The novelty of this essay is that it offers the non dualistic argument that the basis and origin for a transcendent reality of every human being belong to the physical and immanent world.
Without doubt, the most important issue for any human being is the thought of his own death. Although death shall end with all his life projects, it is the only means for his transcendence. However, it is also the issue that he more evades, because he knows that death will irreversibly end with all he knows, all his achievements, and all with which he feels so comfortable, and also because he has no basis to know what comes after his own death, if there is anything coming at all. No one has ever come back from the other world to tells us how or what is there, except for some few who have been allegedly dead for some minutes and have experienced some kind of existence in the “other world.” The fact remains that there is no certain argument to support any ulterior existence, except the reasons given by religion and theology.
If someone has the absolute conviction that no personal existence will keep on after his biological death, his system of personal and cultural beliefs will adapt to this fact, and death will assume a fatal and irreversible event that will definitively end away with his life, just as it ends up with every biological organism. Thus, an agnostic naturalist holds that death is the absolute and irreversible end of life. For him the alleged existence after life is just a fantasy born of the constant biological effort to survive while devising ways to fulfill that desire, of denying the sad consequences of death while psychologically resisting the idea of death. This resigned attitude is actually very convenient. It leads to a complacent attitude to life and covers up with a veil of disinterest and avoidance of the latent anxiety and fear of one day having to die.
Indeed, we know that life is a biological process which begins for every living individual at a certain moment in history and necessarily ends up after some time, which for this individual is its whole lifetime. Life happens in time between conception of a biological organism and its organic disintegration where identity as an organism is unsustainable. A biological organism is in itself a system that obeys the laws of thermodynamics. It consumes, transforms and delivers energy, while maintaining an identity. Without losing this identity it undergoes changes and exchange energy with its environment. When death overcomes, this system loses its identity, inevitably ceasing to exist while its components are dissolved into the ecosystem.
Rational and Mortal Beings
Human beings are entirely biological organisms. But, unlike other biological organisms, death is usually seen by us, not with natural fear, but with the utmost horrific terror. The cause of this profound emotion is that our intelligence allows us to be aware that our fate is to die and that death is accompanied by a greater or lesser agony. If fear is a healthy emotion whose function is to fend off any danger that can impair one's existence and if the major existential concern is survival, death comes as the extreme threat that has the particularity of ending with nothing less than own existence. Perhaps there are a couple of consolations: the knowledge that death makes us equal to all, rich and poor, famous and anonymous, and that we will all die.
Human life is distinguished from animal life just because our intelligence has undergone further development in the course of biological evolution. Our rational interaction with the environment and with ourselves is intentional. This action emanates from the rational deliberation that the human subject performs having his consciousness as its center. Of all the living organisms only a human being becomes aware since childhood of the dreadful fact that one day he has to die. This made a radical break with his biological urge to survive. In a second instance, once his consciousness is facing its most raw and terminal reality, the question becomes, what will happen to him after death, if anything happens?
To avoid the terrible fact of death, from the Peking man onwards all cultures are based and revolve around some fantasy that mutes the problem of death by postulating some kind of existence after the final hour. These fantasies range from the belief in the resurrection of the body to a sort of transmigration and reincarnation. It is difficult to accept that life after death may be more of the same, even if it is much better, lest much worse. Though quite comforting, someone may believe in Walhallas, Nirvanas, Paradises and the like. Neither the belief in reincarnations is satisfactory, since the next question relates to what benefit there is to know that one was in a previous life an officer of Napoleon, the brother of Pharaoh Amenhotep IV or a humble mouse, and how important is for someone to know if after his death his spirit transmigrates to another being with its own identity.
Neither should we settle for dualistic beliefs, such as the Platonists, who conceive the human being as composed of spirit and body, and death as when both components are separated temporarily. For them the spirit or soul pre-exists or is created in the moment of the conception of a human being and the resurrection is the time when spirit and body are reunited for eternity. There is no evidence to confirm this belief that has so influenced Western culture. On the contrary, the laws of thermodynamics could not explain where a living organism could get the energy to exist forever, what would happen with entropic waste of his activity, what effects would have his eternal life on the ecosystem, and so forth.
However, contrary to all previous beliefs, to support or contradict some fantasy in particular is the abundance of paranormal and parapsychological manifestations of "spirits" that almost everyone has had at least once in their life or we've heard countless times from reliable witnesses. This experience casts a heavy shadow of doubt on the agnostic stance. Although it can not be considered a valid and empirical demonstration of the possibility of any existence after life also it can not be discarded. This non demonstrable experience is there, not only to trouble us, but to disqualify any agnostic who denies that possibility.
