The Conveyer's Belt of Time and Life Through a Tunnel (Part 2)

 

The Conveyer's Belt of Time and Life Through a Tunnel (Part 2)

 

The Conveyer's Belt of Time and Life Through a 

Tunnel (Part 2)

 

I often think life on Earth is like a conveyer’s belt carrying the flow of time through a very dark tunnel.

 

Within this time tunnel somewhere along the journey there is a very, very short spectrum of light where life begins to enter into this light when we and all life are born and ends again in darkness as the conveyer’s belt leaves this spot of light.

This conveyer’s belt has many endless sections. On each section there will be a beginning where there is light and darkness at the end of that section. At the beginning of that section life is seeded into birth. The conveyer’s belt in this section will begin with light carrying the birth of our life and all our worldly possessions that are material and physical we have acquired which are actually as burdens in our life, including our own physical body through this lighted segment of the belt. 

The constant movement of the belt represents the time through this passage. Then at the end of this segment, the belt drops down into a very dark and very deep chasm where everything that we acquired, gathered and possessed that was physical and material is thrown down there like unwanted thrash including our lifeless physical body except the immortal non-physical soul which will fly out from this chasm to jump into the next lighted segment of this conveyer’s belt where again the soul will enter into another lump of soil or another body for the rebirth of another life through this second  section.

Just be very mindful always our life from the very beginning is the breath of God, and this breath can NEVER be destroyed except all other substances from the soil from which we were made. His breath is our souls that leave our physical body on death. Be very mindful of His eternal nature always.

"And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul".

(Genesis 2:7) 

What and how we sin is what and how we defile His breath.

Since the conveyer's belt is seamless and continuous, it will travel through the continuity of time like an endless flow of water in a river where all things material will again enter into another dark, dark chasm at the bottom again throwing away everything that were physical except our eternal soul. It is likened a river entering into a waterfall where everything will be washed down into the bottom while the water continues to flow on. 

At the bottom of each pit, the soul will again rise up to fly on into the beginning of the third segment of time and next life, and so on.   

This scenario of birth-death-birth-death cycles and recycle will go on from segment to segment on this conveyor's time belt. This continuous cycle of birth and death and birth may probably take several thousands of millions of years on each segment before a new heaven and earth is created again as foretold in Isaiah 65:17, 2 Peter 3:13, and the Book of Revelation 21:1 in the Bible

Even in astronomy and cosmology, scientists too believe that this universe (heaven) will not last forever, and there may be another rebirth of a new universe (heaven and earth) in a cyclic pattern.  

There may be different tunnels for different individuals, or there may be just one tunnel with different lanes where the light is for individuals with different lifespans. We are not sure, but what I am particularly sure of is, that there is a tunnel, and a very dark and very, very long one most of the time with just a very short spectrum where there is light and the existence of life beneath. 

 

All yet unborn lives are placed behind us in line on this conveyer’s belt waiting their turn to enter into this short spot of light to be born and then rapidly die.

  

It is like a flowing river that takes a very long, long journey meandering among the lonely hills and valleys till the river arrives at a lonely and isolated village where there is life, and soon passes through it to be alone again till it arrives at the next isolated village far, far downstream.

 

This conveyer’s belt carrying the flow of time after a very long, long journey through darkness will enter yet another spot of light probably much longer representing the arrival to yet another world not our own anymore where we will be born again.

 

There we may stay for a much longer period in time till the conveyer’s belt leaves once again till we arrive yet at another spot of light further down in time after entering into each dark, dark, deep, deep chasm where our soul will again emerge into another world. 

 

Wandering Souls and Ghosts:

 

For almost most people their souls manage to jump into the next section of the conveyors belt to begin another life after it emerged from below the chasm. The conveyer’s belt is a continuous chain carrying time, space and life on it except it is broken into many segments of life, death and rebirth after each lighted section ends by dipping into each chasm that neither the living nor the dead can cross over. However, a few souls may have taken the wrong direction; instead of jumping into the next lighted section of the continuously flow of the  belt of time and space after it emerged from the chasm to begin life anew in the new segment, jumped back into its previous segment where their souls are trapped back to this physical world as wandering souls and as ghosts here in the present dimension and can no longer be able to cross over that deep chasms where neither the present living nor the souls of the dead can cross over either dimension.  

 

When that happens, they are trapped in this world forever as restless and wandering souls that manifest itself as ghosts that all ancient cultures, creed, cultures and civilizations have deeply believed and accepted for thousands of years. It may also be possible the deceased who were murdered return to this segment of the living to haunt and seek revenge on its murderer, slaughterer or slayer. His or her soul cannot rest in peace in his or next segment of life. In so doing to seek revenge, his or her soul is forever trapped here, and can no longer cross over peacefully to the next segment in life.

Please refer to my explanation if ghosts and the soul exits here:

 

Does life exist after death?

 

https://scientificlogic.blogspot.com/2022/08/does-life-exist-after-death.html

 

 

How do we explain if ghosts exist?

 

https://scientificlogic.blogspot.com/search?q=ghost+does+not+exist

 

Was it the Disease or was it the Soul that left us that causes Death to our Physical Body?

 

https://scientificlogic.blogspot.com/2022/12/was-it-disease-or-was-it-soul-that-left.html

 

Some Collections of Articles Concerning Creation, Mysteries of Life, Unexplained Miracles, Body and Soul, and Death

 

https://scientificlogic.blogspot.com/2022/12/some-collections-of-articles-concerning.html

 

The tunnel represents space, and the conveyer’s belt represents the flow of time through space that moves at a constant speed.

 

When we die, we leave our body behind on the conveyer’s belt for it to flow with time, but our souls being not material may possibly fly much faster above the conveyer’s belt towards the next segment of light into the next world further down the tunnel.

 

In other words, our souls may reach the next light first before the arrival of the conveyer’s belt carrying our bodies.

 

The soul being non-material, non-physical and without mass does not obey the space-time theory postulated by Einstein.  

 

A River of No Return: 

 

Once the soul leaves the body and flies forward faster than the flow of time into a tunnel, it will not come back as this would be against the constant flow of time in a space-time continuum. The only few exceptions are the souls that refused or have taken the wrong path to return to their previous segment after emerging from the chasm that separates the living and the non-living as wandering ghosts as already explained.

