Time passes by.

For many reasons, I suppose, I have always been fascinated by the theories and concepts of what actually constitutes “Life”, that essence, that vivifying factor that is present when something is “alive”, but is absent when that same something is now “dead”. 

The thing is – nobody knows!! 

In a book of short stories, “Like the flowing river”, by Paulo Coelho, there is a thought provoking passage, in fact two – from different stories – that I will quote as they appeal to my ideas about Life (with a capital “L”).

In the first quote Coelho was in a forested area on the French side of the Pyrenees, practicing his archery, when a French Colonel, exercising with his troops in the area, recognizes Coelho and admits that he too is a writer – about life matters. Once this Colonel asked children in various schools to write down anything they would like to know about life.

He summarized what the children wanted to know:-

Where do we go after we die?

Why are we afraid of foreigners?

Do Martians and extraterrestrial beings really exist?

Why do accidents happen even to people who believe in God?

What does God mean?

Why are we born if we all die in the end?

How many stars are there in the sky?

Who invented war and happiness?

Does God listen to people who don’t believe in the same (Catholic) God?

Why are there poor people and ill people?

Why did God create mosquitoes and flies?

Why isn’t our guardian angel next to us when we are sad?

Why do we love some people and hate others?

Who named the different colours?

If God is in Heaven and my mother is there too because she died, how come He’s alive? 

All, to my mind, very valid questions! 

Those questions lead me easily to my next quote, also by Coelho, which is actually an abbreviated summary of a passage from Chapter II of the Hindu scripture, the “Bhagavad Gita”:-

“Man is not born, nor does he die. Having come into existence, he will never cease to be, because he is eternal and permanent.

Just as a man discards old clothes and puts on new clothes, so the soul discards the old body and puts on a new one.

But the soul is indestructible, swords cannot pierce it, fire cannot burn it, water cannot wet it, the wind cannot dry it. It is beyond the power of all these things.

Since man is always indestructible, he is always victorious (even in his defeats), and that is why he should not mourn.” 

It’s easy to see that I am not a Christian!! Though I do, I think, have a profound belief in a Higher Power. This brings me comfort. 

Now I don’t mourn, but I do grieve. I know that time has passed by – four years actually – since Magucha died, so the grief is not quite so “sharp”. But it is still there as it will always be. I miss her companionship. I miss her as a friend. I also know, deep down, that the essence – her soul, if you like – is out there somewhere. I will never believe that Magucha’s intelligence, her love, her humour, her compassion, have just disappeared into nothing.

So, together with what in written in the Bhagavad Gita, and what others have written, I like to think that life is eternal. That there is a never-ending cycle of birth and death.

To support this here are the first two verses of a poem, “A Creed”, by John Masefield:- 

I hold that when a person dies
      His soul returns again to earth;
Arrayed in some new flesh-disguise
      Another mother gives him birth.
With sturdier limbs and brighter brain
The old soul takes the road again.

Such is my own belief and trust;
      This hand, this hand that holds the pen,
Has many a hundred times been dust
      And turned, as dust, to dust again;
These eyes of mine have blinked and shown
In Thebes, in Troy, in Babylon.

The kindly years.

The years – time – sometimes deals kindly with us humans. I certainly feel privileged to have lived my seventy-eight years with the love bestowed on me, for my good health (thus far!) and the emotional strength I have garnered over the years. For that I am truly grateful. 

There are negatives of course. Life never progresses at a steady pace on a smooth, straight path from one end the other. On the positive side one meets many wonderful fellow wayfarers on one’s journey through life. Some, one learns to love, and they become very close, even as a wife (as in my case) or one’s children; others become good friends, others again, are acquaintances. But one learns from them all.

On the negative side is the inescapable fact that people die. And of course a whole raft of customs, religious “rules and regulations”, have developed around the process of dying and the aftermath. But is death truly the end?

As always in moments of intense emotion I seek solace in poetry. Poets more often than not seem to be better attuned to the emotional aspect of the human condition. 

This from John Masefield:

The Word

My friend, my bonny friend, when we are old,

And hand in hand go tottering down the hill,

May we be rich in loves refined gold,

     May love’s gold coin be current with us still.

May love be sweeter for the vanished days,

     And your most perfect beauty still as dear

As when your troubled singer stood at gaze

     In the dear March of a most sacred year.

