DISCOVERY AND CONFLICT  (3/12/77)

I have been thinking about the life-death thing for some time now.  Of course, things are not defined sufficiently to draw very accurate conclusions.  Also, there is little, or no data with which to work.  So let’s try to imagine and assume, in order to conjure up a logical model.  Let’s then, make some assumptions:

1.      The existence and nature of the spirit is not defined by the physical world.  Note that we cannot attribute any physical characteristic that we are able to perceive to the spirit.  As far as we know, the spirit has no mass, no charge, no volume, no Newtonian forces, and apparently just has “no nothing” at all!

2.      The spirit has some properties however.  Among those are the following:

3.      There are natural and universal laws governing the spirit world.  From this, it follows that a whole series of spirit mechanics must exist, just as a whole set of mechanics exists for the physical world.  The genealogy of the spiritual and physical laws leads to a common “ancestor”, which is the fundamental law of all existence.  This is related to, consistent with, and quite possibly identical with “God”.

Well, using these assumptions, let’s go through a little story, which for the most part is very well known.  It’s the sequence of events from the physical beginning of a human being to the physical end of that complicated being.

Human female eggs, only a few, are formed in the body and at the right time are transported into a position which will permit acceptance of the male sperm.  I think millions of sperms are given a chance at egg penetration.  Most of the time only one sperm penetrates the female egg and the physical chemical dye is set.  It’s interesting to note that a million sperms didn’t make it and perished.  It is also quite consistent with other physical life initiation processes.  But that is another subject.

Now, the tiny bundle of cells, composed of the essential ingredients and gorged with the unique genetic blue prints to result in an individual human structure begins physical growth.  Cells multiply just right, the mother provides required food and the embryo begins formation.  Arms, legs, the head, eyes, and everything starts to take shape.  Even a brain is formed early.

At some point, the brain becomes developed sufficiently to display capability greater than just that of a minicomputer.  At some point, a spirit inhabits the brain.  If we assume a spirit does indeed exist within the developing human being, then one of two things happens.  Either the spirit was created from absolutely nothing, or an existing spirit was transported from some other realm or province to the brain.  We can argue either way and this deserves separate analysis.  But for purposes of this discussion let’s assume the transportation theory.

In any event, the emergence of a spirit happens before birth.  So, the baby grows and develops and refines all of the human machinery.  The brain and all of its tremendous capacity for controlling bodily functions, its memory capacity, its circuitry for interpreting information transmitted via the senses and its thinking and learning capacity is completed and ready for the rude introduction to the outside world.

At the point of birth, the baby knows essentially nothing of the physical world.  Of course, it does possess some instincts like, sucking, perhaps crying and a few others.  But unlike the animal world, the baby human has been given very little information with which to begin the business of survival.  He depends on learning what he needs to know throughout a long childhood and early adulthood.

So the child begins to grow up and information streams into his brain like a torrent of water.  All of the senses pump great volumes of information into the developing child.  And all of this information is recorded in the brain and once transmitted, takes the form of knowledge within the brain.  The child uses this knowledge, tries different things, and learns about life.  First, simple things like hot and cold, food, then tenderness and consideration perhaps converting to love and other intangible things.

The child becomes an adolescent and then a young adult, and the knowledge accumulated within the brain is enormous.  The young adult goes to college and he now learns a little more about how to use his mental processes in addition to cramming even more knowledge onto his memory banks.

The man (let’s say) embarks on his life’s path, he adopts a profession, marries, has children of his own and continues to use what he knows, develops and sophisticates himself, and continues to put even more knowledge on his memory banks for future use.

The man proceeds through life.  His children have their own children.  He attains a happy and rewarding life.  He and his wife are fortunate to have good health and both attain the age of, say, 80 years old.  By this time, and let’s say that old age has been good to this man, he is very wise and has attained great quantities of knowledge.  He has tremendous wisdom and great comprehension and understanding . . . . . a totally mature individual, trained and educated as completely as “humanly possible”.

Our man is outside watering his garden when the inevitable happens.  A stroke - - - blockage of the blood to the brain.  The man collapses, still breathing but the magnificent brain must have oxygen to keep the cells operational.

Even though the blood is being oxygenated, its flow to certain areas of the brain is cut off.  These cells begin to dye and the essential control of the internal organs diminishes and then subsides.  The organs start to fail.  The liver and kidneys malfunction and the blood becomes contaminated with wastes and poisons.  All this time, the memory banks have been inadvertently protected since oxygen rich blood has not been cut off to that portion of the brain.  But breathing is now sporadic and stops.  The cells in the memory banks can only survive for about 3 minutes without oxygen.  The cells’ development and order that took 80 years to form degenerate into random “mush” in a short 3 minutes.  All of the knowledge and human experiences that were tucked into the memory banks are now wiped off, just like an erased length of magnetic tape.  Oh, all of the material is still there, its just that the knowledge, represented by an order, a particular arrangement of molecules, is completely destroyed and transfigured from organized patterns to total disarray

And so our man experiences clinical death.  His body is buried.  It decomposes and turns into dust, perhaps leaving a skeleton for a few hundred years . . . . . and then nothing but chemicals, quite good for the plants, but no beautiful order, just random dirt!

The whole point of this little story is to get our present position.  The real question is . . . what happened to the spirit that “we” injected into the growing embryo?

Well, one of two things had to happen.  Either the spirit was destroyed at the point of physical death, or it simply left the brain just as it had entered it some 80 years ago.  One thing is quite distressing.  This human being had developed a distinct personality, a unique character, idiosyncrasies, and relationships with loved ones and friends.  But all of these things originally in, or recorded on the brain were destroyed on physical death.

Let’s go along with the sprit departure theory for purposes of this discussion.  Now we have two choices:

1.      The spirit leaves with no worldly properties, no genetic traits, and no memories of any experiences while encapsulated in the brain.  It leaves just as it entered on to the scene, and retaining its properties as stated in previous assumption number 2.

2.      The spirit leaves, retaining all of the consciousness of a whole human being.  A DNA type transfer of knowledge has taken place, transmitting information from the physical to the sprit world.

Okay . . . we are all pulling for choice #2.  So let’s pursue it.

Well, I need more time to think about this, but there are two problems right off the bat.  The first is that if one spirit, freed out of death, has 80 years of history integrated into its being, how can it ever be recycled into another embryonic brain?  No one has ever heard of a newborn baby that was qualified to run for president!  So it looks like recycling is out.  Well then . . . how about heaven?  We are all pulling for that one also.