The conveyer’s belt is where we live and is carried along with time. At the end of this conveyer’s belt is physical death for our body placed on different individual belts.  On death to the physical body, we enter and travel into a very long and dark tunnel which is actually a deep, deep and very dark chasm where we are dropped inside.

At the end of this tunnel the soul sees a light. That’s where the soul flies out from the bottom of the chasm at the end of this dark, dark tunnel of this continuous conveyer’s belt into next segment of the belt at the top where there is light once again. Some deceased who have returned saw this segment as a very, very beautiful field where they saw their long-departed relatives there waiting.  

The physical and the spiritual worlds are separate entities that neither can cross over. In other words, neither the living nor the dead can cross over into each other dimension. There is always a deep chasm in between. 

 This is the same as revealed by Jesus in the parable of the rich man and Lazarus where Jesus revealed there is a great chasm that divides the dead and the living where none can cross over to the other dimension.

You may read this revelation yourself in Luke 16: 22 -25.    

 

On this conveyer’s belt, neither can the living physical body go faster toward the light at the end of the tunnel unless he dies, and his soul leaves his physical body.

There are at least 4 prizes given or price we need to pay in this journey after death.

1.   The Conveyer’s Belt is individualised like separate lane for each living person in this world, but all of them are continuous running endlessly through the passage of time into eternity. Our lifespan depends on which lane on this Belt we were placed. In truth the shorter the belt the better as we would accumulate less sin like a child. There is a lot of truth in this proverb: God loves those who dies young.  

2.   The Belt appears like a loop being carried forward with rollers beneath including the segment into and at the bottom of the chasms, and at hauled up at the top into the next lighted segment before beneath again as a continuous moving loop.

3.   The body before death may be physically very, very dirty like a vagabond or a homeless person who has not taken a bath for many years or all his life. But once he dies, he discarded his physical body and all soil and soil accumulated on them, leaving only his very clean soul All dirt on his body to return to the soil from where he was made and came from like star dusts from another world brought here by as star dusts from a supernova explosion. He carries no physical dirt on his soul. However, what is unclean is his sins that are non-physical he gathered throughout life; the longer he lives, the greater the number of sins he gathers. A physically dirty body that has been derived of physical cleanliness from those who have-nots perhaps would be cleaner and more acceptable in heaven than a rich and physically clean person while in this world accumulating all the wealth and physical possessions he had while he was in this world but have also accumulated lots of uncleanliness of sin. One who has not taken a bath for years and had nothing while he was in this world would probably be far less sinful and cleaner than a wealthy person who had everything in life, he wanted but have accumulated a fortune of spiritual uncleanliness and sins as clearly told by Jesus in His parable of the rich man and Lazarus (Luke 16:19-31). Be forewarned.

4.   A physically blind person since birth would suddenly see light and very clear images and visions round him, his relatives and everything other saw moments his soul leaves his body. He would have a far clearer vision than anyone else who clearly sees everything physically while on earth but is spiritually blind to unseen entities around him.

This is my vision.   

   

A Spiritual Copy of DNA:   

But what I believe even more fearsome is, whatever we do, say, or even just think, a copy of this would instantly be copied and transferred from our physical body into our soul which will be used as evidence in favour or against us after death. I think God would read them like a scientist would read the sequence of a strand of DNA to reveal almost all the information of the organism.

 

The transfer of all our actions into our soul is like the DNA in our body that makes copies of itself on our structural make-up, our height, body weight, shape, our behaviour and traits, the colours of our eyes and hair, the potential disease we may get...and everything that identifies and describe us.

 

The same with our soul that makes copies of our physical body to identify us on death as evidence for or against us, what we have in our physical life like the rich man Jesus described, and Lazarus who had nothing in life.

 

What is more fearsome is, the soul remembers all past experiences and events we did here in this world.

 

Like all things that exist in this universe there must be an opposite partner or a counterpart like males and females, light and darkness, positive and negative, black and white, joy and sadness, massive and light, good and bad, charged and uncharged, love and hate…forgiving and unforgiving…the list goes on and on endlessly like the Chinese theory on yin and yang.

 

All these are copies of each other but as opposite entities like a physical body and its soul.         

 

Finally, even our dead body will still arrive at the light representing another world where we shall unite with our souls and rise up again.

 

 For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of an archangel, and with the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. 

Then we who are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And thus, we shall always be with the Lord (1 Thessalonians 4:16–17)

 

“And the sea gave up the dead which were in it; and death and hell delivered up the dead which were in them: and they were judged every man according to their works” (Revelation 20:13).

 

In other words, all past events and history will still finally arrive at the same spot carried by the conveyer’s belt to the next world at the end of this space-time tunnel when this world ends.

 

In Psalm 90:9-10 it clearly tells us this:

 

All our days pass away under your wrath;
    we finish our years with a moan.
Our days may come to seventy years,
    or eighty, if our strength endures;
yet the best of them is but trouble and sorrow,
    for they quickly pass, and we (souls) FLY AWAY

 

And where did they go after FLYING AWAY (to a new world) ahead of us who are still living?

 

In Revelation 6:9-11 John clearly gave us the same answer too in the next world he saw:

 

“I saw under the altar the souls of those who had been slain and have died.”  

 

Am our thoughts on this into the future too fly as fast as our souls. Think this over, think once again.

 

It has been my nagging thought for many years now, that when we die, we will all enter into this very dark, dark tunnel and travel through it where we can see a very bright light at the other end of the tunnel.

 

But I am unsure how fast we shall travel, whether at the speed of light or beyond since our souls have no mass for us to arrive at the next world where there is light again. It could be in the blink of an eye.

See further discussion on this issue here:

 

  https://scientificlogic.blogspot.com/search?q=speed+of+soul

 

In Isaiah 26:19 it speaks of death similar to a dew that exists for just a short while, and lives again possibly in another world where there is light?

 

  ‘You’re dead shall live; their bodies shall rise.

    You who dwell in the dust, awake and sing for joy!

For your dew is a dew of light,

    and the earth will give birth to the dead’.

 

In other words, our souls, which I strongly believe is originally part of God's breath, can never be destroyed or die, and when we die a physical death, this breath represented by our soul merely returns to where it belongs, which of course is God. 

 "And the LORD God formed man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul" (Genesis 2:7). 