May what we are be all we might have been,

     And that potential, perfect, O my friend,

And may there still be many sheafs to glean

     In our love’s acre, comrade, till the end.

And may we find when ended is the page

Death but a tavern on our pilgrimage.

                        

Maybe it will be as Kahlil Gibran wrote in “The Prophet”:

“A little while, a moment to rest upon the wind, and another woman shall bear me”.

Or, to quote John Masefield again, from  “A Creed”:

“I held that when a person dies

     His soul returns again to earth;

Arrayed in some new flesh-disguise

     Another mother gives him birth.

With sturdier limbs and brighter brain

The old soul takes the roads again.”

So what will it be? Is Magucha’s soul, after “a moment to rest upon the wind” ready to be “arrayed in some new flesh-disguise” and so grace the world with her love, her indomitable spirit, her courage and feistiness and so be a loyal comrade to someone else?

It pleases me to believe that, one day, this will be so. 

Memories, Reminiscences and what End?

As one grows older perspectives on life seem to grow and alter with the years. As an example, I now live alone - my wife of many years has died. Does this bother me? Yes, but not as much as it might – I have always been satisfied with my own company. Do I miss her? More than I could ever explain to anyone. Have I memories? Of course I have. Do I reminisce? Yes.

All this, but there is something more, something deeper, something that is slowly approaching the forefront of my mind. It is, I suppose, more of a philosophical discussion with myself. I ask myself the questions – what is a memory, what is a reminiscence and the big one what, actually, is life? And then, what will my “end” be?

Neurologists, quantum biologists and psycho-pharmacologists all stake their claims to understanding when it comes to the brain. It has been established, beyond doubt, that neurons in different parts of the brain are activated (scanning techniques verify this) when looking at something, when listening to a sound, when thinking, remembering or problem solving. Various chemicals have been identified as “neuro-transmitters” that cross the synapses that lie between one neuron and another, which appear to be essential in the “storage” of information or interpreting what has been perceived in the environment.

BUT, and this is where I dispute the “science” of the determination that the brain is the only locus of life, thoughts and memories. For instance the question has yet to be answered – what comes first – do the thoughts and memories somehow activate the neurons in the brain, or do the neurons, by some means, create the thoughts?

AND, what is a thought, actually? What is a memory, actually? What is an emotion, actually? What is life, actually? No one knows.

So I ask myself the question, are they all just the result of chemicals in the brain, as neurologists and psycho-pharmacologists would claim? I ask the question, are they all just the  result of the activities of sub-atomic particles as quantum-biologists would claim? I ask the question, how can a chemical or chemicals in any combination, inanimate as they are, create or store a thought?  Particularly as no one knows what a thought is, actually! I ask the question, how can a chemical or chemicals in any combination, inanimate as they are, create or reflect on an emotion? Particularly as no one knows what an emotion is, actually!  I ask the question, how can a chemical or chemicals in any combination, inanimate as they are, create life? Particularly as no one knows what life is, actually!

Biologists and psycho-pharmacologists have determined the chemical constituents of a cell but no one (repeat no one) has ever come close to “creating” life in a petri dish by mixing together the known chemicals that constitute the structure of a cell.

It would appear to me that life is something above and beyond our knowledge. I have sat and held the hand of someone who is dying. I have sensed that the life force (however this is defined) has left, or withdrawn from, that person. What is it? So, again, what is it that is now absent from the body - the body that was alive and warm and is now dead and growing cold?

The cells that constituted the body of the person who has just died are identical to the cells that constituted the body of that same person the split second before they died - except that they are no longer “alive”.

I don’t suppose, or presume, that we will ever have a “scientific” answer to these fundamental questions, even though scientists try to convince us that the understanding science conveys is the only kind there is!

So I am left to my memories, reminiscences and philosophical thoughts to try and understand what will happen to me when I leave this “mortal coil”!!

I wonder if it will all end as Omar Khayyam wrote in his famous Rubaiyat?

 Quatrain 47

And if the Wine you drink, the Lip you press,

End in the Nothing all Things end in – Yes –

Then fancy while Thou art, Thou art but what

Thou shalt be – Nothing – Thou shalt not be less.

Or is there something more like this, the first verse from John Masefield’s, “A Creed”:

I held that when a person dies

His soul returns again to Earth;

Arrayed in some new flesh disguise

Another mother gives him birth.

With sturdier limbs and brighter brain

The old soul takes the roads again.

I prefer John Masefield’s version but you choose!