Who Dat?

The prospect of life after death has been invading my consciousness for the past few days. It is intriguing to say the least. When one considers that we are part and parcel with our bodies, our brains being part of the package, it is a stretch to envision existing after the body dies. And in order to give credit to the power of the brain, it will be “brain-body” in this entry.

The brain-body has capabilities that allow it to function on many levels simultaneously. For example, I ate a meal a little while ago and all the while I am doing whatever else since, my body is digesting that food and putting it to use wherever it is needed or storing it for later use, or not. More complex activities are going on as well, there is a scab knitting the skin back together over a scrape that occurred two weeks ago. It keeps getting smaller and the skin is closing over the injury, one molecule at a time. Answers to puzzles become apparent when the puzzle is re-addressed after being put down for a while. We go to a place for one reason only to encounter someone about whom we have been thinking. The list could go on infinitely.

Yet there is an entity that exists that uses the brain-body to fulfill his purpose. It may be a collection of entities but let’s not complicate this any more than it already is. This entity, for lack of a better name, can be called Master. If he exists, he could be from previous lifetimes because by our definition he exists above nature, in other words he is supernatural. (And I say he because I am a male, someone else could say she or it or whatever. I doubt if Master has a gender.)

If the purpose of Master is to eventually exist as an individual in a spiritual world, i.e. without a brain-body, then that process may take many lifetimes. During any lifetime, since the brain-body is mostly reacting to its environment, he may only have limited opportunities to pursue his purpose so he keeps coming back in new and different brain-bodies. The newly inhabited brain-body has no memory of previous lifetimes because memory is a brain-body function as is every other mental and physical process. Master, existing supernaturally, may have memory but the brain-body isn’t privy to it.

The horse and rider analogy works here. Just as a horse has memory for what he has been schooled to do and a rider knows how to put the horse through his paces to achieve an end, so too brain-body is trained to deal with his environment but Master has his own agenda and uses brain-body accordingly.

So what I decide to do today is a function of brain-body; Master allows it if it is even remotely consistent with his aim. It is like an employee who has a lot of general skills and is made a member of the organization. He is allowed to do whatever he wants within a certain set of parameters of which he may or may not be aware. As long as his actions promote the general welfare of the organization he is given scope and when they run afoul of same, he is reined in by a superior.

If and when the employee gets so far off track that he can’t be brought back, he is fired in the analogy. In the real world, when Master can no longer pursue his aim in this brain-body, he causes it to die and if he goes on with his development, at some point he inhabits a new brain-body. This habitation could take place at any time in the life of a brain-body, currently it is my opinion that it takes place at first inspiration, when the brain-body begins to function completely on its own.

The brain-body has no direct communication with Master; he is mute. Everything of which we are aware is a function of the brain-body; Master is here but not in any apparent way other than imagination. This function of the brain-body, imagination, is the bridge between the brain-body and Master; between the natural and the supernatural. The relationship is not reasonable, nor physical, nor emotional; the only clue we have to its existence is that we can imagine that it does. This could be the genesis of Faith.

The purpose of Master is mysterious; only he knows what actions taken by the brain-body will move him towards his aim. He is patient, he has eternity to achieve his aim and as long as the combination of the brain-body currently inhabited and he are making any inkling of progress, he patiently allows whatever else to go on.

There are features of the brain-body that enable it to achieve its own aims and perhaps concurrently the aim of Master. Those that come to mind now are memory, imagination, reasoning (both intuitive and logical), and decision making. Memory is the store of raw data, imagination draws upon that data and forms some possible conclusions, reasoning tests those for possible action, and decision making enable action. Experience shows us that the process is not perfect.

It must, however, be stressed that these are features of the brain-body. The memory is fed by experiences that come through the senses including observations made of circumstances and the results of actions taken from decisions made.

The features of Master are unknown; the aim of Master is unknown. A guess was made above but only a guess. There is no way that the brain-body can know the aim of Master. Glimpses can be made via imagination but there is no way of verifying them, only objective, long term observation of past actions and results there from. Even this is fraught with possible misinterpretation. The only one who knows the aim of Master is Master. If brain-body is allowed to continue its existence, Master may see hope for progress in the achievement of his aim.