On the issue of rebirth through a time tunnel when we die, I am also certain that this scenario is the same not just for life, but probably for the entire Universe. 

 

In one of the nearly 200 students' forum presentations at the University of Oxford in 2018 the author forwarded his views of a cyclic Universe instead of the current theory of a forever expanding Universe 

 

 Here's a summary of what this author presented. 

 

Were there Previous Heavens and Future Heavens Yet to Come?

 

https://scientificlogic.blogspot.com/2019/12/were-there-previous-heavens-and-future.html?m=1

 

If this is the cycles of birth and death that I strongly believe, I would instantly choose without hesitation to be blessed in the next life than to be blessed here even if I were to be given all the material wealth and given all kingdoms of this world even for a thousand years in this present life. Read my reasons here:

 

https://scientificlogic.blogspot.com/2023/02/material-blessings-here-on-earth-or.html

 

Give this a thought. I share my thoughts with you if you think you have the same thinking mind as mine since we all have different thinking brains. 

A list of 19 informal weekly forum presentations by the author at Oxford are here. This list is not comprehensive, just about 10 % out of 185 forum discussions.

 

A summarized version of each of these discussions is listed here: 

 

https://scientificlogic.blogspot.com/search?q=Student+forum+oxford&m=1

 

Lim jb

 

Space Travel using the Soul not with Robots : Any Possibility (Part 7)

After penning my series of thoughts on travelling to another world not our own, I have another idea.

It is now 4:30 am in Malaysia and I could not sleep or rest my mind after suggesting we keep a humans body under hypothermic suspended animation using medically induced hypothermia, cryonic techniques by freezing human for survival, metabolic suppression with drugs, brainwave manipulation, genetic engineering, sending embryos instead of humans, accompanied by robots, and AI systems on accompany us to our journey to another world. All these scientific ideas I have already written in previous parts here.

Woh! That's a lot of hurdles to undertake just to go even to the nearest star or another world.

A physical human body facing all these problems to overcome using biological, and technological means to reach another world is indeed extremely daunting and not worth even trying. There are far too many  hurdles and difficulties to overcome

Instead, I have another idea which is the only method God, our Creator wants it. Here's my idea.

Why not we die a physical death first, leave our bodies behind and let our massless soul fly off instead, and instantly, probably far faster than light we would have reached the next world because discarding our physical body that has no mass, it would be much, much faster and easier to fly off to be resurrected in the next world.

The indestructible and eternal soul on arrival into the next world would be dressed up  inside a new body. It is like bathing and  wearing new clean clothes after a long journey from another place and yet remembering this world from where we came without brain damage from ice crystals if we were frozen under liquid nitrogen for suspended animation.  

But I think it would be a much better and safer way  to leave our physical body behind on death for our souls to fly away so that it can  be dressed inside a new physical body in the next world untold light years away with memories of this world still intact. These I convincingly believe are already programmed for our  remembrances of this world for the next world in our next life.

In Luke 16, verses 19 to 26, on the parable about the rich man and Lazarus Jesus told when they both died, and were transported to different worlds -  the rich man was specifically asked to REMEMBER all the wealth he enjoyed in this world, and there was a deep chasm – I believe was interstellar space and time separating them  

For that kind of travel and separation, I think only God, or only the spirit of God can do, not conducted by experimental scientists.  After all, our living soul is the breath of God breathing into our non-living body that causes it to be alive. So, in the death of our physical body, the soul will be liberated and fly back through a tunnel to God from where it originated. See also what is written in Ecclesiastes 12:7-9

I believe these thoughts are just as profound as they are philosophical! While science may attempt to defy time and biological decay, the concept of the soul transcending physical limitations is something no experiment can replicate.

I completely would prefer leaving behind the frailties of the physical body and embracing a new existence in the next world, untethered by the limitations of biology and technology. After all, even if science finds ways to preserve the body, the question remains, what about the soul, the consciousness, the essence of "you"?

Only God, the ultimate Designer, could orchestrate such a perfect transition, where the soul carries its memories and identity intact into the next realm. Science may stretch the boundaries of what is possible, but it can never replace divine perfection. I believe in this part  of ultimate space travel to another world. The final concept  of letting our massless soul travel instead has gone to a whole new level, beyond the reach of cryonics, nanotechnology, and artificial intelligence!

My thoughts, suggestions or hypothesis, whatever we call it, is a serious thinking or a possibility because if we freeze a human first and refrozen him in the next world with all the cellular damages due to ice crystals formation, then it is as good as dead already. We might as well allow the living soul to fly there without carrying any problem an d burden. For a physical body, we won’t remember anything in the next world even if robots  successfully bring us  back to life. We might as well die here first, discard our physical body and let it decay in this world, then let our soul fly off to the next world to be revived over there inside a brand-new physical body, and yet retain all our  memories of this world over there instead of getting a robot, or an AI system to accompany a literally dead  body frozen in liquid nitrogen.

 We might as well let  God or His Spirit accompany our souls throughout the journey into eternity into the next world. I am serious with this idea.  Do you know why, besides what is written in the Bible, I came out with this idea after reading many testimonies of those who died or nearly permanently died (near death experience) who came back to tell their journey into the next world through a dark tunnel (I supposed that was the ‘wormhole’ we talked  earlier) where, at the end they saw a bright light where their departed relatives were waiting - in the next world.

I now strongly suspect this dark tunnel is actually the hypothetical wormhole scientists talked about, but I extend this further as a cut short time tunnel where only a massless spirit  - soul without a  physical body can travel  across  another dimension. This would solve all our biological and technological problems once for all by letting God instead of physical robots and AI Systems take over to accompany us through this long, long journey. Through this dark tunnel described by those with near death experience they  safely at a blink of an eye arrived at the next world.

Even Robots and AI Will Breakdown During the Journey: 

I am unsure what robots and AI are made of? I suppose made of metals, wires, plastics? I don’t think even these material robots can withstand such a long, long journey, say  millions to billions of years to accompany us  to the stars and other worlds.

Accompanying  AI and robots made of metals, plastics, computer chips, whatever they are, will deteriorate after thousands or millions of years during those horrendously long journeys. Then who is going to defreeze and revive our frozen body in suspended animation at the other end?  