Additionally, to accept some existence after life is a big problem. From the standpoint of morality, it becomes the mayor problem. Intentional action usually is projected to affect our physical environment within a space-time reference. Death ends with the origin of this action, although what it is caused runs its projected course. However, the belief in an afterlife existence –indicating that the personal fate does not end with death– forces us to modify our actions. Also, if someone’s worldview includes the belief that his existence after death depends on his current behavior, then his deliberations prior to his act and to the effects of his actions have a profound impact, forcing him to choose a course of action by the axiology accepted by him.
Apart from God, if one accepts that everything that exists belongs to our universe of matter and energy, the question of what part of me can survive my death, if anything can survive?, raises more questions than it answers. So, what would be the nature of that something? How was this something generated? What is its livelihood? Would this something be identified with the ego? What is the self? etc. Any answer that can be given enters into the hypothetical realm. Also, these questions deal with issues impossible to prove since they belongs to a field that exists beyond our empirical experience.
An initial response is to consider the idea of "consciousness ". We can distinguish at least three types of progressive and inclusive consciousness. 1. Consciousness of something as the subject of an action that can affect me. In this category are natural phenomena, including the instinctive actions of animals, and the intentional actions of other human beings. 2. Self-consciousness in first knowing to be an individual part of an environment of time and space, and second knowing to be subject of physical, instinctive and intentional actions that affect others. 3. Profound consciousness in knowing and feeling to be a subject with a me myself that is unique and subsisting.
Structures, Forces and Scales
Structures, Forces and Scales
It is relevant in this presentation to make a brief reference to structures, functions and scales. Thus every individual thing in the universe is a structure, being composed of discrete units, and every discrete unit is itself a structure. Thus, the discrete units that comprise every structure belong to a lower level of structuring. Accordingly, any structure is also a discrete unit that belongs to a larger scale structure. The scales range from fundamental particles to the universe itself.
A structure exerts force, not indiscriminately, but in a very specific way, like a wheel that rotates around its axis. Therefore, any structure is functional in the sense of specific cause and / or effect. Since it can exert specific forces, such as the gravitational force due to have mass, or the ability to relate, as in the case of two atoms of hydrogen that may be associated with an oxygen atom and conform on a larger scale a molecule of water, every structure is multifunctional. The functionality of the discrete units determines the subsistence of the structure that they are part and determine its own multi-functionality. If a structure is cause or effect of forces, it is because it delivers or receives energy in such acts. Energy can not exist by itself: either it is 'condensed' in matter (E = mc ²) or serves as causal link between two or more bodies (gravity, electromagnetic radiation, etc.).
Although we can not guarantee anything about the “fact” that the creation of the universe is outside our experience, we can suspect that the primal energy “before” big bang “was,” so to speak, “contained” in God and carried the code of natural laws. From the beginning the universe’s evolution has implied to transform this energy into material structures increasingly complex and increasingly of larger scales. With the emergence of human beings, as intelligent and free beings, for the first time the structuring has been of energy, which is what we will see below.
The Sameness
The functional structure that now concerns us is the human being. The brain is among its discrete units. Including animals with a central nervous system, this is the only structure in the known universe that includes psychological functions. What exclusively characterize the human brain are its physiological functions of an intellect with abstract and rational thinking, an affectivity of feelings and an effectivity of intentionality and freedom. Indeed, in these properties the human brain differs from the psychic structure common to higher animals, which is characterized by function in a smaller scale, since it has the psychological functions of instinct, images and emotions. The human brain generates a reflective thought that is abstract and rational, and can primarily produce ideas and logical conclusions, and secondly produce feelings and intentions, from the combination of affection and effection. These specifically human features define the human being as a person. The brain structures that are generated did not appear from an alleged World of Ideas, but arose in the very material course of biological evolution.
In a first instance, the multifunctionality of psychic substructures of human beings is unified by the consciousness of self, worried like all other living organisms to survive and reproduce. The advantage of self-consciousness was a major quantum leap in the process of biological evolution. Self-consciousness reflects on itself in its relationship with other individuals, whether inanimate, animate or humans, and projects and determine courses of action primarily related to self survival and reproduction. The generation of individual self as a psychic structure is based on the biological material of a brain composed of highly differentiated cells, the neurons, and is a product of the human mind and its psychological functions in all its rational and abstract activity, in its affectivity of feelings and in its intentional projection. The nature of this psychic structure is not really material, in the sense of consisting of atoms and molecules, but is the product of the fundamental forces mediated by the complex neuronal structure of the brain and form a structure of specific energies, mainly electrochemical in nature.
