evolving consciousness

 

Before daybreak today, I drove going to Camiguin, a one hour ride by car and another one hour ride by boat, for a court hearing. Just as last year, when days before the day I first saw the world, I have been in contemplative mood, pondering of the life I have lived and what remains of the earthly journey. In a word, I have this stream of consciousness that never fails to flash in my mind, as in a movie.

The age of reason is supposedly seven years old, when the child becomes self-aware of himself, of the outside world, when he starts to use his reasoning prowess – in a word, when the child slowly evolves into a man. As we look back, there is this realization that what we are now is strangely different when we were, say 7 years old. The way we look at the world, and relate to it, and to act in a community of men, is never the same each passing year. Somehow, our consciousness is not the same as that of last year. We simply change, hopefully for the better, but the reality is that, it is not always so.

The young tends, generally, to favor loud, metallic sounds, punk, or outright rock. Later in life, you realize that you could not anymore groove with the fast beat, when you tend to go cozy with the jazz or the classic.

From what source does the change spring? Is it the natural development of the brain, from childhood to adulthood, and the natural decay as man is nearing the grave, by age? Or is it the myriad of factors, like the people around you, the wares that you strut around, or the place where you hang around? Am I evolving alone, or my consciousness evolves with the collective psyche, with the universal man?

Friedrich Hegel said that the “mind” is evolving, and that this evolution determines how society in general is structured. Social structures are the product of a pure thought which in itself is evolving, and as it evolves, so does society. Karl Marx turned upside down Hegel’s concept when he said “ the economic superstructure determines consciousness”. Simply put, the way we structure our society, culturally and politically, depends on the kind of economy. Agriculture has feudalism; industry and trade have capitalism. The consciousness among the feudal lords and among the capitalists is drastically different from the proletariat. The rich reads the classical novels, the laborer in the hovel, the comics. The rich is concerned with the Victorian table manners; the poor, of immediately using the hand that feed the mouth. The rich lives above the clouds and therefore is conscious of the finer things in life; the poor toils the earth, and is therefore, conscious more of daily survival.

In my youth, Karl Marx never convinced me, and more now.

Yesterday, CNN reported about a scientist in London who is into hybrid animal-human stem cell research. Man, after having decoded the human gnome is now playing god. There may be serious ethical issues here but one fact cannot be disputed: science has evolved in quantum leaps. More than half a century ago, man reached the moon, later planet mars. The internet has drastically changed communication. But, after Darwin challenged the creation theory, the decoding of man’s gnome makes it possible the cloning of parts of the human body. The implications are far reaching.

If there is anything so pervasive and incessant an influence on man’s consciousness, science is it. It may be true that the economic structure determines consciousness, but the economy is determined by the progress of science. Mass production, telecommunication, planes, sky-rise building, internet, medicine, all these we owe to science. Name a field in science, and come to realize, how this field has changed our lifestyle, and the way we relate to the outside world. Before, we wrote love letters with our paper and pen, now we just email it. Even in rigid countries such as Iran, the cable table and internet and constant human travel have influenced this previously cloistered society. Some women are already getting rid of the burqas. Thanks to the information overload.

At no point in recorded history has the influence of science more pervasive than now. The change of our individual consciousness is triggered largely by the rapid progress of science which has changed the way we live, and even the way we perceive things. The gnome project has pushed us to rethink our philosophy vis-à-vis our morality and beliefs.

As I write this blog, I received a cell phone message, greeting me this early. I replied through text message. Twenty years ago, I used to receive a real greeting card, not virtual. I have online friends worldwide which was not possible two decades ago. Things are a-changing, and my consciousness is a particle of the collective consciousness that is now emerging globally.

 

 

 

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Friday September 7, 2007 – 06:33am (CST) Edit | Delete

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the other worlds

It starts with a basic premise. Everything that we perceive is based on the limitations of our senses, and the extent by which our minds process these perceptions. In this sense , man is truly unique; it is not our color, height, or weight that make as an individual, it is our peculiar perception of the reality that confronts us, which is basically determined by our senses and mental capacity, and the memories that we have stored in your psyche.

