by Jody Harrow
Has man perched himself on a pedestal so high that life after death is solely about his journey, his quest, his finding another, better life? Isn’t this pretentious outlook out of step with both present scientific findings and a more encompassing ‘spiritual’ understanding?
I believe our awareness of life takes place in infinitely small places. It burrows into the sub molecular elements in our body orchestrating an interaction of harmony or inharmony that has our health and well being in the fore.
Humankind has not woven the web of life. We are but one thread within it. Whatever we do to the web we do to ourselves. All things are bound together.
~ Chief Seattle
Each molecule in our body is a living, ‘breathing’ entity as interrelated as the societal patterns we have formed over millennia. We are dependent upon each infinitesimal network in our body to be in constant communication with trillions of other cells so they can perform harmoniously within the whole. When these signals get out of sync we become ill. But even this breakdown is an opportunity to renew.
All things share the same breath - the beast, the tree, the man…the air shares its spirit with all the life it supports.
~ Chief Seattle
What we call death is an expiration of one set of functions which are beyond repair and therefore unable to continue to hold all the other elements it interacts with together. But since these elements cannot disappear, they disband only to transform themselves knowingly and consciously into another life form.
The living dead may buzz among us. Attacked by a fungus that takes over their bodies, flies start acting erratically in the moments before they die, playing an unwitting role in spreading the fungus even further. Scientists call them “zombie flies,” and they are found across North America and Europe.
~ NYTimes Oct. 31, 2019 (written on Halloween)
-
When a person dies the countdown to decomposition begins, as digestive enzymes start breaking down cells inside the body. When the person was alive these enzymes were held within parts of the cell known as the lysosomes. But when the person dies, the membranes of the lysosomes weaken, allowing the enzymes to spill out and digest the cell.
~ NYTimes June 2, 2017
This is survival, this is the afterlife; a symphony in the making.
All matter is made up of the same basic particles that are ever transforming the light, water, soil and wind they encounter. Plant pollen is carried either by the wind or by cooperating creatures who function as the catalyst for developing new arrangements of life.
Leaves bend themselves over a new blossom to protect it from the excessive heat of the noonday sun.
This facilitation also takes place within the bigger picture - the forest. When one tree lacks sunlight, the other that doesn’t, gives its carbon through a network of underground fungi (think mushrooms) to help it’s growth and well being. This reciprocity of fungus and roots connect individual plants together by transferring water and other nutrients and is based upon mutual respect. It makes for resiliency and as a byproduct we humans receive the gift of clean air and clean water.
This notion of “give what you can”, which Suzanne Simard has spent her career studying, likens reciprocity to “a public immunization system”. It uproots (excuse the pun) our up until now popular belief that Darwin formulated and we so pervasively reinforce - ‘survival of the fittest’ that all nature is in competition with each other for survival. What a different world we might be living in if we could tweak this outlook and embrace how nature really works - in harmony with each other.
All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream.
~Edgar Allan Poe
Back in the forest, the sedentary tree, unable to move, uses its knowhow to procreate by sending pollinators as its convoy to dance on the wind - giving it a chance to blow its seeds far and wide. Could these plant forms, being much older than humans, have created us as a conduit to help with their reproduction as well?
This kinship, reciprocity and interconnectedness with all life does not see death as a barrier. Here are the departing words of 3 famous peoples that convey their sense of border-less-ness as they each cross over.
Timothy Leary, (an early proponent of LSD while doing research at Harvard University) when coming to terms with his own death wrote about his belief that death is "a merging with the entire life process." His last word, according to his son, was,
Beautiful.
Anna Pavlova, the famous Russian ballerina who is best known for her performance as the dying swan in Swan Lake said,
Get my Swan costume ready.
Harriet Tubman, the late, great abolitionist and political activist who made 13 missions to rescue over 70 enslaved people told those in the room just as she was departing,
I go to prepare a place for you.
There is no afterlife per se, there’s simply a continuum. An eternally connected thread.
We have much to look forward to. 💀