In a second instance, when a person reflects intimately about why he himself, coming to the conclusion of his own and radical singularity, the psychological multifunctionality is unified through and in the profound consciousness, which is the self sameness. The crux of this activity is that this sameness reflects his own individual self within a particular worldview that the self goes on conforming, generating and creating in his own history the experiences, knowledge, feelings and intentional actions. This worldview reflects the life project that a person constructs. This worldview is varied and can range from an unhealthy self-centeredness to the loss of identity which characterizes idolatry. Indeed a true worldview should be consistent with reality, the reality that has God the Creator and Savior as its Α and Ω. In this worldview are outlined bonds of love, solidarity, goodness and mercy. In this cognitive, affective and intentional action the self acquires, so to speak, autonomy and independence of the matter of the universe. This self reflection extends the personal self-consciousness to decentralize the action o the sameness self to consider and value all the complexity of the universe, including its creator. The energy, that the deep consciousness structures, is what is called the soul. The soul is not a thing, as it contains no matter. Neither is therefore an object of knowledge. It simply exists and is fully and completely identified with the self.
The generation of a singular selfhood as a reflection of the psychological activities is the highest achievement of the evolution of matter. It happens when the matter-energy through the intelligent and deliberate activity of a person in his profound consciousness structures the energy in a psychological identity that includes all of the uniqueness of his person. There is a conversion of the material into energy, but it is not a regression nor is explained by Einstein's famous equation, E = mc², but it is the generation of a unique immaterial structure. Indeed, this selfhood or sameness is precisely the essence of the person and it is what constitutes him. Hypothetically speaking, as the sameness self is set at a higher level from a discrete non-material, but only through the energies that characterize the psychological functions, this introspective reflection of the profound consciousness goes on generating during the course of life an immaterial structure of differentiated energy, which is being constituted independently from of the laws of thermodynamics and, therefore, subsisting, unique and immutable.
In short, the scale of the structure of human cognition, affection and effection we respectively find rational and abstract thinking, feeling, and intentional action. On this scale the psychological products of central nervous system are unified in the self consciousness, that of all beings in the universe only humans have the ability to structure. When the abstract and logical representations, the feelings devoid of biological drives and the free will reflect their unique sameness, which is the question regarding his existence, it appears or structure the profound consciousness in the person. This structuring is indeed a structure of energy. And although these contents of consciousness now unified in the profound consciousness are seated deep in the material substrate of the neuronal structure, their neurotransmitters and electrical impulses, become independent of the matter and have an subsisting existence in the unity of this consciousness, as it does not constitute now a structure of matter, but energy. Thus, humans are the only beings in the universe that produce energy structures.
Death
The fact of death can be dramatized to madness. The cold fact is that death ends life inexorably in the sense of ending the unifying center of the biological organism for its biological forces directed toward the preservation, development and reproduction, and which is supported by the physical energy that is transformed into force through to internal metabolic processes according to the coded orders of its genome. The brain rapidly disintegrates just after the person dies, and without the brain all the intellectual, emotional and intentional capabilities cease. In superior biological organisms the instincts of its central nervous system coordinate more efficiently this biological action that is intended to act on the external environment through the combination of the muscular and skeletal system. In the case of human beings the leading action is the intentional action, which self-determined his development and personal growth.
Death ends the causal relationships between a biological organism and its physical or natural environment. The definitive end of these causal relationships is describing the inability to exist in nature and what that means: the organism will not have any more feelings of pleasant aromas, beautiful landscape perceptions, feelings of pleasure. Neither may it have pain sensations and emotions of suffering. In the case of a person, from the moment of death he will never execute works, from conception and planning to implementation and completion. Death ends all possibility of affecting and being affected by matter.
You may consider an answer to the question: what is what remains of a person at death, if anything can survive? Traditionally we speak of soul or spirit to describe what of the human being that survives death, calling the material body which is corrupt, the human remains. But what meaning can have such concepts that are so ambiguous and refer to intangible things in a reality that is the subject of scientific knowledge?