The dog perceives you starkly definitely from the way you see yourself in the mirror. The range vision of the dog is different from yours. The dog has powerful sense of smell. We, concededly, cannot sniff a bomb. The world we see is not the same kind of world the dog experiences. Imagine if you had night vision: the nights would never be the same again.

At a time when I was engrossed in my study of philosophy, I was enamored with the idea of parallel universes, and the implications they have on human existence. Philippine Studies, my other major way back in the undergraduate, exposed me to the world of faith healing, shamanism, witchcraft, magic, the frontiers of the mind – the other worlds. If we perceive reality differently, ergo, we cannot shut the door to the possibility that parallel to the reality that we now live, there are other possible universes that co-exist with us but which, owing to the limitations of human faculties, we cannot perceive and understand, as of yet.

Parapsychology explains these other worldly phenomena based on the capacity of the mind, and the yet its uncharted potential. Yuri Geller is able to bend metals by merely concentrating on it, and telekinetic powers take over. John of God, the Brazilian doctor turned faith healer, is able to operate without use of anesthesia. Nostradamus had clairvoyant powers, the gift to see the future. If your beloved is in distress, thousand of miles away, you too will feel the distress. Charge it to your extra sensory perception. All these are but illustration of the powers of the mind.

Yet, there are similar phenomena which do not fold quite fully well in the mold the parapsychologist explains as the power of the mind.

Take my grandmother, who incidentally, at the age of 94 can still recognize her grandchildren. At a tender, I witnessed many people who were suffering from the worst form of skin diseases. She did not finish elementary nor medical course. But she has this potion which is heated, and then she would rub this to the affected area, and murmured incantations the language of which I do not understand. Amazingly, living micro-organisms were collected in this hot potion, so hot that I wondered why these organisms were still crawling. The process was repeated depending on the severity of the disease. In days, the skin diseases were cured.

I developed recurring sinusitis way back in high school. Every summer vacation, I would return to our very rural hometown where my grandma lived then. One time, I had this sinusitis, with the debilitating fever and headache. There was this faith healer named Inday Moran (may her soul rest in peace). My grandma accompanied me to her clinic. To my surprise, the same medicines which my doctor gave me were prescribed by this faith healer. She also operated other patients the same way a doctor would. But she would also refuse to administer serious cases like operating on a kidney due to lack of facilities. When I was examined by her, I realized that she was a linguist. She spoke English, Tagalog, and other languages fluently. Yet, she only reached Grade III in the elementary level.

She cured so many people that she was elected mayor of our town, and was undefeated until she died. And my sinusitis? She cured it.

Ever since, I have opened to the possibility of parallel universes. I have to unless I had super human senses and perceptions. If one recognizes his limitations, there is no other logical way but to be open to the possibility that the other universes may indeed exist.

I am prompted to blog about this because of my recent experience. Two years ago, my wife went to Ireland for two months. When she came back, she could barely walk and had been suffering excruciating pain for almost a month already. She was taking pain relievers but the pain persisted. After three doctors and many tests, she was diagnosed to have slip disc, an incurable disease in which one of the disc in the lower spinal column collapsed, and the major nerve compressed. Without surgical intervention, she could suffer paralysis in the lower part of her body. But I asked and researched about the success rate of slip disc operation. The result: it is a 60-40 proposition, with the possibility of major accident during surgery.

I have a German tennis buddy who has slip disc also. There are only two recognized experts in this field, two German doctors in Germany who can operate for a fee of P5 million or $100,000.00. Where on earth can I get the money?

Then, we went to this faith healer. Miraculously, the day after the healing, the pain was gone and my wife can walk again.

Was it our faith that healed? But to be candid, when we went to this faith healer, I was the typically doubting Thomas. The faith healer must have some powers which science, as of yet, cannot explain. The key is openness.