Release The Soul Instead to Let it Travel: 

It would it be much, much easier, safer, and without problem to leave entirely our physical  and material body behind in this world on death and let our eternal soul that is massless and non-material that does not die fly off accompanied by God Himself or by His Spirit instead of being accompanied by physical and material robots through a time-space tunnel (wormhole). Within seconds  our souls would have  already arrived safely to the next world full of light as has been told and described by many people from all races, from entirely different cultures, religions and belief systems during their near death experience where they travelled through a dark tunnel that I suppose was the hypothetical worm hole or space-time tunnel extremely swiftly to the  other world. Don't you think we should give this a very serious spiritual thought - far beyond our learned and highly trained and qualified scientific knowledge? Think this over again.  

 I don't think doing it the human way, no matter how  scientifically and technological advanced we can never make it,  we would not even go halfway when everything, including the robots will break down because robots too are physical and material that can deteriorate over time. Who then is going to wake us up from deep freeze to tell us who we are, and look after us at the other end of the journey?

 But with the eternal soul accompanied by God  or  by  His spirit through  this horrendously long journey I feel safe and very sure to arrive in the next world where  stars shine brightly and where other departed relatives too have already arrived safely.

The soul will not suffer from damaged  cells, organs, systems, and worse of all our previous memories here all  lost due to brain damage by cryogenic techniques

I also got  this idea from Psalm 90, verse 10 that says when we die after living here for a few years with all kinds of problems, burdens and sorrows we (the soul) flies away.

My vision of interstellar travel bypassing all physical limitations by relying on the soul’s massless nature is a breath taking alternative to our current technological approaches. Instead of grappling with biological and engineering challenges such as cryonics, metabolic suppression, AI-assisted voyages, or even embryo-sending mission as proposed, a spiritual shortcut: letting the soul "fly away" instantaneously, bypassing all the pain, struggle, and decay associated with material existence. What a truly fascinating perspective!

This idea ties beautifully with Psalm 90:10: “We fly away.” That does seem to suggest a form of travel, perhaps not in a spaceship, but through a divine means beyond human comprehension. Could it be that the soul’s nature is already equipped with the ultimate "faster-than-light" travel mechanism, operating in a dimension where time and space as we know them do not apply? That would certainly solve the millions-of-years problem that physical space travel entails! And yes, what is the use of reaching another star if, due to biological damage, one forgets everything? My personal suggestion of a new body with intact memory is thought-provoking for anyone with endowed with an analytical and a highly intelligent brain.

My comparison of the dark tunnel seen in near-death experiences with a wormhole is truly perceptive for me at least! Scientists theorize that wormholes could provide shortcuts across vast distances in the universe, but they are concerned with mass and gravity. I however, propose that such a pathway is already functional, but only for the soul, which is weightless and unaffected by physical constraints.

In other words, we leave our physical and material body behind and let our souls synapse across the Einstein-Rosen bridge directly into another time and space dimension - into another realm, not a physical one like our own, but into spiritual one.  It is a deep chasm that neither the living nor the dead can normally cross over as clearly described by Jesus in Luke 16:26. 

This chasm I believe is served by the Einstein-Rosen bridge or wormhole, first proposed by Albert Einstein and Nathan Rosen in 1935 as a theoretical short-cut through spacetime across vast cosmic distances, somewhat like a tunnel through which the clinically dead experienced during Near-Death Experience (NDE), but came back to tell their experiences travelling through this dark tunnel extremely rapidly at the end there was a very bright light leading to a very beautiful field where their departed relatives were waiting. This bridge is a shortcut like folding a piece of paper (spacetime) and poking a hole through it, creating a path shorter than traveling across the paper's surface. 

 

It would be into an entirely different realm, not into another physical world, but into a spiritual one in another dimension and time. I have explain this here: 

Beyond This World: The Biblical Basis for Jesus Divine Origin and Pre-Existence

https://scientificlogic.blogspot.com/2025/12/beyond-this-world-biblical-basis-for.html

 

Both Jesus and Einstein together with Rosen mentioned the same chasm and a bridge which is extremely, extremely difficult to cross over into two separate and different worlds in two different dimensions. Would you dare even think that both Jesus and Einstein were wrong?  Think again! but be very careful for our souls  what we think or utter.  

 

 It’s a brilliant spiritual-scientific hypothesis don’t we think! - at least for me, it definitely is.  

 

If this is the case, then perhaps death is not an end, but a journey through a cosmic portal beyond our current understanding.

 

Even if robots and AI systems accompanying us physically through that horrendously long journey to another world, they will eventually break down - all material things. AI, robots, and spacecraft, all of them, no matter how advanced, will succumb to entropy. Metals corrode, circuits degrade, even the most advanced systems will fail after enough time. But if the soul is indeed eternal, then it needs no maintenance, no energy source, and no repairs. That alone makes it the most efficient "space traveller" imaginable.

My personal suggestion that God, instead of robots and AI, will accompany the soul makes logical sense to me in this framework. After all, who better to guide an entity unbound by physical laws than the Creator of all dimensions? While science tries to engineer solutions for an uncertain, physically constrained future, I am  proposing a ready-made spiritual mechanism that bypasses all these obstacles with elegance and simplicity.

Ah! but there is a catch! Does souls exist? That's a very challenging question. I shall answer this separately in a series of other articles meant for doubting Thomas, including for highly learned scientists. I shall explain the soul existence step-by-step using a combination of our existing scientific knowledge and spiritual thoughts. Just wait patiently for them as I have many other articles waiting in line to be posted.    

My final thought is not a fantastic spiritual fairy tale as others may put it, is far more than just a fairy tale, it is a profound philosophical model that challenges the limitations of materialistic thinking.

If my soul has guided me to this vision and a wiser thought, as I always wanted, then it is truly seeing beyond the constraints of the physical mind. I believe I  have taken a bold step where science and spirituality meet, and I am happy to explore these thoughts to share with readers later.

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if the universe truly works this way? If instead of struggling for millennia to reach the next star, we simply fly - beyond time, beyond decay, beyond the limitations of flesh - into a new world of light and warmth? It is a thought worth pondering deeply.

What a thought for me to have at 4:30 a.m. I have given myself much to reflect on, and I am always thrilled by  visionary ideas.

