Time, Memory, and the Existence of an Afterlife

An afterlife. The existence of life after its own ceasing. How can such a concept exist? How can such a concept coincide with reality. To understand the existence of this seemingly paradoxical existence, we must first take a deeper look at reality itself.

Memory, that is where lies the key to comprehending the incomprehensible. What is life? What is human existence itself, but a compilation of memories? In reality, though it may seem quite a simple thing, to exist, it remains a complex system. How can reality be pinpointed? How is time experienced? How can we define "now"? If we dwell on this last inquiry, we can come to the strange conclusion that time cannot be experienced in the present, or to rephrase it, we cannot understand time in the present. You may disagree. How can we not experience time? Am I not reading this blog at this exact moment in time? Am I not reading this sentence, this word, this letter at precisely this moment?

Time may best be explained in an analogy. Time is a dimension of spacetime, and as such, it experiences measurement and observation. We can define sections and lengths of this unknown quantity, but we can never fully understand it. Time can fit between to boundaries (between 1 and 2 seconds, for example) but we cannot pinpoint it. You can never in a single moment in time define the moment itself. By the act of attempting to observe the moment itself, it slips away. Similar to the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle in quantum dynamics, the act of looking upon time makes its measurement cease to hold importance.

Time moves faster than the speed of light. Light itself is measured against time, being the faster of the two, just as other quantities are measured against light. We cannot see that which moves faster than the light that conveys visuals to us. It is as such that we cannot see current time. By the time that we pinpoint a moment, it is no longer there. This acts as a segway to my next point. Though trying to pinpoint current time itself is like trying to catch a photon with our bare hands, we do experience time.

Memory grants us access to the dimension of time. All that we witness, all that we experience, has already occurred by the time we try to precisely pinpoint it, and as such, those memories, those experiences are memories themselves. You may be saying immediate experiences cannot possibly be
mere memory, they are so vivid, so real, so unlike memory. But these instantaneous memories are vivid because of their recentness, just as other memories are dulled and blurred by age, so are our instantaneous ones. The memory becomes a memory as time passes by, which in term becomes a memory itself, and so forth and so forth. Take a moment to try to comprehend these revelations, these insights into reality. The act of thinking itself cannot be fully experienced. Like memories of reality, we will soon forget these thoughts (or perhaps only remember thinking them). Now that we have defined this concept, we must look deeper into its implications.

If all experiences of reality are formed of memory, of the firing of synapses, then reality itself, existence itself must also be made of memory. The reality, if we can continue to use such a word even, that we experience is no 'reality' at all, but our own memories, being generated and reacted upon, or at least the perception of the physical world through memory. But if all life is memory, then what is life itself, but the reliving of memory itself? We can comprehend the existence our own existence, but by doing so, we cannot comprehend what our existence consists of.

Finally, we come back to the introduction to this post. An afterlife, the existence of existence after our existence has ceased. How can such a paradox be ever understood? Memory. Life. If we exist and can prove our individual existence (I can prove my own existence to myself, but am not capable of proving yours) and now understand that all human existence is memory, then we can come to the complex conclusion that an afterlife exists. Now, this my seem like a drastic leap, and as such we must dwell on it further. If, again, all life is memory, then how can there ever be the absence of life? If we die and lose our existence fully, then how can we 'experience' our memory, which we all experience after true events occur? This can form the conclusion, that there exists an afterlife. Or, to rephrase it, there is no version of reality in which human existence, or the existence of our conscious thought cannot exists. Thus, we never truly die. Yes our bodies may rot and our minds may decay, but our soul, or conscience, or whatever name you give our true being will continue on. Now what lies ahead? Who can ever tell, but those who have already ventured that far.

Quod Erat Demonstrandum