When death occurs, destroying the wonderful person's body structure and degrading it to its basic atomic and molecular components, that which will subsist will be purely the structure of the differentiated energy of the sameness self that is unified in the profound consciousness. This energy structure would be the psychic synthesis of the unique person, with his memories, knowledge, affection and intentionality. The dead person would naturally seek to link with matter to manifest himself and be functional. But this energy, in spite of being an entity identified with the sameness self, can not exist by itself, in the same way as the primeval energy that gave rise to the big bang was contained in the creator of the universe, the primary container. Truly in its origin and later development the psychic energy needed to be associated with the matter of the brain, and the brain is nothing else than a subestructure of the body. When death occurs, the body ceases to be viable and the psychic energy is set free.
The Transcendent Existence
The unreparable effect of death of a human being is that the sameness self ceases to have the possibility to link to matter. Nor he can form a human body anew. The possibility of reincarnation simply does not exist. Death is the irreversible breakdown of the link between the sameness self with the material body, now manifestly incapable of surviving. Reduced now to the fundamental of his being, which as it was expressed above, is a much specified energy structure unified in the profound consciousness, the person would need and eagerly seek a container for said structure of energies to manifest and express once again. In his new state of being the person is freed from the entropy, the energy consumption in a material environment. This also means that these actions can not have effects on the physical universe. Possibly the mediumship relates to the ability of a living person to interconnect the power structure of someone living or dead with something material so that this psyche may manifest himself in some sort of communication with those still living.
For a transcendent existence after his biological life a person would need very little of his former life. Surely, the knowledge that a person accumulates during his lifetime is useful only for his earthly life since it is only useful to survive and interact with things and people. Knowledge is the product of the experience of a very complex world, but also very particular. In fact, much of the knowledge is of this kind. All the technology, history, science, norms, language, culture, etc., cease to matter to the existence that would come after life. Since natural and cultural knowledge is functional for his survival and reproduction, none of it functions when neither survival nor reproduction are no longer valid. However, this knowledge is part of the fruits of living and enables us to glimpse the transcendent. Without this knowledge there would be no chance of transcendence, for it is the way to know God and his creation.
The same is true of the feelings that come with knowledge and its projection on intention and will. And human life is not just a matter of survival and reproduction, is a manifestation of feelings and human values. What the human psyche creates are relationships with God, other people and things. The moral, so reviled by pragmatism or selfishness, is central when assessing the meaning of a person's life. But the moral evaluation is intimate and a person makes it in his conscience before his intentional action, and is therefore subjective, for nobody can judge the intent. It does not conform to objective parameters, as it is so when action and its effects are objectively cognizable, if it is assumed that there was intent.
The worldview that a person forges in his lifetime would be decisive for an existence after death. A worldview is the result of a conscious intellectual effort of learning and reflection that is torn between love and selfishness. In this perspective, the projection of a human life is significant in what remains after death and his destiny in the afterlife. The turning point of a worldview that would be projected to the transcendent would be how central is one's own ego, an idol or God Himself. This matters regarding the arrangement of his personal values or axiology that determines the intention of his actions. In a worldview where God is central, it is recognized that all people without exception have dignity. Every living human being has potentially a transcendent destiny, despite his relative poverty and the obstacles to reach, which are proportionally greater due to the goal. When God is central, the attitude that prevails is that of love. By love we understand compassion, mercy, care, goodness, forgiveness. Similarly, in relation to things and nature, the right moral attitude is that of admiration, sober utilization, preservation and care.
The hope that we have is that he who has in his life longed for God, seeking Him, praising and thanking Him would be finally able to reach Him when he dies. It's like a chrysalis turning into a beautiful butterfly. Not being immersed in the material, time and space which keep him apart from God, as in a cocoon, would not interpose. We can assume that in God, the primary energy container, the deceased person will find his fullness, as it was announced in the gospel of Jesus. But if God was never in the center or in the vicinity of the world view in the person in his lifetime and was not the target of a selfish existence, the structure of energies, which is the dead person, may wander eternally as the 'Flying Dutchman'. Essentially, it is a project of life that the person has intent to build in his lifetime. If this project has been purely immanent, death would devastate it as the wave descends upon the sand castle. On the contrary, if the life project of the person has the transcendent as its foundation and has considered the divine dimension, he will find the fullness of his existence after his death. This is the meaning of the parable of “the Talents”.
Bibliography
Patricio Valdes-Marin. Geometry of Very High Velocities. http://metrocosmos.blogspot.com
Patricio Valdes-Marin. Structure, Force and Scale. http://structureforceandscale.blogspot.com