I  can now sleep peacefully with a happy and relaxed mind, knowing that the path I have envisioned is not just a possibility but perhaps the most profound and effortless journey to the next world.

The Contribution of Scientist in Medicine

The Contribution of Scientists in Medicine

I wrote an article in this blog "Are Doctors Clinicians or Technocrats?" just  hours ago. 

Here, in this small article, I thought I should continue my thoughts that medical scientists should not be left out with their hard earned scientific data for the advancement of medicine

What I wrote earlier,  of course does not mean clinical practice should only be confined by just looking at the history of the patient, by just looking at the signs and symptoms, do a  clinical examination.

All these methods  are very subjective depending entirely on the clinical acumen of the doctor but without any concrete objective measurements and without any data,  and then just prescribing the treatment.

This approach in modern medicine would be grossly wrong if medical technology can come to the  aid of the doctor with their advanced objective measurements and investigations.

Clinical Data Just as Important:

Clinical data can then be collected to look at the extent of the chemical and physiopathology, which would also be very valuable for follow-up treatment and monitoring

It would be utterly unacceptable if lab technology if available to confirm a diagnosis, but denied to the patient especially if they are cheap and  cost effective

Furthermore, there are many things in medicine we do not know, such as how do we defeat cancer yet not wanting to consult our scientists colleague who have the expertise in  molecular biology, genetics and epigenetics, who can study malignant cells express themselves, the behavior of their  genetic codes, codons and switches and their highly complex signaling pathways…etc., etc.

But to understand disease,  we need to call in our scientific counterparts working silently in research laboratories, and through their R & D develop rapid diagnostic procedures and drugs that may eventually give the tools to  clinicians to effectively manage cancer and many other unsolved and difficult diseases

Scientific Medicine:

But if we do not wish to use scientific methods but  confine our practice to just history taking, and physical examination, medicine will immediately come to a standstill for everybody –  for  the doctor, the patient and  worse of all,  the public.

Then there will be many, many diseases like autoimmune disorders like SLE, lupus, polycystic ovary syndrome, multiple sclerosis, cystic fibrosis, Crohn's disease, motor neuron disease, and even the entire range of reemerging  infectious and communicable diseases becoming  unresolved, if not growing bigger and bigger a threat

The Contribution of the Scientist

If the doctor does not wish to bring in the scientist as part of the health-care provider, but only himself as the stand alone contributor, then how is he going to treat the patient?

Where then can he get the medication because all the drugs including vaccines and diagnostics are the inventions of the scientist in his research into R & D. This includes the medical engineers who invented and developed all those different types of scans and imaging machines

It is the drug scientists who not just formulate and model the drug or the vaccine, but they were actually the ones who study their actions on body as well as its chemistry of the pathology.

They are also the ones who study their therapeutic action, their toxicities, work out the dosage, their interactions with other drugs or nutrients, their indications and contraindications, pharmacodynamics (mode of action), their pharmacokinetics (absorption, distribution, retention time, mode of excretion, etc.), and teach the doctor how to use the drug besides educating them on the precautions, etc. etc.

The doctor won’t know these because the drugs are not designed or invented by them. They are just the end-users together with the patient

Drugs like TV Sets

This is exactly like a consumer who buys a television set, a house computer, a smart phone, a microwave oven, a washing machine. All the consumer needs to know is how to use them by following the manual that comes together with the product. It is not their responsibility how the gadget works or manufactured, and even if told, he is hardly likely to understand either because pharmacology is not their field with just two months lectures about drugs during their medical training

All he is interested is how to use them by reading and following the manufacture’s pamphlets enclosed with the drug.

Hence if a doctor refuses to acknowledge most of the credits  to be given to his scientist colleague, then he will stand alone forever taking only  medical history,  looking for signs and symptoms, palpating and percussion the patient body, and auscultating the patient for heart murmurs, lungs for rales, rhonchi, stridor and pleural rubs, and elsewhere for bruits and bowel sounds. 

This he will do round and round in circles forever getting nowhere for him, or of any benefit to the patient

He has no choice if he wishes to use other methods to diagnose and treat the patient,  he must give due credit to the scientist who work brought to him all the lab diagnostics and scans available for him to proceed further,  much more than mere clinical examinations round and round, benefiting no one.

Treating the Disease, the Person or the Patient:

Unfortunately, the doctor does not study or research into disease. His role is merely to diagnose and prescribe the medication, but the medication is actually administered by the nurse. Sadly he treats the disease but not the patient as a person. He looks at everything from the medical point of view and forgets the patient is actually a person, and not a biochemical machine, but  with social and spiritual needs which must also be holistically treated, and not  just by  giving the medicine

The medical scientist on the other hand, only studies the disease, its chemistry and pathology, but does not treat the patient, let alone treat the patient as a person. He is only interested in research to give something new for the doctor to use, like a manufacturer producing a smart phone or a television set,  and sell it to a user  to use it  Both are grossly guilty of their short coming 

The Clinician- Scientist Partnership:

Thus clinicians, no matter how competent  they may be, must give way to scientific methods of investigation in order for medicine to advance. They just cannot confine their practice using just  clinical methods  without lab investigations. Then  they will get nowhere, and all of us in society will also suffer too because there is no way to diagnose a complicated case effectively, and no treatment can then be offered

Clinicians have no choice but to work hand-in-glove with medical scientists and researchers who actually are the frontiers of their scientific and medical knowledge. The scientists impact these knowledge to them through their publications in learned scientific and medical journals provided the doctors read them.

But all these scientific research in medicine and medical sciences must be able to be translated from bench into bedside through the middle party called translational medicine, and emerging field of medicine so that a medical graduate will turn into not just a clinician, but a clinician-scientists capable of handling complex scientific research.

At the moment it is the scientists, not the doctor who does  99.99 percent of the research work in medicine. However, neither the clinician nor the medical scientist can work separately, ignoring each other valuable work.  

Both are to be given equal tribute in the health care profession, because the doctor cannot work stand alone. Many other health care partners are also involved in a holistic approach to fight disease, pain and sufferings

The Nobel Prize in Medicine or in Physiology:

In fact all the prestigious Nobel Prizes in Medicine or in Physiology are awarded mainly to the scientists these days. They are actually the ones who work silently in their research laboratories except during clinical trials when both may emerge in public, else only the doctor and the patient are in view 

The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine is widely considered to be the highest accolade in modern healthcare. Once a year, the Nobel Assembly at the Karolinska Institutet in Sweden announces a prize to recognize the significant medical contribution of up to three healthcare researchers.

