The atoms of my physical body will seek other places to reside.  My consciousness is part of the universe and will rejoin that region from whence I came.  For consciousness is not confined to the brain.  It exists in every form of matter.  Consciousness has used the brain for a receptor, a place where ideas and images are processed.  When the brain dies, then consciousness has no further need of it and abandons the receiver, the processor.

Perhaps my consciousness returns to its former home, that which we refer to as “dark matter” or “dark energy.”  Both dark matter and dark energy exist, but can neither be seen nor measured.

Consciousness is much the same.  It exists in every atom and molecule in the universe.  Since our bodies and everything on this earth is composed of that matter which was released by a dying star, a tremendous explosion in the universe when a burning star runs out of fuel and collapses in on itself to become a super nova, all of its former essence is a part of that same consciousness that produces new stars, new galaxies, new solar systems.

Ever since man began to question the natures of life and death, he has tried to overcome his fear of the unknown by putting a name to that which cannot be seen with the naked eye or the telescope.

Man has called this mysterious matter, which I call consciousness by many names, including “psyche” and “soul.”  For a time, the Greeks thought that breath was the substance that gave life to man.  They thought they could see vapors leaving the mouth at the moment of death and that when it was gone life had expired.  The breath went to another region, an unknown place that also had to bear names to lessen the mystery.  That place varied with the cultures and became “heaven”, or “limbo” or “hell.” Or, it became the eternal “happy hunting ground” a second “Eden” or “Valhalla and so on.”

If man cannot accept the inevitability of death, then he must seek another and better life in some other region of the universe.  He has come to believe not only in a “soul” but in “spirit.”  The word “spirit” can pertain to God or a man’s inner being that cannot be seen nor measured.

Then why not “consciousness?”

For consciousness possesses the same attributes as spirit, soul, psyche and of the other immeasurable and invisible appellations that attempt to assert the existences of an afterlife, a life beyond death that is always better than life itself.

You will no longer see me after I die and am cremated or buried.  Yet, if you listen and observe, you will hear my voice in a song.  You will see images of me in your dreams. You will retrieve a memory and it will seem as if I am close at hand, perhaps in a parallel universe, existing in some other form.  And, out of the millions words I have written in lifetime, perhaps some will survive long after I die. Then, they too, will fade away and vanish in the mists of time.

You may not see my ghost, but my consciousness is now part of the universe, perhaps part of a host of universes.

Perhaps we are here on this earth for such a brief time so that we may develop our consciousness beyond its original form and thereby contribute to that dark energy, that dark matter that is so vital to the ever-changing universe that knows no time nor distance, but only love and creation.

This is why I do not fear death.  I know that a part of me, which can neither be seen nor measured will obey the physical law which proclaims “energy can neither be created nor destroyed.  It can only be transformed.”

We have come from Eden, and we will return to Eden.  Meanwhile we have many models of Eden to choose from while we still breathe.  One of my Edens is in the Ozarks hills where consciousness can be contemplative and we can, perhaps, see that which cannot be seen, the original Eden that is so far back in time and memory that only human language can explain what it was and what it really means.