Recycled

 

I have no doubt that the physical presence I have been so incredibly close to is about to depart. My mom is certainly not long for this world. I will miss her, but to have her back in the miserable state she was in seems even more daunting than not having her back.

I will, no doubt, struggle with this to some degree, but I am older myself now and I have really come to understand life and death on very different levels of thought.

This entire universe seems more like a very big container to me in a way. Even my dad is in here somewhere. I am not delusional enough to imagine having my dad reappear as he was when I last saw him, but…

Perhaps a metaphor?

When I was younger, I worked at an auto salvage yard, pulling salvageable parts from inoperable cars and trucks. In an effort to save money, people would line up behind our counter and ask us if we had certain parts. Someone might come in and ask, “Do you have a transmission for a 1979 Chevrolet Malibu?”

After some checking, the salesperson – who, in my case was Ernie Simmons Jr. – would look through the catalogs of available parts and he would often say, “I do have that. The car only had 60,000 miles on it and it is $400.00.”

The yard I worked for was called Auto Parts Recycled. We had two large buildings filled with parts; the rest of the parts were in the yard; some still bolted into their former host.

The Universe is one such yard… for everything.

My Dad’s familiar face simply dissolved. It was not an instant, Hollywood moment; it may still be dissolving even now; 16 years later. But there is complete conservation. Dad’s molecules are out there. His consciousness is as well. Consciousness is not a product of intellect; it is the “air” breathed by beings. Oxygen provides us with a necessary fuel for our bodies; Consciousness provides us with a necessary fuel for thoughts, memories and experience.

There is certainly consciousness to be found within most humans; but there is also oxygen.

It is no longer a mystery, how our human lungs perform as they do, but imagine not yet knowing that the source of oxygen is “out there”. Imagine science struggling with the hard problem of oxygen. Without modern discoveries, we might be able to find traces of this mysterious, chemical element in the blood of humans, but we may not have a way to isolate the element and study it by itself. This is where science is with consciousness. We find traces of it within humans, but we’ve yet to find ways of isolating it and studying it on its own.

Here is the mystery:

It would be easy to mistakenly believe that humans produce oxygen and that it is then distributed throughout the body for energy and animation. But we fortunately know better. The source of oxygen is in the very air we breathe.

In the same way, it has always been easy to mistakenly believe that humans produce consciousness and that it is distributed throughout the nervous system for awareness, thoughts and feelings. This is where we are wrong and not quite advanced enough to measure and appreciate consciousness as in our environment rather than as a product of our inner-self.

Oxygen is what a sentient body breathes as a fuel for the machine it is. Consciousness is what our inner-man breathes as fuel, in order to portray a specific persona while joined to a specific body.

In short, Oxygen and Consciousness are out there.

Now, back to my Dad:

He was not a body; even though I was familiar with him because of a specific body.

Nor was he a ghost; even though I am yet familiar with his unique personality.

So what was he?

He was a gathering.

”And I will lay sinews upon you, and will bring up flesh upon you, and cover you with skin, and put breath in you, and ye shall live.” Ezekiel 37:6 KJV

In this text, Ezekiel was exploring the very thoughts I am exploring today when he had this incredible vision of a land of dry bones.

This breath, referred to in this myth, is consciousness, not oxygen. It was discussed in other books as well.

“And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.” ~ Genesis 2:7 KJV

This “breath of life” is an ancient way to convey what we refer to as consciousness.

This breath of life is referred to often in The Bible. Here is another example:

“If he set his heart upon man, if he gather unto himself his spirit and his breath; All flesh shall perish together, and man shall turn again unto dust.” ~ Job 34:14-15 KJV

But I want to return to this word, “gather”.

When an animal is conceived, it will need oxygen for the body and consciousness for the experience; both will be found in the environment where the character can grow and even thrive. Animals evolve to work with varying degrees of oxygen and consciousness.

As for oxygen, an example of varied degrees can be witnessed by considering fish, who breathe dissolved oxygen from water.

In the same way, chimpanzees have smaller cortical association areas in their brains than humans; which is one way of understanding why they “breathe” dissolved consciousness and therefor have less voluntary control of their experience.

A monkey, compared to a human, intellectually, is what a fish is, compared to a human physically.

Of course, this does not mean that consciousness and oxygen are not found in other environments; it just means that both are filtered through objects in countless ways.

You are a gathering. Every breath you breathe is available outside of your experience, but necessary for it. Every thought you have is outside your experience in the same way; and it is also necessary for your experience.

When a person dies, it is very much like a machine or a computer that stops working. All of the data and electricity is still where it was, but no longer filtered through the RAM of that one device.

Today, 16 years beyond the departure of my father, it would be foolish to exhume his body to look for traces of the last breath of oxygen he breathed; it would be just as foolish to assign consciousness to the cavity of his skull and hope to find his personality there.

The decaying bones of my father’s body have nothing to do with the air he once breathed; nor do they affect the consciousness that once portrayed him.

However, oxygen and consciousness are safely conserved in The Universe. This is The Essence of every object.

The Universe is a salvage yard. Every breath is out there. Every thought is out there. Occasionally, I pick up a thought that was once a part of my dad’s personality and I bolt it into my own experience and find that it works well. This is the way consciousness works across time. If you happen to be reading these words, you may even pick up one of my thoughts and use it.

We are all out here in the yard called “Universe Recycled”.