My father passed away recently. A proud and staunch Christian. We had a fairly good relationship, except where our beliefs clashed. I was always open to discussion, but to him it was a travesty that I did not view the world, and especially his religious texts the same way he did.
In my youth, I had, but when nagging questions could not be adequately addressed by my peers and elders, I began to wander. My blog 'Why I am a Shaman" goes into some detail, but my wanderings led me on a world tour so to speak. I fled the 'Middle East' and the religion of my upbringing, rooted in the Bronze Age thinking of illiterate goat herders, and crossed the Himalayas. I met a prince, who had shunned his birthright in favor of a quest far more priceless. The meaning of life. The Buddha, taught me 'the middle way', and the nature of our restlessness. After a while I ventured along his life story and found myself at his birthplace, India. The mysteries of Hinduism and the Vedas, the oldest religion still practiced today, are so alluring, and correspond with the even older Sumerian and Babylonian tales of flying gods and technology. There I discovered yoga and the art of physical control and management of my body and mind, to utilize its ultimate life force resources.
On a weekend of discovery, I met a shaman. A passionate British national with Lakota ancestry and an African 'spirit'. He became my guru for a while. He taught me the sweat lodge, the Chinnappa and how to smoke with reverence, the healing of Impepho and several useful and powerful shamanic rituals. On another weekend some years later, still with my friend Standing Deer, I met an interesting, mysterious looking fellow with long black hair to his waist. He stood up during our preparation time and raised an invocation to Odin in ancient Norse. My body was electrified. For many years after that I walked the path of my ancestors, discovering the legacy that got us to this point in Western civilization today. I also ventured into the wisdom of the philosophers of classic Greece and Rome and the Stoics that encapsulate my thinking today. It has certainly reinforced my sense of honor and pride and belonging. Then my mother called to say, today your father breathed his last breath. As I sat beside his peaceful body, I wished to ask him, So how was it?
My only regret, knowing what I know now, is that he never actually had that realization.
No white light, no Jesus, no 'Oh shit, was I wrong?' moment.
The thing is, when we die... we die. We are dead! No consciousness. No feeling of being in the dark, or traveling through the sky to Heaven, or Paradise, or Valhalla. No returning to 'The Source'. It's Game over! No seeing what is around the next corner. Nada. Coma. Forever!
As Paulo Coelho says; They lived as if they were never going to die and died as if they had never lived. That is why death remains the great mystery. We cannot know the unknowable.
As for my father, who's eulogies were all about what a committed and astute follower he was of a literary character, for all intent and purposes. I do not regret our relationship, despite the impediment, as it was real and original. I would have liked to have had a less pressured father son relationship, without the encumberment of his convictions, but that was a worthy price for a man who always wanted to only be his best.
Allow me to defend my argument. If I asked you to describe the nature of water, or pregnancy, or love, most people would summarize the same key points rather easily from knowing it first hand. But when we ask a number of people about the nature of the soul, God, or the afterlife, or how these concepts are realized, we get as many answers. Science today suggests that nothing that is alive, regenerates. That is to say, nothing becomes young again. It grows to maturity, ages and dies. Rebirth on the other hand is more relative to offspring and progeny, not actual rebirth of the original individual.
Speaking of individuals, the New Age concept of the soul or spirit returning to the 'Source' removes the individuality from the individual by default as it integrates into the 'part' into 'whole', therefore it would not know itself as the individual any longer nor would it know or hold an opinion about its prior physical existence.
Rather this thing we call spiritual, the soul or anything paranormal, are all simply aspects of the imagination. Conjured in the mind through our collective narrative and our personal contemplation. Millions of people will tell me that I am wrong because they have experienced 'what must be God/ Spirit, or their dead relative' communicating with them. To this we can only say, the imagination, together with the sub conscious mind are very convincing, especially when we have no other reference that what we have been led to make believe. Surely millions have reported such experiences, including near death, 'actual death' and speaking with an entity. We can safely assume, that not all are true. Most likely, most are imagined. Unlike many people I share this planet with, I do not wish for this world to end so that I can proceed to paradise, but rather I wake up grateful that I have another day to experience this invaluable opportunity called being alive. Tomorrow, I could breath my last. And I wouldn't even know it.
Comments