My friend Millie was kind enough to let me read about the Einstein Theory of Relativity. Small objects travel space that is warped by the larger objects, This warping can only be seen in at least 3 dimension-reality. But accordingly, there are 7 dimensions of the hyperspace which are not yet determined with particularity. Will somebody pursue Einstein and explain to us the possibility of parallel universes, the other worlds?

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Sunday August 19, 2007 – 07:40am (CST) Edit | Delete

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where hath the music gone?

The irony is that the most common experience of human existence is often the most misunderstood. We hear, write, speak about many stories about it, and yet we do not fully grasp what it really means, the phenomenology of it all. The cliches written about it only add to its misunderstanding.

We have not de-mystified what true love really is.

Yesterday, a client came to my office seeking annulment of her 8-year marriage. Hers was a unique case.

I have handled annulment of marriage cases but basically for compelling reasons, as if hers is not compelling enough. The first annulment case I handled was that of a young lady, a dentist in her twenties yet. She got married, and after a month or so of living together, the husband eloped with his true love, never to come back. What choice did she have? Another came to me seeking annulment of her marriage with a drug addict. She was a punching bag, a sex toy, a house maid, and to cap it all, she was the bread-winner. How can I and the court refuse her plea?

I have lost count of the annulment cases I handled, but I can recall with clarity the reasons why those marriages have to be annulled.

But this latest client is a unique case. I asked her why she is seeking annulment. Her ready answer, in such a casual manner is that there is no more love, the so-called infernal fire that overwhelmed the couples’ being pre-dating the marriage has suddenly been doused of with the chill from Siberian wind, so to speak. I pressed on. Is there anything wrong with your husband? Does he support you? Do you have sex often? Are you battered? I only received the nays . Simply put, the music just died, and there is no more reason to dance in the dance floor of life.

Grim, eerie, but compellingly true. There is only left a cold chill between the couple.

Which lead to us to re-examine, what is love really.

There is this favorite article written superbly by a Spanish Philosopher, Miguel de Unamuno, “Love, Suffering, Pity, And Personality”. I used to lecture it to my students a week before the Valentine’s day. I never fail to get their total attention. Love is such an interesting topic that cuts-across ages.

Love is not a concept. It is a human experience; it sparks, grows, or dies, depending on the couple. Although homo sapiens has evolved into an intelligent animal, man is still part of the kingdom animalia, and not seraphims and cherubims. Man still is an animal driven by instincts, by the the physio-chemical processes, although his intelligence may filter the most primal emotions, and suppress their outward manifestations. The first encounter with the beloved, and this you must accept, is driven not out of love, but the whole gamut of lust, attraction, and longing. When you are wired emotionally, then you start to experience this loving relationship.

Just like any human relationship, be it love or say, even hatred, it grows or dies, depending on the couple. The lover is still an individual, and how he relates to this loving relation depends largely on the kind of person he is. The bond of love is strengthened not by how much a lover has become unique, but rather, how far the couple have forged a common personality, a one loving experience which they can identify with, not as an individual, but together as one. And the forging of this common personality is not borne out of the joys of love but of the suffering the couple has to endure in order to sustain the loving relation.

To paraphrase Unamuno, “True love grows out of the common mortar, enduring the common pestle of suffering; the more they suffer, and endure the suffering, the more they identify to one common bond of pain, the more the love grows, true love, that is.” The wife who sought to annul her marriage from a drug-addict, instead of trying to forge a common bond with the beloved, went out of the mortar of pain, to seek her own identity, instead of nurturing a common personality. Her loving experience ended when she tried to go on with her own experience, searching for her own self.

Love does not grow during the honeymoon stage. It is only the fruition of the physio-chemical processes, of man’s primal emotions. Real love starts to grow when the relationship is buffeted with the winds of financial distress, sickness, failures in the careers, or even the death of the dear ones, like, say, a child.

Those who survive the wind create a enduring , stronger bond.

When you swim in the sea of happiness, you satiate your senses, you gratify yourself, and thus, you tend to savor the sensation of your experience; in a word, in moment of joy, you become inward bound, savoring every minute of the euphoria, or the moment’s sense of bliss, though too fleeting it actually is.

