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Saturday, April 9, 2016

The Cycle of Life and Death

"Death, the most awful of evils, is nothing to us, seeing that, when we are, death is not come, and when death is come, we are not.” 

- Epicurus

I have always considered death as the ultimate calm; a state of perfect serenity; the blackness that covers all the light; an eternal night. But now I have started to think of death as something more. Life and death are the two alternate roles we play. These are not opposites but complementary to each other and feed on each other to survive. Think of someone who has been buried into the ground after dying. They are decomposed by microorganisms and converted to soil. The nutrients from the soil are absorbed by the plant in order to make it grow. In the process the soil itself becomes alive by being a part of a living part of the plant. When the plant is harvested for its fruits, vegetables and grain, a part of the plant dies again. And it soon becomes alive when it is eaten by someone and forms the basis for all our body parts including the brain and the heart.

Death is certainly not the eternal oblivion we make it out to be. It is a transition between lives. A person disintegrates into a billion parts and each part is transferred to a new body. This is how we live forever as parts of a whole. We see this process of dead being resurrected to life everyday around us. In this view, life is death for the dead.

Our DNA contains all the information on how to convert the nutrients into a living organism. Given the advances in cloning, the future in which we will be able to use the algorithm hidden in our genetic code to resurrect someone who has died does not seem far. But since memories form an important part of a person’s identity, we first need more research about how information is stored in the brain so that the person with the same characteristics and identity can be resurrected. This is one of the roads that we can follow to achieve immortality.

Want to read more about immortality? Read below:

10 comments:

  1. This is what I have been telling people for decades altogether!
    Except the last few lines which has given a new direction to my thought process.
    Nice read!

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    1. Thanks a lot! I'm glad u could relate to it and find something new :)

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  2. If it is just that then yeah we may find immortality. But I doubt its just an algoriithm to convert stored energy into kinetic and other useful form or even memories. Even when memory is lost as in amnesia we belive the person to be the same, is it just the body then, just the dna? A person's inherent nature must be composed of something else as well. What we don't fully understand yet, given the limits of our dimension or our knowledge, what we call a soul! If it is just that then yeah we may find immortality. But I doubt its just an algoriithm to convert stored energy into kinetic and other useful form or even memories. Even when memory is lost as in amnesia we belive the person to be the same, is it just the body then, just the dna? A person's inherent nature must be composed of something else as well. What we don't fully understand yet, given the limits of our dimension or our knowledge, what we call a soul!

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    1. Perhaps! But you said we believe that person to be the same. So if the identity of the person is contingent on you belief that he has a soul, then perhaps soul is just your belief in identity of that person. If there comes a person who looks same as I do, with same memories as mine including level of information, interests and other known things that are affected by the brain. If the person replaces me without you knowing about it, then will you believe that he is me? And in fact, isn't he actually me now if he has all the same memories and identifies himself as being me and you believe him to be me? There have been several movies on past life, all of them have focussed on identifying of a person who has taken a new body on the basis of "memories" of past life. Though, I understand that what we call consciousness of a person who has died has ceased to exist. But it is replaced by a new consciousness which associates its identity with the identity of the deceased. So, for the purpose of all the living in the world that person is the same. While for the person who has died... well does it really matter!

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    2. How can someone have same memory as you until and unless it is not you... of course we would believe under such circumstances that it is you..you and only you. Even the clones fail on the part of memory! (You made it look like sci-fi thing) (Rajni Kant's Robot)

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    3. Read the link about uploading the mind that I have shared.

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  3. This is a new perspective of looking at Death. More of a logical and scientific one. Though as mentioned in most of the religions, death is regarded as an end of all pains and miseries. And if you do not finish you can not start again...

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  4. I really appreciate your professional approach. These are pieces of very useful information that will be of great use for me in future.

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