Seek for Immortality?

“These roses under my window make no reference to former roses or to better ones; they are for what they are; they exist for God today. There is no time to them.”
- R.W. Emerson

 In the folklore of human literature, the idea of a fountain of youth has found its way into the imaginative minds and pens of writers of all kinds.  Water from this fountain was said to restore youth and vigor, permitting one to live eternally.  In the mythology of the Americas, it was said Florida contained such a spring, and as the story goes, the unrelenting object of the Spanish explorer Ponce de Leon. The idea?  Somehow living forever is something to be desired.

Consider, however, what it might mean be eternal – to live forever in this world.  How much would be accomplished?  What would the incentive be to finish a project? It could always be done later.  Immortality might just be a recipe for failure rather than success.  The knowledge that tomorrow would be just as good as today, might be just exactly the mechanism by which nothing got done.

Yet, we all seek immortality – to be remembered – in some way.  This does not mean our temporal existence is meaningless, but rather a dressing room, as it were, in preparation for a next stage.  

How we find or conceive of it in more than an abstract way is the centerpiece of this idea of ‘no time.’  For surely, once the path is found, the journey is much less painfully difficult.

Immortality has everything to do with ‘no time.’  It is a way of expressing in a single word the ‘end game’ of our human experience.  Endgame might be the wrong word – how about the end of our earthly journey.   Spiritual writings describe better lives ahead once this earthly body is shed…better?  For some, clinging to a positive forecast from the storms of this world, helps keep hope alive.  For others, there is an unknowing, yet undercurrent sense of more to come. These teachings tell us there are things that need to be done, in order to find the elusiveness of eternity. They suggest bringing oneself to a more quiet and peaceful place through prayer or meditation, causes greater enlightenment.

Allegory of the Cave

In Dante’s Divine Comedy – Paradiso is an example of the transcendent journey toward immortality, as are the essays of Ralph Waldo Emerson, C.S. Lewis and others.  One example is Socrates’ allegory of the Cave (Plato – The Republic, Book Seven).

Plato asks the reader to consider what it would be like if a person were from birth in a den under the ground...chained in a position where he/she could not move and could see only what was directly in front of them – a blank wall like a movie screen.  Imagine a fire, or some light source behind them.  Between them and the fire behind, different objects pass, casting shadows on the wall.

There would be no way to discern the source of the shadow, no way to understand these were just images of something else being reflected.  Further consider there to be an echo in the chamber, so that any thing spoken from behind would seem to come from the shadows themselves.  The shadowed reality their complete world!

Now imagine being released from this position, turning and seeing everything thought to be reality, merely a reflection of something else.  What a shock!  What they thought true was not! The light of the fire would be overwhelming. 

Further suppose, once having accommodated to the light of the fire, they made their way up and out of the cave into the open world.  What a further shock! This light would be even more overwhelming…so dazzling they would be unable to see clearly until their eyes became accustomed to this new world…the moon, the stars, the heavens and finally the sun itself, no longer the dimness of the fire, nor the reflections on the wall – BUT life as a truth.

Plato argues this would cause person to reflect on those still in chains in the cave and realize all of the things important to them - understanding, status, desires for honors and glories were meaningless.  In addition, returning to the cave, would be found a dark and black experience.  Rather than being embraced, this person would be considered an enemy of those still in chains.  In trying to release another from the chains, they would not be honored, but condemned, in peril of their very life.

Plato says this allegory is one of intellectual enlightenment - that in the world of knowledge, true good is the last to appear in its true form and can only be seen with effort.

The way we live our lives; the openness we have for spiritual and intellectual growth, the struggle to understand, allows access to a doorway through which we all desire to pass – the beginning, one might say, of a transcendent and eternal life…toward the ultimate ‘no time.’

 

- ted