“Thus nothing that dies dies for ever; but nothing that is born receives a fundamentally new existence. That which dies is destroyed; but a germ remains over out of which there proceeds a new being, which then enters into existence without knowing whence it has come nor why it is as it is. This is the mystery of palingenesis; it reveals to us that all those beings living at the present moment contain within them the actual germ of all which will live in the future, and that these therefore in a certain sense exist already.” 1
Arthur Schopenhauer, Essays and Aphorisms,1851 2
Is this the end? Is it my body that disintegrates alone upon death? Or is it my whole being comprised of body, mind, and soul that perishes?
This death is mysterious as is birth. For certain people who care enough, it sometimes takes them their whole life to grasp the meaning and the reason for their existence. This unavoidable incident called death adds further weight to their account of contemplation.
However, having been born by our soul’s choice into this world, isn’t it natural for us to deduce that we would return to our original state with our innate image fulfilled and experience gained during our embodiment here as part of nature?
Our soul is noumenon erecting our body in this world as a phenomenon. This spirit that departed from the veiled realm projected our material body. When the time of departure hits, we go back and rejuvenate preparing for another journey back like in a perpetual cycle.
Schopenhauer called the inner world within each of us ‘will.’ According to him, it’s this will that causes our appearance in this world. Doesn’t this inner world called ‘will’ greatly resemble the notion of the soul that we’ve been discussing so far?
It’s one’s will that maintains its continuation in a newly created body that repeats life in a new form, just like each soul descends into this world with its purpose planned in each carnation.
So as Schopenhauer asserts ‘the world of will’ is a unity and the ‘real world’ that’s not subject to the forms of space and time, our soul likewise in its essence belongs to the destructible real world.
When death approaches us, it is to be reminded that the appearance called our body that we have chosen to erect was well used for our soul’s purpose, but the totality of our being – the noumenon indestructible – would return to its original realm which we may not be able to fathom and would prepare for another journey to fulfill its will.
Jay
Note:
1. On the Indestructibility of Our Essential Being by Death, Essays and Aphorisms, Penguin Classic, 1970, p49
2. This book is a translation by R. J. Hollingdale, 1970, of Parerga and Paralipomena – a selection from Schopenhauer’s last writings: the collection of essays, aphorisms, and thoughts to which he gave the name Parerga and Paralipomena, published in 1851.
Leading by Reading 