We are earthworms.

I went to the garden of remembrance with Azad today. It was great catching up over avocado and chili chocolate ice-cream cones after. He hasn't been around hall much, and I know the unfortunate story behind that now :(

We were talking about the after life and covered the different religions and their conception of what happens after someone dies. The three religions of the book belief in after life, either a better existence, or a lesser one. The other major eastern religions (hinduism and buddhism notably) believe in transmigration of the soul. But, what if we just die?
Die, period. Cease to exist. Not be. Nothing after.


pawsome picture from chinese buddhism site. is it trippy or is it trippy?!

We humans regard ourselves as superior since we are thinking beings. We are not the strongest, fastest or most resilient organism and yet we survive. How? "By exploiting our surroundings" appears to be too simplistic, but it's the most pragmatic explanation. In a highly intrusive fashion, we change our surroundings to suit us.
Not just because we can, but perhaps because we must? This may be our evolutionary advantage after all. Okay...maybe "finding opportunity in our circumstances" is a nicer way of putting it. We being thinking beings has kept us in the mad game of existence.

I proposed the following theory to Azad.
We are no different from earth worms. We are mere matter and that is what we will continue to be after death... just a slightly more decomposed form of that matter... maybe fossilized after a bunch of centuries.
So what happens after you die? Are you that same being? Do you still even think? Maybe not, so do you cease to exist? Maybe so.
Perhaps there really is nothing after death, but being the species-centric race that we are, believing we are superior to earthworms, we cannot accept that. Hence the creation of heavens/ hells/ rebirths etc.

He said he could grasp that logically, but that is not how he feels about this issue. he intuitively feels there is a God and cannot believe that the play we put on daily has a futile end... to make room for new puppets on the stage of life.

In any case, my heart wants to agree with him, my brain doesn't know... after all, there may be an earthworm heaven.