Good morning. 🌹🌹🌹
19 June 2026
I think I’ll go a little out of my depth this morning and muse about life and death.
Is there life after death? I think there absolutely is — just not for the organism that has died. For that organism, there is nothing. Biological function ceases. Consciousness is a function of biology, so when the organism dies, thought dies with it. It’s like a flame: once it’s extinguished, the flame is no more.
But what about the universe? When we die and fade into nothingness, does the universe still exist? I’m sure it does — but only for those who still have the capacity to wonder about it. For the person who has died, awareness is gone. Their physical presence remains, but that’s about it. The world continues, just not for them. Their window onto reality has closed.
In that sense, death isn’t a doorway or a journey. It’s simply the end of experience. Life goes on for the living; the universe keeps unfolding. But for the one who has died, there is only the quiet absence where consciousness used to be.
So where does the idea of life after death come from? To answer that, we probably have to go back to the earliest humans — maybe even before them. Long before scientific understanding, people tried to make sense of death using the tools they had: imagination, fear, hope, and storytelling. They created spirits, gods, and unseen realms to explain the transition from being alive to not being alive. As Temple Grandin put it, the question was always, “Where do they go?”
I don’t say any of this to challenge anyone’s beliefs. People find meaning and comfort in different ways, and that’s part of being human. This is simply the way I understand it.
As you might discern, I’m not a believer in ghosts — but I still think they’re fun.
“Life is a flame that is always burning itself out.” — George Bernard Shaw
“We are our brains. That’s all we are.” — Antonio Damasio
#photo #photography #photographylovers #nature #rose #life #death #philosophy
Jessica
G Dan Mitchell
Swede’s Photographs
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