Man, in a moment of crisis, is outward-looking, seeks for the hand that he can hold onto. When you are tossed in the sea, you hold the hands of the beloved, knowing that your survival depends largely on the other, and her survival rests also in your hands. In this way, you and the beloved, lose yourselves, and you thus create and identify with , to a bond, a “self” superior to your individual selves. Here, you start committing not only to each other, but to the union of your beings, to a separate personality which you can each identify with and you cannot live without.

Love grows from emotions to commitment to a self far greater than the individual. I am amazed by how the Family Code of the Philippines defines marriage: ” It is not a contract but an institution”. And if I may add, true love is a commitment to an institution of a loving relation. When there is commitment to the institution, your search for meaning in life is directed to making the institution stronger. Life-altering decisions have to reckon with the question, “Will this choice promote the institution?” In choosing a career path, your factor always how it will affect your family, and the children.

Our superior intelligence enables us to commit to a higher cause greater than ourselves. But the pitfall of most marriages is that in the process of committing oneself, the self-identity is lost. Don’t forget that, unlike angels, we are still animals deep down longing for self-satisfaction, for our individual self-worth. You cannot give and commit what you don’t have. True love is happy in suffering and sacrificing for the beloved because, in so doing, he finds his own meaning in life.

By Monday, when the client comes back, I have to accept her case. Since the infernal fire she had to her husband during the honeymoon has not grown into a commitment, then there is no reason for the institution to continue. Her searching self must be freed and not imprisoned in the institution she does not and cannot identify with.

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Saturday July 28, 2007 – 07:14am (CST) Edit | Delete

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belonging and alienation

Way back in college, there was this professor, Fr. Malley, who analyzed divine and human history in terms of alienation and belonging, instead of thesis and anti-thesis, the latter being more popular to the students considering the political temperature during Marcos time. The Marxist dialectical materialism took man as a mere object, a mere commodity in the historical moment. Fr. Malley’s analysis however considered man as the focal point of history. If history has to be understood, we have to dig deeper on the nature of man. To him, history is the full stretch of the tensions of belonging and alienation, played in the recesses of the human psyche and outwardly projected in our collective history.

twas in the Garden of Eden when alienation started

The Garden of Eden, although more allegorical than historical, jump starts the connection of the divine with the human and at the same time the alienation of man. At the end of the story of the Genesis, when God already breathed into man the breath of life, the Creator gave man an abode, which was a paradise on earth, the Garden of Eden. Man belonged then to the embrace of the Creator. But the snake in the garden which tempted Eve to take the forbidden fruit, opened man to the other world, the possibility of living beyond God’s reach.

It was in the Garden of Eden that man strayed away from completely belonging to God. Throughout the Bible, there is a constant struggle to belong to God and at the same time to be alienated therefrom. Moses, in leading his people to the promise land, was faced with pagan-worship, bacchanalia, sex orgies, and all vices in complete defiance of God’s commandments.

Moses parted the red sea only to be betrayed by the people he wanted saved

Human history is a mere extension of the biblical tension in terms of religious wars. In fact, the most gruesome war is not political but religious; the former war aims to conquer territory, but the latter is concerned with the conquest of the soul. What we witness today by way of terror attacks is not a clash of civilization but of one group trying to consolidate its piece in the already fractious religious debate, claiming their religion as the only path to salvation and the rest will lead to the road of perdition. The issue, to what religion should man finally belong, Christianity or Islam, has only alienated man from the source of love and belonging. In an attempt to spread its own version of salvation, people have been killed, and when called upon to account for the deaths, these groups would only charge the killings to collateral damage.

But why should man kill if he only wanted to belong to his divine? The answer lies in the estrangement of man. If we have to read historical moments, we have to go back to human nature. Without roots in the divine, man is a broken piece. The sentient, and intelligent man needs to belong, to the divine and to the people he truly loves. According to Saint Agustine, “My heart is restless until it rests in thee”. Ironically, the jihadist that kills is moved by the overpowering mission to accomplish a mission that is, for him, truly divine. If he fails in his mission, he not only fails his Allah but the people around him as well. He needs to belong, and if he has to kill to achieve this, then kill he must. Alienation is at times worse than death.

