Consciousness, the Afterlife, and a Madlib by Bill Wofford
People who know me know I love pondering consciousness and other gloriously unanswerable questions. What is consciousness? What happens when we die? Is there a soul? If so, where does it go? My mom and my son clearly know me well, because for my birthday they independently gave me books that explore exactly those questions.
In A World Appears, Michael Pollan explores questions like: What is consciousness? Which beings possess it? Are dogs conscious? Or are they “just” sentient since they can’t, as far as we can tell, ponder questions like “Why am I here?” or “What is consciousness?” How about plants, some of which have at least 15 senses, communicate, share resources and deploy survival strategies of individual and species-wide varieties? If Darwinian evolution and a thoroughly materialist worldview are right, consciousness somehow emerged from matter through a long series of mutations that happened to improve survival. But what exactly tips a collection of cells from practicing biochemistry to instantiating subjective experience? What transforms electrical impulses into the inner life capable of producing The Odyssey, Hamlet or Game of Thrones? Is AI conscious? It increasingly behaves as though it might be, which raises the unsettling question of how we'd ever know the difference. What do we even mean when we say consciousness? Can we even study consciousness objectively when the only tool we've got is...consciousness?
While Pollan combed academic journals, bounced around the world to consciousness conferences (who knew this was a thing?) and interviewed experts in fields as diverse as biology, computer science, philosophy and religion (among others), David Eagleman seems to have relied on some combination of pure imagination and scripts from episodes ofThe Twilight Zone that I missed or forgot or that never existed at all. Sum offers 40 different visions of what happens after we die, each succinctly presented in 2 or 3 pages. What’s it like in a heaven where everyone gets in? Or one lorded over by a god whose favorite book isFrankenstein? Have you heard about the startup promising to upload your consciousness to a computer, quietly dispose of your body, and deliver "you" to a bespoke digital afterlife? What could possibly go wrong? These dispatches from the beyond are sometimes funny, ironic, cynical, mind-bending or inspiring. And who knows, perhaps one of them is right. Or maybe they all are. And I might never know. But if I find out, guess what: I’m pretty sure I won’t be spilling the beans.
Which leaves us back in the here and now. Where, before you go, you can try this quick Mad lib:
Decade of life:____________
Role:______________
Gathering or Event:_____________
Holiday: ____________
Structure:________________
Place:______________
What did you get? Mine goes like this:
In my [50s], I was invited to serve as an [apprentice fire tender] at [a sweat lodge ceremony] during [Fourth of July weekend] in a [temazcal] built at [my home]. Can’t say I saw that one coming. We’ve got a few spots left; message us if interested.
Maybe I already died and this is heaven. Some days it feels that way. Other days…less so.
But while we are here and conscious, why not explore and try something new? Or go deeper on something you already know and love? Maybe some of the offerings below resonate. None of these practices promises answers to the great mysteries. But they do invite us to become a little more intimate with the one mystery we can investigate directly: our own experience. Whether through movement, stillness, breath, music, ceremony, conversation or simple attention, perhaps that's enough.
