The hereafter . . .

There's always been so much talk about the afterlife, and whether there really is such a thing, it's occurred to me that maybe the problem is assuming there's either something like the life we live now (perhaps without a body) or else utter darkness -- oblivion. Maybe the situation would be easier to assess if we allowed other possibilities.

If there's one thing that seems to characterize life (at least ours) and distinguish it from nonlife, it is consciousness. Now, we don't really know that what we call inanimate matter really lacks consciousness, but let's just go on this assumption. There are also plenty of other distinctions between life and nonlife, like reproduction, metabolism, and a few others . . . . But for now, let's just go with consciousness.

Now, if information is written on a blackboard in chalk lettering and someone is looking at it, then the information exists twice: once as physical chalk, and another time as a conscious image. The recurrent appearance of information in this dual guise has raised questions about the nature of consciousness and its relationship to the physical world. For now, let's just say David Chalmers is right about an intimate link between consciousness and information, and that the relationship may be one of identity (that's panpsychism -- another post).

Well, information, so our physics tells us, is a conserved quantity (kind of like mass and energy). So if consciousness is information, then there is some sense in which consciousness may also be conserved. Is that what is meant by afterlife?

Another peculiar feature of consciousness is its association with the self. The self as an entity distinct from the physical world is hard to delineate precisely. Where do you end and the non-you begin? This question, which has no ready answer, can be reformulated more precisely with respect to perception (i.e., where is the boundary between perceiver and perceived), and also with respect to action (where is the boundary between controller and controlled?). These are the problems of the so-called "epistemic cut," rendered by my former graduate advisor, Howard Pattee -- very influential in my thought processes.

The boundaries (or lack thereof) pursuant to perception and action are spatial -- i.e., if there were a point delimiting the you from the non-you, that point would exist in space. Similarly, we can inquire about the temporal boundary between the self and non-self -- i.e., when does the self begin, and when does it end? The latter question involves a possible afterlife and lacks any clear answer.

Perhaps all that can be said is that even in this life, one has glimmerings of experiences of becoming part of something larger -- that one's boundaries are no longer defined by the skin, and one's experiences are no longer one's own only. Such experiences can occur as intimacy, as creativity, as spirituality. It may be that people close their eyes when they kiss and when they meditate for the same reason: by losing the visual perception of an external world, they're feeling of oneness is magnified.

Perhaps in a similar sense it is possible for the self to extend beyond the mortal body in time also. What the nature of such an existence might be is anyone's guess, though it is telling that the Vedantic word for unification is samadhi, and their word for death is mahasamadhi. Perhaps in all their meditation and introspection, they've learned something that is difficult to grasp with the analytical mind.

Here's a note -- to myself as much as to the reader -- that next time, I'd like to talk about memory and karma, and perhaps also about the subjectivity common to information and consciousness.