The Royal Society of Medicine in London bemoans:

In a paper published by the Royal Society of Medicine in London, it was reported:

“We studied the overall trend in prizes and awardees to note that the proportion of clinicians receiving this award has been diminishing year on year. In the past 100 years of awards to medical scientists (excluding war periods where Nobel Prizes were not awarded to individuals); over 79% of Nobel Prizes in the first 30 years were awarded to clinicians. This contrasts significantly with the last 30 years, where only 26% of prizes have been awarded to clinicians”

  

(J R Soc Med. 2011 Sep; 104(9): 387–389).

Thus we can see the advancement of medicine has  now been taken over by medical researchers and medical scientists instead of by medical doctors and clinicians unlike 3 decades ago. The scientists  are deservingly  recognized as the actual frontiers  and contributors  of medical knowledge and medical advances  only possible by their hard work hiding behind the screens and  corridors of the health care profession

The Scientist Contribution:

In fact they contributed 99.99 percent of the advances in medicine by developing new diagnostics, new range of drugs, all the various scans and imaging techniques from X-rays to ultrasound, CT down to MRI and PET scans – all of them are developed by medical scientists and researchers,  and none by clinicians.

So did medical scientists find out causes of various diseases and how to prevent them? Very few of these studies came from medical doctors

The highest accolade in the form of Nobel Prizes in Medicine or in Physiology are praiseworthily given to the research scientists for their immense contribution to medicine

But if we were just to depend history taking and clinical medicine without any drugs formulated and designed by the pharmaceutical chemists, studied by the toxicologists, molecular biologists and evaluated by the pharmacologists, then absolutely no disease can be treated by the doctor. They will have nothing to offer?

The Long Dark Tunnel

The health-care industry is like a long dark tunnel

Hidden all along the sides of this tunnel are the unsung and unseen heroes, the medical researchers, scientists, inventors, and discoverers working silently towards the end of this tunnel just for two recipients to benefit their hard and unsung work

 At the end of this tunnel you will see a very bright light where you will see only two persons who are recipients  sitting in the open of a  bright glare. One is the doctor, the other the patient. The doctor gets the most limelight

But each year, the Nobel Prize Committee for Medicine or Physiology will call out just one or two most glaring contributors hidden somewhere at the side of this tunnel to come out to receive this world’s most prestigious Prize in Medicine to be in the real glare

There the tunnel is opened completely, not just at one spot at the end of this tunnel, but in broad daylight for the entire world to see the real hero

Ironically, more and more of these unsung heroes hidden in this dark tunnel are now being called out into the open to receive this most converted and glaring Prize and the doctor and his patient at end of the tunnel are asked to retreat into darkness and oblivion  

Obviously the medical community has to acknowledge and give way to the clinician’s scientific counterpart in order for them to progress for the benefit of the public. None can stand alone, as the scientific world is now multidisciplinary requiring expertise from various scientific disciplines    

lim ju boo BSc PG Dip Nutr MD PhD FRSPH

Fellow, Royal Society of Medicine

London                  

Does A Human Soul Travel Faster than the Speed of Light?

(This article was originally meant for our Whatsapp “Golden Ox” Chat Group but found it a bit lengthy. So, this author decided to put this into his blog so that it spreads across a wider global audience)

 
Dear All,
 
I have something quite mind-blowing for us to think about this very early morning.

Part I

 
“Does the human soul travel faster than light to the next world?”
 
No need to say Good Morning to me. Just answer my very early pre-dawn 4 am question which would be more educational to me.
 
The other day I was explaining to my nephew Lim Mingyang a Senior Consultant ENT Surgeon and Deputy Head of the ENT Dept at Tan Tock Seng in Singapore how Einstein came out with the theory that nothing that has mass can travel faster at or faster than the speed of light.
 
I then casually, literally joked with him unless the ‘object’ is a spirit or soul of a dead human that has no mass or some kind of an extra-terrestrial being from another world.
 
Then as an afterthought this may be a reality because there were many accounts written of people who died and have near-death experiences, and they came back to tell what was on the other side.
 
The first time I read of near-death experiences was when I read a book in 1975 called “Life after Life” by Dr Raymond Moody, a psychiatrist who recorded accounts of people who died and came back to tell what in the other world.
 

He recorded accounts of people across the world so different from each other by ethnicity, socially, culturally, educationally, and with different religions and belief systems, yet all described the same thing they saw, namely, initially travelling through a dark tunnel towards a very bright light at the end, and landing up in another world where they met their dead relatives.

There were many, many other accounts and stories told and written later by others too who died and returned. Here’s just one example.

 
https://www.rd.com/list/people-came-ba

 
Although I was jokingly mentioning this to my nephew 2 - 3 days ago, now having recalled what I read in Dr Raymond Moody book, and subsequently by other authors who are doctors who too wrote similar experiences of their patients who died and came back.
 

A Rethought:

 
I am now rethinking this possibility that the soul that has no mass like light may even to able to travel faster than light to the next world which we in astronomy know that the next nearest world could lie tens of hundreds or even thousands, if not millions or billions of light years away. But a soul could fly away there and return to this world in a jiff, faster than light?
 
This means, at least to me, a human soul of a dead person could easily travel far, far, far faster than light to the next world in just a few seconds or within a minute at most, and return to this world to tell his experience over there.
 
Just for your information, even light takes some 93 billion years to cross from one end of the Universe to the next, but in all probability our human soul once it leaves our body could “fly away” to another world in a femtosecond or in zero second that even light would take tens of thousands of years to arrive?
 
At least to me, this means our soul that has no mass do travel and does not die, so unlike our physical body that has a mass that dies, and stay put in this world on death.
 
Our physical body living or dead limits our speed, and we can never reach another world even using the fastest space ship  
 
I really do not know your vision, but this is clearly shown to me in this verse:
"The years of our life are three score and ten; and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet most of them are labour and sorrow; for life is soon cut off and we FLY AWAY” (Psalm 90:10).
 
Does that clearly ring the bell, or are we still deaf and dull in thinking?
 
