ELECTROMAGNETIC ENIGMA

What is Heaven? One can assume that dead souls have no corporeal form. No body, no flesh and blood, no physical parts, no carnality. No carnal desires. No appetite, no interest in sex or alcohol or cocktail hour or any other pleasures.

Many imagine the dead to be spirits inhabiting a heavenly realm. To others, they are conjectured to be some sort of electrical energy, unknown phenomena of electromagnetic waves emitting signals or light or heat or something that is currently unimaginable.

That concept of heaven would be no fun at all. The living who expect to be reunited with their dead loved ones would be disillusioned and disappointed to find that their flesh and blood companions had been transmogrified into a metaphysical, intangible presence.

The Sunday School/Born Again Christian/Devout Catholic concept of dead human beings miraculously transformed into heavenly bodies in recognizable form, capable of being hugged and kissed and sharing lives again in a glorious eternity, is, on the face it, a tad crazy.

BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU WISH FOR

But, harking back to the ever-so slightly less crazy concept of electromagnetic wave phantasmagoria, who wants to be reunited with a dead companion if the former flesh and blood loved one is a disembodied pulse or signal or sensation in a supernatural state of metaphysics?

One argument is that when you yourself are dead, you would also be a wave or a pulse, an indestructible atom, etcetera, and you and your companion would get along swimmingly, pulsing and waving throughout the cosmos for ever and ever.

Still, no fun. Certainly, one can confidently say it would be the end of conversation and camaraderie and cocktail hour as we know it.

In conclusion, if you want to be with the spirit of your loved one, then perhaps the best course of action is to not be dead, to stay alive and be at one with the memory of your lost soulmate — memory and spirit becoming one, a communion, a peace of mind amid grief.

That may be the best deal we’re going to get in this basic, godless, down and dirty life.