I don’t believe in life after death.

Now you might well ask, “Really? You gotta be kidding me, Oh truly weird one who talks to spirits in graveyards. Why is that, pray tell?”

Because I don’t really believe in death.

A certain fragment of consciousness had inhabited a living form he called his body for a length of time he thought of as a life. – But then what?

The cells and tissues in that form lose their coordinating principle.

They may be broken down and distributed among other living forms like bacteria, microbes, and great gobs of yucky stinky goo, but this is merely life of one form feeding into another. It isn’t lost; it’s redistributed. Even the minerals left behind after those processes move elsewhere can be argued to have some form of slow-moving life in them.

If the body is embalmed and sealed so that no microorganisms can get to it; or if it is cremated; what happens to the life that once flowed through it; where does it go?

Same place it has always been:

Everywhere.

Life passes through us; we don’t own it. No chunk of it is ever broken off from the whole; we pass through life as life passes through us. Our birth and death don’t add to or diminish the overall supply.

So what is lost?

The consciousness that moved into that form at birth now rejoins its more immense self; it has not died, and may even return to form again. Nothing has ended; stages of development have shifted; that’s all.

So what is death? A definition imposed by limited minds. A best guess; a conception. Just because doctors have shut the machine off that kept your heart beating doesn’t mean you’re not in that room hugging your loved ones. Is that life after death?

Or just life?