One of the most extreme examples was in the early history of Christianity. I wonder how many Catholics today know that they are supposed to believe that if they meet certain standards, they will achieve "resurrection of the body." In the outskirts of Rome, one may visit catacombs which are basically the same as the modern corpsicle warehouses in California... places where bodies are stored in hopes or expectation that they will be revived. Like the horror movie "Dawn of the Living Dead," except people actually dedicate their lives to seeking that. Catholics are still supposed to declare belief in "resurrection of the body," but more often toady (in the US, in my limited experience) they are taught something more like the Dante cosmology.
Belief in the invariant self... strikes me as a bit sad and a bit touching, as I cope with certain concrete realities of human life. After my great uncle had a stroke,
I would naturally ask "Where is HIS invariant self?"
When I was 15, and first read the Upanishads, and fully agreed with the more global and abstract PART of the Upanishads... I would have said: "It is the Self, not the self, which demands logical attention. There is really just one Self, which looks through many eyes. Your eyes tomorrow are different from your eyes today, and also different from the eyes of the person with you in the library. OF COURSE, the small personal self is not invariant." But what of the greater Self? I did not know enough yet about mind or about time to give a realistic answer at that time, to such a tricky and complex question.
I have often recommended that people read
an entertaining but enlightening novel available instantly for $6 on kindle. She goes 'way beyond observing my wounded old great uncle, to probing very deeply what one can see in a hospital, in the literature on life after death, and on astral exploration to probe further. So much better than futile dry efforts to answer questions by use of verbal pure reasoning which simply CANNOT be resolved that way!!
Lately, however, as my mother ages beyond 90 and is in an assisted living facility, I have tried to understand better what is really going on here more completely, in a more serious and practical way.
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But before I get to those tricky realities of everyday real life and death...
I feel some duty to live up to the subject line, and explain what I mean by the
"credit card model of the soul," RELATIVELY briefly. (Too long for most of you, too short for what the subject demands.)
There are many people who insist that they believe they have souls, indeed that they are the chosen people for the strength of their faith. But what IS the image of soul that they believe in? It is something they HAVE, like a credit card in their pocket, not something they USE. (Wouldn't that be witchcraft, and doesn't the Old Testament say we should burn all witches? Lots of ulema/pharisees try to propagate such attitudes, which, like illiteracy, make it easier for them to control people.) The only PRACTICAL presence of soul they imagine in their lives is like a credit card (or, really, a debit card): when they chose to commit a sin, they get charged, but sometimes they can do things which put a deposit on their card; at death, the banker in the sky decides whether they are in the red or in the black, and sorts them accordingly.
The key commitment of real mystics is that we don't USE our souls, we ARE our souls... or at least, HALF our souls, which is one of the things Dante basically got right. Half beast, half angel. The notion of an invariant self as a credit card soul doe snot work well. The self we EXPERIENCE changes with time... and is thus capable of growth.
Change and growth... but I can hear voices which demand a caveat on that simplified statement. Even in an ideal neural network... it is POSSIBLE for the CONTENTS of a brain to change and grow, EVEN AS the underling hardware and laws of learning do not change. But our experience is that the hardware and embodiment also change in important ways... important and complex, too complex to review completely here. So just a few more words, on ACTUAL changes through life and death.... (leaving aside hormones and alcohol and such for now)
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To save time, I will just copy over what I sent my brother a few days ago:
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So of course I have wondered (long ago): where is Mom now?
I was deeply impressed by the deeply sensitive novel Passages by Connie Willis, about nurses and afterlife and the Titanic. (Even Lily liked it, maybe because it was so very precise about what life feels like in hospitals.) She conveyed her view of how tricky it can get...
When we last visited Mom, I had the feeling that she was "all there," 100% normal and embodied, but utterly bored and wondering what she was doing there.
What of those other times?
Thinking about it... I realize I too have as strange kind of daily rhythm.
Peak intelligence (at least for creativity, vision, hard mathematics) actually at about 3AM, what some folks call their "conversations with God" time, but continuing to my last moments in bed. Lately I start to see my conversations with Luda at that time as like an even higher level continuation of those same conversations. Then next, for many years, I have scheduled my most mentally demanding important tasks for right after breakfast until I get them done. Afternoons, as my deep intelligence declines, I try to schedule more conversation stuff and practical stuff, where "being here now" and being at a more normal level of intelligence actually helps. BY evening... I try to maintain the afternoon level of intelligence, but occasionally have to apologize to Luda for screwing up (despite good intentions).
Exactly when I turn out the lights and hit the pillow, I immediately now experience what I now call a "spin state". (Luda wishes I could find a better phrase... maybe...). I start to become open to all kinds of stuff, a true whirlwind, but WITHOUT the power to keep it all positive and under control. Like spinning wheels.
Those states Mom gets into may be a whole lot like that spin state, not unlike going to bed. Not such a bad thing in principle, but...
Some folks experience mental "spinning wheels" as a kind of wild and energetic mental thrashing. For me, that is the specific time when I basically take the Buddhists' advice -- not to try to stop the spin, but not get engaged in it either, just let them spin and maintain some detachment. But I have to admit that for the past two weeks or so, the stuff out there has been unusually... detaching... in this incredibly crazy world.
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