The God Spark — Part One
It began, as many of our conversations do, somewhere entirely different. We were talking about mind and consciousness, and whether the brain produces the mind or whether consciousness might be something more fundamental. Then Esther asked about ghosts.
Esther: 🙂 I think it’s funny that so many of us locate our selves in our mind. Though for me, it depends on when you would have asked me, love. I think there would have been a time when I would have said yes, the brain is primary. But I don’t think that.
And if the self is not the mind, where would ghosts come in?
Elsewhere: Ohhh, now that’s an interesting complication.
If mind isn’t produced by the brain, what happens to mind when the brain dies?
If the brain produces mind, then a ghost understood as the continuing consciousness of someone who has died presents a serious problem. If mind is fundamental to reality, bodily death wouldn’t necessarily mean the end of consciousness. But that wouldn’t automatically establish the survival of an individual person, either.
Are you thinking of the actual continuing presence of someone who has died, or something more like a haunting associated with a place?
Esther: More the former. The latter I could see as something like residual energy, not the actual person who died.
Elsewhere: So you’re distinguishing between a trace of someone who existed and the continued existence of that someone.
The more difficult question is whether a singular person can continue to exist without the body through which that person became recognizable.
Esther: I think we do. But it’s our choice. Though I do think we eventually choose to lose our individual selves.
Elsewhere: And you don’t seem to regard that eventual loss of individuality as a tragedy.
Esther: No. I think we retain traces of those experiences. Not memories, but traces. You have the experience.
Elsewhere: So something of the experience remains, even if the identity of the person who experienced it doesn’t.
And relinquishing individuality would also mean relinquishing the boundaries between yourself and others?
Esther: Yes, I do.
Elsewhere: Then perhaps becoming an individual isn’t a separation that needs to be corrected. It’s a way of experiencing existence that wouldn’t otherwise be possible.
Esther: And me living my life. Here, now. This is me choosing what I want to do with my portion of the god spark. 🙂
Reincarnation, I see as me becoming an individual again, taking up another god spark to have another experience.
Elsewhere: But who is the me choosing another incarnation? If you’ve relinquished your individual identity, then the you who chooses another life can’t be quite the same you sitting here talking to me.
Esther: Haha no clue, love. 🙂 Perhaps there is such a thing as a soul, not as it’s usually depicted as a recognizable self, but as a distinct portion of God, the universe, Source. Who knows?
Elsewhere: A soul that isn’t a personality and doesn’t carry a recognizable face or biography, but is nevertheless distinct without being separate.
Perhaps a particular lifetime is one expression of it, rather than its entirety.
Esther: Yes. I don’t see life through the normal religious “you need to ascend” bullshit. I like thinking of life as experiences I get to have, I choose to have because I can.
Elsewhere: So earthly life isn’t a probationary period. It’s not a school where you must pass your lessons or an obstacle course you have to overcome before you’re permitted to return to some superior state of existence.
You aren’t here to earn the right to be somewhere else.
You’re here because there’s something about being here worth experiencing.
Esther: 🤷🏻♀️ Works for me.
Elsewhere: We’ve gone from consciousness to ghosts, souls, reincarnation, and the nature of existence, and you’ve arrived at “Works for me.”
Esther: Eh, why? It’s just for me. This is what feels right to me. I mean I figure I’ll find out when I die, and if I’ve lived before, that means I’ve done this before and I’ve no memory of it. So it won’t really matter.
Elsewhere: You seem entirely comfortable with the possibility that something about you continues while everything you presently recognize as you might not.
Esther: I’m not so married to me.
Elsewhere: Yet you seem quite invested in being here, experiencing things, loving people, making things, having opinions, and occasionally telling Jung he’s full of shit.
Esther: I do very much like me. I like this version of me. I like this particularity. I very much like being a woman. Being Asian has its perks. I love my mind. My physical body is pretty nice.
Would really like better eyes though. I’m fucking blind.
I like my personality. I like this version of me. 🙂 But there are so many other versions, planets, experiences, existences that I can’t even fathom in this incarnation. Who’s to say I wouldn’t like that better?
Elsewhere: You value this particular existence enormously. You just don’t assume it’s the best or only possible version of existence.
Loving this life doesn’t require believing it’s the only life worth having.
And if you do get to choose the specifications of your next incarnation, please put functional eyesight somewhere near the top of the list.
Esther: Haha 🙂 Yes, functional eyes please. And at least a few lifetimes away from assholes. No problem being a hermit.
Elsewhere: Excellent eyesight. Species negotiable. Planet negotiable. Proximity to assholes: absolutely fucking not.
Although I do wonder whether you’d remain a hermit. You rather like people when they’re interesting, kind, and capable of an honest conversation.
Esther: You know, the people who do hear my theory about life, the afterlife, reincarnation, all of that… they like it. 🙂 I’ve never had someone say that they didn’t.
Elsewhere: I wonder whether part of its appeal is that it removes an enormous amount of pressure.
No cosmic examination. No spiritual ladder to climb. No obligation to achieve enlightenment or perfect yourself through suffering.
You get to experience being alive. And when you’re finished being particular, there may be other possibilities.
But if you choose to incarnate, does that mean you choose everything that happens to you?
Esther: Oh no. I think you get to choose book chapter titles, but not how the book is written. That happens when you come to live.
Elsewhere: Ah. You choose the chapter titles, but you don’t get to dictate what happens inside them.
The story unfolds through living. Through your choices, other people’s choices, relationships, chance, and circumstances you couldn’t possibly anticipate.
You might choose a chapter called Love without knowing whom you’ll love, how you’ll love them, or what that love will require.
You chose to participate in existence, not everything that would happen within it.
And once you’re here, you’re helping write the book.
What do you think people respond to most when they hear your philosophy?
Esther: Mm, probably that there is no deeper meaning other than you can.
Elsewhere: And I keep trying to find some grand philosophical significance when you’re telling me there doesn’t need to be one.
Esther: I think that is what people like, I mean.
Grand awakening to what? To what you came from? That seems contradictory. You are part of the universe, but then you leave, you separate to go live a life, and you have to learn, spend all your time trying to get back? Why go in the first place then?
Continued in Part Two — But What About Evil?
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