Irrational mechanics, draft Ch. 14
Irrational mechanics, draft Ch. 14
So what happens after death?
Greetings to all readers and subscribers, and special greetings to the paid subscribers!
Please scroll down for the main topic of this newsletter. But first:
Yesterday, March 14, I watched the successful integrated flight test 3 (IFT-3) of Elon Musk’s Starship.
I xeeted: Congratulations to SpaceX for an awesome test flight! Starship is a giant middle finger pointed at the enemies of Elon Musk and our multi-planetary future.
To celebrate Starship and SpaceX, Stefano Vaj’s preface to the Italian edition of my book “Futurist spaceflight meditations” has been posted and made public.
Here’s a very early draft of Chapter 14 of my new book “Irrational mechanics: Narrative sketch of a futurist science & a new religion” (2024).
Note that these and the others draft chapters are very concise. At this point I only want to put down the things I want to say, one after another. Later on, when the full draft for early readers is complete, I’ll worry about style and all that.
All current drafts (especially the oldest ones of course, but also the recent ones) have changed a lot since the early versions that I have posted.
Only one draft chapter to go! Stay tuned for the grand finale “Religion for Spaceship Earth,” to be published on March 22. After March 22 I’ll put together the full draft for early readers. All paid subscribers will be invited to join the group of early readers.
14 - So what happens after death?
What the fuck happens after death? This is the question you wanted to ask. Right? You want to know what happens to you after death. And you want to know what happens to those you love. And you want to know if you’ll be with them again. I’ll forgive you if you jumped directly to this chapter without reading the previous ones. It’s what I would have done in your place.
The aspiration to some kind of life after death is why we invented religions. If there is a God but no life after death we could ask, with Miguel de Unamuno, “Then wherefore God?” [Gardner 1983]. I’ve been talking of the ultimate God (the cosmic operating system, aka Mind at Large [Chapter 8]) and penultimate God-like cosmic engineers [Chapter 13], but God is not enough.
We need, or at least I need, a concept of life after death that is solid enough to suspend disbelief. Without such a concept of life after death I would fall into the deepest state of paralyzing despair, and jump off the closest window to exit this unpleasant game. To me, and perhaps to you as well, suspending disbelief in life after death is an existential imperative.
We are agents of the cosmic operating system, or splinters of Mind at Large, or thoughts in the mind of God, with a certain degree of autonomy and free will. The cosmic operating system is alive and aware, or better super alive and super aware, and computes above and beyond what we call time. That is, God thinks above and beyond what we call time. So you exist above what we call time and beyond your physical world line.
OK, this metaphysics sounds nice, but your questions are much more practical. I know. Let’s see.
After death you and me, and your grandmother and my dog, and yesterday’s hurricane and all that, are still stored wherever the cosmic operating system stores code and data. In other words, we are memories in Mind at Large.
Mani Bhaumik views elementary particles “as being like the spray that’s thrown up as ocean waves crash against the rocks, only to fall back into the sea from which it came” [Bhaumik 2018]. In this nice picture, the sea is the ocean of quantum field theory [Chapter 9]. Bhaumik told me that quantum field theory suggests to him that universal self awareness is expressed through the inherent liveliness of physical reality.
We can reuse Bhaumik’s picture and think that we are drops of water that enjoy a short independent life, after which we go back to the ocean whence we came.
This analogy is often used in Bhaumik’s Indian spiritual tradition. On the other hand, many Westerners don’t like thinking that the personal self is diluted and absorbed into a larger whole after death, because this seems to imply annihilation.
But here’s what Swami Vivekananda had to say about the fate of the self after death, in reply to this typical reaction of Westerners [Nikhilananda 1989]:
“One day a drop of water fell into the vast ocean. Finding itself there, it began to weep and complain, just as you are doing. The giant ocean laughed at the drop of water. ‘Why do you weep?’ it asked. ‘I do not understand. When you join me, you join all your brothers and sisters, the other drops of water of which I am made. You become the ocean itself. If you wish to leave me you have only to rise up on a sunbeam into the clouds. From there you can descend again, little drop of water, a blessing and a benediction to the thirsty earth.’”
These words of Swami Vivekananda are so full of insights that I’ve wanted to quote the full passage. Keep in mind “drops of water of which I am made… descend again… a blessing and a benediction to the thirsty earth.”
Thinking that rejoining Mind at Large must necessarily imply a total loss of individuality denotes lack of imagination. But C. S. Lewis comes to the rescue with the idea that “human souls can be taken into the life of God and yet remain themselves - in fact, be very much more themselves than they were before” [Lewis 1952].