So too the Crusaders who slaughtered the Muslims on their way to redeem the Holy Land. The medals of war conferred on them were mere testaments of their deep desire to be accepted and to belong in the bigger Christian community.

The most lethal assassin is not one who brandishes his weapon with dexterity; it is one who is willing to die in the pursuit of a mission imposed upon him by his group that sets the common vision. If he dies, he will be a martyr to his brethren, no matter the scorn of the society that he has wronged. Unfortunately, in man’s desire to belong to a common mission, divine or worldly, he sets him apart, by force of circumstance , from the larger community. What we see now are packets of cohesive groups unwittingly annihilating each other.

The necessity to belong is both divine and human. It is existential in character. There is a proverbial hole in a donut. A donut ceases to be one without the hole. Man is suffering from an existential hole, an emptiness that he carries to his grave; he is forever in constant attempt to fill-it up but never succeeds. The members of the family, friends, and other humans who we love and care are sources of

the hole remains till we die

belonging that somehow fill-in the hole. But while still alive, we look upon God as the source of total completeness, as the Being with whom we truly belong.

Historical movements are manifestations of this existential hole in every man. People seek salvation in recognition of this hole. Otherwise, if man feels complete, there is no need to look for the beyond. Push to the extremes, we see congregation of people, who, in their search for their own version of salvation, have relegated others as mere collaterals.

Is man cursed to kill each other in the name of salvation? Look at the mayhem in Bali.

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Sunday May 20, 2007 – 08:30pm (CST) Edit | Delete

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going back to the core of life

Yesterday, I received a tragic news: my once tennis buddy, Dodong, died, apparently of car accident. But there is more than meets the eye. At 1:00 o’clcok in the afternoon of March 24, 2007, his car rammed into a truck that was parked at the road shoulder. He must be running with a speed of 120km/hour that his car and his mangled body were beyond recognition. Initial finding points to a suicide. Accordingly, his young wife, called him over the mobile phone to break the tragic news: she was leaving him. One tragic news leading to a more horrific news.

We were stunned, numbed. How could he took his life? He was doing well in his business? He was a class “A” tennis player, and for us, tennis players, “tennis is life”. So long as there is a tennis court, life continues. And yet, Dodong’s case proved that afterall, contrary to our slogan, there is more to life than tennis, that behind the grunts for a power stroke, underneath lies the sobbing self, hidden behind the facade of a happy face.

One time, I eavesdropped upon a conversation between two of my friends. This friend is planning to resign from his present job that compensates him enough to place his family in the middle income bracket. But he is planning to go to Canada for greener pasture, leaving his family in the Philippines. I joined the conversation, and asked this friend, what really does he want in life. He is doing financially okay here in the Philippines, but he is willing to leave for a higher income, despite the terrible adjustments that he has to make in Canada. The question struck a chord. He could not answer what he really wanted in going to Canada. And yet, he was then in the verge of deciding to leave.

How many times have we embarked on something, yet if we are asked why we did that, we become speechless because we dont have the reason why. Once, I gave a peptalk to my students. “Why are you studying? So that you can work later on? You work so that you can earn your bread, and you need to earn your bread, to give you energy. You need energy so that you can work well.”

You go to companies and other workplaces, you find people who are working without being able to transcend the workplace, meaning, unable to break the cycle of working to earn the bread to give energy, to work well. Life becomes a conundrum. A person lost in a riddle of life may later find no direction.

We are living in a dizzying world. Knowledge, information, and events come to us in a fast pace that we can hardly catch-up. Often, we do things as a knee-jerk reaction to events without truly reflecting on the reason why we do things, or we decide on something. I often ask students why are they taking a particular course, the usual refrain is that it is what their parents told them, or, it is the easiest course, or it assures them of job in the future. It was rarely when somebody answered me, “Sir, because I am excited and happy to learn about this course.”