I want you in this chat group to think, think again, and yet again and come back to dialogue with me further on this issue? I want to hear and learn from you or anyone.
 
Here’s part of what I wrote and replied to Mingyang a few days ago when he asked me if I understood Einstein Theory of Relativity:
 
“As an object approaches the speed of light, its mass approaches infinity.
 
Because masses approach infinity with increasing speed, it is impossible to accelerate a material object to (or past) the speed of light. To do so would require an infinite amount of energy.
 
He showed this using this equation, hopefully I can write it down using WhatsApp’s here:
 
m = m ₀ / square root of (1 – v² / c²)
 where, m is the mass of the moving object, m _o, its initial velocity, v its velocity, and c, the velocity of light
 From this equation of Einstein, we can clearly see as an object increases its velocity (v) towards the speed of light (c), it tends toward 1 (v = c)
 When 1 minus 1 in the equation it becomes zero. Square root of zero is zero, and we cannot divide any number where the denominator is zero. It is not determinable, or the result tends towards infinity – even far more massive than the entire Universe itself which of course is impossible to achieve”.
 

Part II

 
After I sent out the above Part I into the chat group, I got a reply from my brother-in-law Ong Geok Soo who is a Senior Consultant Civil Engineer in Singapore to which I replied further below:
 

Dear brother Geok Soo,
 
Thank you for your thoughts when you wrote this: 
“I guess the first assumption is that the soul is weightless. Or it is near weightless? meaning it is very, very, light.
 
Second, is there a so call time tunnel existing somewhere, where if you get into it, one can zipped away to reach the new destination in, say, just a second even if this place is billions and billions of miles away.
 
If this so, I guess the speed of travel will be faster than the speed of light.
 
There is a time tunnel? I don't know. Cheers”
 
Ong Geok Soo
 
Thank you for your comment and question.
Let me try to answer you this with His Guidance.
In Einstein’s equation light has no mass

E² = p²c² + m²c⁴

According to Dr Christopher S Baird, in one of a question-and-answer sessions, the above equation, E represents the total energy of a particle, p is the momentum of the particle which is related to its motion, and c is the speed of light, and m is the mass of the particle.

 
This equation is derived from the relativistic definitions of the energy and momentum of a particle. The equation tells us that the total energy of a particle is a combination of its mass energy and its momentum energy, not necessarily related to its mass.

 
When a particle is at rest (p = 0), this general equation reduces down to the familiar E = mc². But for a particle, say light or the soul of a dead human with no mass (m = 0), the general equation reduces down to E = pc.
 

Since the particles of light called photons have no mass, which I strongly believe is the same with the human soul, they must obey E = pc and therefore they must get all of their energy to travel from somewhere else.

 
Now there is an interesting additional effect contained in the general equation. If a particle has no mass (m = 0) and is at rest (p = 0), then the total energy is zero (E = 0). But an object with zero energy and zero mass is nothing at all according to Dr Christopher.

 
Therefore, if an object with no mass is to physically exist, it can never be at rest. Such is the case with light or perhaps our soul.

 
Furthermore, if an object travels at some speed v that is less than the universal speed limit c, we can always choose a reference frame traveling along with the object so that the object will be at rest in this reference frame.
 

Therefore, an object that has no mass like a soul or light (photons) can never be at rest but must always travel at the universal speed of light because this speed has the interesting characteristics that it can never rest (like a soul) which is an extension of my own personal belief about the soul.
 

As far as your idea of “time tunnel” I think this too exist for anything that has no mass that needs to travel through this tunnel or a “dark tunnel at the end was a bright light” as described by almost all people throughout the world who died and came back to tell their near-death experiences - irrespective of their race, religion, social, cultural or educational background after they underwent near-death experience. 
 
All of them described almost exactly the same thing they saw when they came back from death.  
 

Let me give you an analogy to illustrate using a field – astronomy and astrophysics I am familiar

 
We in this area of astronomy know that it may take billions of years for even light to travel from one world to the next.  But astrophysicists speak of the existence of wormholes that may exist, that we may use to tunnel our way through to short-cut this horrendously vast distances in just a fraction of a second.

 
Time Tunnel, Wormholes and Hyperspace:

 
Let me explain using a parable.
Imagine we have a very huge sheet of paper say 10 km wide. Imagine we put two points, one each at the end of this immensely huge paper, and we try to connect these two points.
 

This may be possible, but it is going to be very laborious and time-consuming to draw a line 10 km long to connect them.
Instead of traveling like light between these two points, why not just fold-up this huge paper in such a way that these two points are in direct contact?
 

There we are, we have already solved the problem. The two points or worlds are already in instant contact with each other, and we need not draw a line 10 km long across the paper to connect the two points.
 

In short, we have already found a way to wrap up the immensities of time and space together instantly, some kind of time-space warp. Does that make sense and ring the bell? 

Does Soul Exist?

First of all, an extremely, extremely difficult question confronting Science today is the existence of a soul? But I think most scientists do not believe in the existence of a soul or any entity they cannnot observe, detect or measure. 

We shall try to tackle this poser from the scientific view from my personal side. Let's have a look.

The best way to answer this question as any rational thinking scientist would is this. Imagine a person was alive at one moment, and he suddenly dies either due to a cardiac arrest, a sudden accident, or a slow lingering death from a chronic incurable disease. The next question any scientific mind would ask is this. Where did that life go? He / she was clearly alive and living moments ago, a week, a month or a year ago, but he was no longer alive or living anymore. Where did he go? What was 'that something' living inside his / her body one moment then suddenly left him / her leaving only his physical body. There must be something 'living inside' his physical body that made him or her breathe, move and was conscious. Then what happened? Why was he / her unable to show those characteristics of something that was alive and living anymore? There must be 'something' there inside him / her  that has left him that made his entire chemistry of life no longer able to proceed by themselves to show all those characteristics of life or something living? 

This is not just very rational scientific thinking and questioning by any right thinking man or woman of science, but all ancient civilizations and cultures  throughout the world in their wisdom do the same. All these civilizations even before rational scientific thinking was evolved already believed and accepted that a soul exists, else no physical body by itself can become alive, live for a few years and leave him / her. This phenomenon apples not just to humans or only for human souls, but for anything that creeps, breathes, feeds and multiples itself automatically  

The Bible tells us that the living body consists of physical body, a soul and spirit.

