emotions constantly change and will therefore not likely last much longer, if at all, than the senses and energy needed to sustain them. So if we identify ourselves as being our vitality or our minds: we are not immortal.
What is left, and does it live on? If a part of us is immortal, then it must be within us now. If within us now, then it must be discoverable now.
Whatever others have to say on this subject, ultimately we can only discover the answer for ourselves. We can either wait till we die, or…
Exercise
Sitting quiet and still with eyes closed, in your imagination separate yourself from your body. Feel that you are floating above your own body. You still exist. Now separate yourself from your thoughts – project them onto a screen, out of the way. You still exist, lighter and freer. Continue in this way, separating your consciousness from any part of you that is finite or changeable.
Eventually, you will find – and become – the answer.