In this dizzying world, the call to humanities is most imperative. The sciences may provide us with the technological know – how on how to deal with the present world, but it is in the humanities that provide us with the reason on why and how to deal with the present world. The humanities open our eyes to a deeper appreciation of life, a life that we chart and travel. There is a need to ask: Why and what am living for? The meaning of one’s life, and the depth of our conviction to it, is like a shining star that where ever we are, as we charter our ship of life, will guide us, and tell us whether we are on course or not.

Once we have an existential connection to the deeper meaning of life, no wind nor wave can buffet us into the neverland. We will always find our bearing in the turbulent seas because as we look up in the sky, we still find and relate to the shining star.

My tennis buddy Dodong may have been buffeted by the howling winds, and perhaps, did not place his shining star up there. Seconds before he rammed his car into a truck, the record show that he told somebody from the other end of the phone conversation, “I will ram this car into the truck.” Which, tragically, he did. He lost touched with the core of his life, the reason for living.

Maybe, he had placed a shining star, but he did not have a strong existential connection to it, that at the instant that the shining star was to be his guide, it dimmed, and failed to lift his spirits up, and there, his life went into oblivion.

soulmates

February 14 is St. Valentine’s Day when as the cliche goes, love triumphs above all. Today, I commit to digress from my brand of writing, in honor of somebody to whom I promised to write a topic about – soulmates. She asked me whether I believed in soulmates, by way of an answer, let me assay further….

 

More in depth in Classical Definition

 

“Plato wrote in his Symposium that humans have been looking for their soul mate ever since Zeus cut them in half. In his mythic story, Plato describes a world where there were men, women and people who were both men and women. Apparently, humans began discussing how they could climb up to heaven and replace the gods. The gods were upset by this and discussed what should be done. The simplest solution would be to destroy mankind, but Zeus came up with a better idea. He suggested cutting all human beings in half. This would serve two purposes. First, it would immediately double the number of people making offerings to the gods. Second, it would weaken the humans, so they would not be able to carry out their plan. Zeus’ idea was accepted, and the humans were all divided into two. Naturally, the humans were upset at this, and Zeus decided to enable each half to have intercourse with their opposite , symbolically creating a whole. Consequently, the males sought other males, the females other females, and the people who had been both male and female sought their other half, allowing population to reproduce.”¹ This concept is outlined in the modern musical Hedwig and the Angry Inch

 

New Age concept of soulmate

 

There is a prevalent concept in some segments of the New Age movement that some souls are literally made and/or fated to be the mates of each other, or to play certain other important roles in each others’ lives. These souls are thought to have created something in a past life and they have chosen this lifetime to help each other “heal.” Following this concept, one can have many soulmates. For example: One could see another person they have never met in this lifetime and instantly hate or love them because of previous interaction(s) with the other in one or more previous lifetimes. The most popular use of this concept is in applying it to those who were loved intimately in other lifetimes which were then found in this one.

 

Also, being conscious of the “soul mate connection” is not necessary, according to this idea.

 

Soulmate Emotional Destruction Theory

 

Ultimately the consequence of this notion is the unfortunate reality that soulmates often possess the ability to inflict serious emotional injury unto their twin flame, greater than any other being could. This often results in the separation of idealized love, due to the severe emotional impact. Many soulmates are destined for an eternal search, not for lack of meeting, but rather lack of acceptance. The encounter is often analogous to the collision of matter and antimatter, a violent explosive reaction will occur, but if held through to completion only pure energy, and thus harmony, will result. Unfortunately few encounters are held through to completion.

 

Eastern View

While the Greeks had the idea of soulmates as mythology, Eastern Philosophy, Hinduism more particularly, has believed in the idea of soulmates as something real and experiential. Man has many past lives, not necessarily as humans but as other forms of organism. In man’s quest for nirvana, that is, complete bliss, he undergoes the wheel of reincarnation, sometimes as a cricket, a frog, a cow, or as man. But the spirit behind this earthly manifestations is the same constant spirit in search for nirvana. In this wheel of reincarnation, the spirit , in one of its earthly lives, encountered its true mate, which due to temporary existence is cut short by death. But in future lives, as if by coincidence, the two constant spirits would meet in other bodily presence. Their past lives would be re-awakened in an instant as if two combustible materials ignite each other, and they identify and recognize each other. In that one particular lifetime, they realize that they are only complete in the presence and love for each other. But alas, their present circumstances may not be similar in their past lives, so the love for each other is muted and pounded in the arms of another person.

The deepest love of all has cosmological origin, and in the spread of eternity, that kind of love may not find fruition at all. But when these two spirits indeed meet but are trapped in different circumstances, in time and space, they still recognize their true love for each other, that kind of love that is not imprisoned in the flesh and circumstances, the love that springs eternal and magical.

The celebration of Valentine’s Day is not necessarily the celebration of true love, but the sanctity of the search itself.

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Tuesday February 13, 2007 – 08:32pm (CST) Edit | Delete

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of dying and thereafter

 

      Last December 2, 2006, we attended the burial of my wife’s auncle. He was suffering for almost two years of cancer of the tongue. One month before he finally succumbed, he suffered a severe bleeding due to a rupture of one of the veins  caused in turn by the spread of the cancer cells.  When I saw him, I immediately called his brother, my father-in-law, and told him that within twenty four hours, his brother could expire. Actually, the prognosis of the doctor was that he would last for not more than seventy two hours.  Amazingly, he survived for another month. Thanks to a sheer will to live, to hang-on to dear life.

       During his last days, he would let the windows of the hospital open so that he could see the trees outside.  He would talk of going to his farm, and of doing his other routinary activities.  He would walk us through his previous triumphs and pains, and he intended to do more. His body was so emaciated in contrast to his once athletic physique.  Anytime then, he would expire.  Once, his eldest son Reno , asked him, “Dad, are you afraid to die?”   His unmistakable reply was a curt, “Yes”.

 

        During his burial,  my son who is still six years old, kept on asking why his “Papa Remy” was sleeping in the coffin.  I said, he is already dead, and would have to be buried soon.  As usual to a precocious child, I was bombarded with follow-up questions, as if I were  under cross-examination.  But the question that jolted me was ” What would happen now that he is dead?”  I could not answer . Otherwise, I would have to go to a long and unending discourse of the afterlife, which until now, I too am still grappling and searching for answers.

 

 

       When the coffin was finally lowered to the ground of his final rest, I noticed that my son shed a tear or two.  Other grandchildren also were teary eyed.  During the vigil and the church ceremony, these children were still playing and frolicking around, seemingly unmindful of the solemnity of the occasion.  Yet, at the final moment when the coffin was lowered to the ground, the same children who were playing were sobbing.  I asked my son why he cried, he retorted, “Should we leave him alone?”

 

        As a child, I was wondering what would happen after death.  “Physically, death must be very painful that I may expire in the process, ” so went my chilhood musing of death.  Is the afterlife, too dark, cold, and lonely?   Obviously, my son, gragarious and playful as he is, is concern more of the dead being alone in a dark grave than of the beyond.  As a child then,  the answers given to me only  raised more questions.  

 

       I have always been reflecting on death.  Are we afraid to die because we leave love ones and memories behind or is it because, life after is uncertain? 

 

        When I was in college, I majored in Philippine Studies and Philosophy, a recipe of challenging beliefs.  I was so enamored with eastern philosophy that I almost went to India for further studies, if not for my mother who wanted me to become a lawyer.  But by then, I lost  my catholic faith.  At the age of nineteen, I became a non-believer of Christ although I still believed then on the Supreme Being. (or was it the Universal Principle? Or Nirvana? Or the Great Cosmos)   In times of doubt, one thing becomes certain, uncertainty.

 

        During the period of doubts, the most nagging idea to me was about the afterlife.  I held on to many possibilies, that I was not certain of what death would mean.  Lately however, when I regained my christian faith, death to me is a painful process, of leaving the loved ones and the memories with them, for something, as the Bible promises, eternal life.

 

        Yet, even as I cling to christian teaching of the afterlife, I could not erase in my mind the other possibilities.  Afterall, no one has come from the dead to tell the living.  Somehow, the christian belief of the afterlife eases the burdens, clarifies some doubts, and give the dying fortitude in spirit to face the great beyond.

      Recent events though show that people abandon the present in favor of the  promise of bliss in afterlife.  They live for the beyond, while  smothering the here and now reality.  Terrorists would kill innocent people in the pursuit of the jihad, whatever the word means.  They may die in the process but that is of no moment so long as they go directly to the promise of paradise where they live in abundance, and they are surrounded by virgins whose  only duty is to satiate their pleasures.  There is too the christian teaching that  it is better for the poor man because he can enter the kingdom than the rich man.  Forget poverty, hunger, and malnourished children; the poor are sure to enter heaven.  People cease to live in the present.

 

        In his last days, Auncle Remy received the final christian rite, the annointment of the sick. Gradually,  he accepted death.  When he expired, he had a smile of serenity in his face.  Rightly so.  He died, but left the tracks of having raised a good family, made a loyal circle of friends, and contributed to the community.  These are things we would reminisce of him.  In the end, he had no more problem accepting life after death for although the road ahead would be ancertain, he lived a meaningful life on earth.  Although he had sights of the beyond, he did not cease to live the moment.

       It is precisely the truth that the afterlife is uncertain that we try to make our lives meaningful.  A good singer should sing, a boxer should know how to punch hard and fast, a lawyer should articulate the laws.  And what about me? I blog now because so long as the internet is around, my thoughts are forever recorded, and could be retrieved in the generations to come.  After all, when I take my last breath, I am not a mere speck in the stream of time anymore.  I made a difference.

 

        But faith in the afterlife somehow makes dying not too difficult to accept.  And if is the only way to ease the anguish of death, then I better hold on to it.  The alternative would only be more morbid.

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when life begins at 40ish

        it was strange. usually, after three shots of brandy, i get usually sleepy. but not last night. i could not sleep, even if i tried to. i was told that when you get older, 41 to be exact, your sleep time diminishes: you sleep late but wake up early. father time, as it were, is taking its toll. the sleep hormone is fast depleting.

        is this more physiological than psychical? or is it more philosophical, a tectonic paradigm shift about life?

        when you reach forty-ish , the tell-tale signs are becoming, in the legal parlance, res ipsa loquitor – the thing speaks for itself: the hairline is fast receding, the knees start to wobble, the waistline turns immeasurable… ad infinitum. sleep problems come with the greying of the hair.

        but the physical signs are mere manifestations of the changes inside. chemically, at the age of forty, the estrogen re-asserts itself. the male libido suddenly surges back as in the youth of the past, save for the organic weapon, which, due to constricted blood vessels, needs the chinese prescription , the happy king potion.

        the hormonal changes necessarily trigger electro-physical reactions in the left hemisphere of the brain. at this stage, one becomes irritable, easily sex-cited with the twin peaks of the woman, and tends to go sporty in apparrel, in an attempt to hold back father time. the psychologist, if not psychiatrist, describes this as mid-life crisis, a wish to stay younger forever as against the lurking realities of aging, with all its pervasive signs.

        between a wish and a reality which seems irreconcialable at this point in life, the deep-seated frustrations inevitably appears by way of the beers, and women – as if to prove that one can still do it and nothing has changed. at the philosophical level, becoming forty-ish is being in the threshold of youth and of age, of the gnawing reality that deep inside is the realization that life , or rather living, is a process of dying: that no matter what the facade one projects, inside lurk the fears, or rather, anxieties of death that may just knock anytime. and because death, or aging, is now in the doorstep, one has to leave his tracks on earth, good or bad, for the living to relive.

        the focus to achieve for fame or infamy reaches its apex at this stage. normally, empires, a business or harem, take clear shape. the life project that would leave an indellible imprint is being realized, till the forty-ish marches towards his grave. But precisely due to the temporariness of life that we try to make it eternal, to live in the here and now, in a word, to be immortal by the seconds.