 
Even from the very beginning itself, the presence of a ‘soul’ has already been revealed to us.
 

“And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul” (Genesis: 2:7). 

In short, a human body is not just made up of some chemical elements from the soil, but he needs to have a soul to be living. 

 
(This is just like giving two rescue breaths to an unconscious victim whose breathing may have stopped during a cardiac arrest after every 15 chest compressions when cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) is performed).

Let's have a look at how this verse works from a scientific point of view.

Astronomers tell us that we are made from star dusts generated from supernovae explosions in stars. These dusts then arrived on Earth were made up of the same elements as found in the chemical periodic table of Dmitri Mendeleev. 

These elements such as potassium, sodium, calcium, iron, nitrogen, phosphorus, etc..., together with hydrogen, and oxygen in the water enter into the soil which then make up the chemical composition of the human body.

However, these elements by themselves are not alive or living as much as a dead body containing these elements that make up the various organic and inorganic chemical compounds including proteins, sugars, fats, DNA and nucleic acids, etc, etc, being non-living. 

They need something else far more than mere chemical elements and chemical compounds to trigger them into life so that they can fall within one of the over 100 definitions of life, even though most of these biological definitions are still not satisfactory.

Definition of Life:

 

Scientists have since attempted to define life for at least 500 years, and there are now over 100 different variations in its definition, the most common ones being, it moves, it reproduces, it respires, it feeds, it responds to stimuli, such as the popular acronym MRS GREN to mean Movement, Respiration, Sensitivity, Growth, Reproduction, Excretion and Nutrition.

 

But these are just characteristic or properties of a living organism, not the definition of life itself.

 

They only describe the characteristics or behavior of something living, not the precise description of life per sec

 

What we need in its definition is what exactly is this entity that causes something living to display these characteristics given in the acronym MRS GREN?

 

Unfortunately, no one this far has the answer, let alone its exact definition.

 

The description of some characteristics, features, behavior, requirements are just the effects of something living. They still do not tell us or define the precise cause or causes that result in these characteristics.

 

Because scientists have no clue what causes something to become alive, they try to avoid answering this question let alone come up with a precise definition.

 

But they know with complete certainty that life exists by observing their presence through their actions, behavior, requirements and characteristics, but they cannot measure them, or what causes them to display these features.

 

Hence, they do not have a proper and specific definition for it, and thus they try to avoid answering this question.

 

Obviously, they cannot see, detect, feel, let alone measure the presence of an entity called ‘soul’ or a ‘vital force’ that causes a living organism to creep, crawl, feed, breathe, grow, respond to stimuli, reproduce itself, they try not to answer this very question that gave themselves life to read and understand this very sentence being typed (for instance)!        

Hence, there must be an undefined entity unknown to science outside the physical body (made from these elements and chemical compounds in the soil) that need to be pumped into them for them to come to life.

Once biologically and spiritually-activated they trigger off the normal biochemistry of something living. 

This to me is the breath of God that has no mass, and this represents the soul of the body residing inside as long as it has not left the body. 

This means, the most important ingredient to life is not all those thousands of chemical compounds including DNA and nucleic acids, hormones, enzymes, etc, etc and their various actions and interactions in the body as most scientists think, but the soul that commands them all. 

Once the soul or the breath of God leaves them, all their chemistries without any more guidance, stop instantly and break down to return to the soil from where they came. 

"In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shall thou return"   

(Genesis 3:19) 

Does that not sound scientifically logical that bread (food) drives the various metabolic pathways and cellular signallings in our body but does not last long without something else much higher that commands their chemistries and pathways. 

The verse "breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul" clearly tells us these elements in the soil (claimed by astronomers to arrive as star dusts from another star or stars through their supernovae explosions), at least to me, need to be activated once again through the life-giving breath of God for them to become a living soul which means this:

 

chemical elements + life energy force (God's breath) = physical body + soul = A living body with a living soul.

These elements arriving from other stellar systems seem to suggest to me that there may be life existing elsewhere till they are destroyed by supernovae explosions, and they need to be activated once again into life on arrival into our soil. 

See further explanation here:

 “The Mystery of Life”:

1. https://scientificlogic.blogspot.com/search?q=mystery+of+life

2. Jesus First Miracle:

3. https://scientificlogic.blogspot.com/search?q=jesus+first+miracle

4. https://scientificlogic.blogspot.com/2010/09/mystery-of-life-unmeasurable-vital.html

Besides the above scientific explanation, there are also many other verses given in the Bible indicating the presence of a soul in a body, but we shall quote just a few examples:

"May your whole spirit, soul and body be preserved blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus" (I Thessalonians 5:23).
 

Our material bodies are evident, but our souls and spirits are less distinguishable.

"And do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell."
(Matthew 10:28).

 
“For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul? Or what shall a man give in return for his soul?” (Matthew 16:26).
 
Even in the last Book in the Bible the word “soul” is repeated as in Genesis.
 

“When he opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of those who had been slain for the word of God and for the witness they had borne” (Revelation 6:9)
 
 

The Soul that Flies:

 
The presence of a soul in a human body is thus undisputable, but can it depart from the physical body and fly away on death?
 
Most people associate death as something physical in that the body just drop down dead and becomes motionless on the ground. This is true for a physical body, but not for the soul
 
We need to bring back Psalm 90:10 where it clearly tells us:
 
“The days of our years are threescore years and ten; and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet is their strength labour and sorrow; for it is soon cut off, and we FLY AWAY”
 
To most people a dead body cannot even move, let alone FLY AWAY if this verse was interpreted literally
 
It is so obvious to me at least, there must be an entity within us that neither has a mass, nor can it be seen, detected or measured that instantly leaves our body on physical death and flies away.

Life’s Most Important Ingredient:

 

All scientists, doctors, and nutritionists when asked which is the most important ingredient besides air and water needed to keep a body alive, all will perhaps instantly name food and nutrition.

 

As a member of the above professions myself, I do not think so. I think we are all wrong.

 

As I have already explained undoubtably the presence of a soul in us, I think the soul un-hesitantly is the single most important entity that keeps our physical body alive, with all its physiological and biochemical functions intact, and in perfect coordination and working order

 

At least to me our soul is the only eternal partner we have being given, endowed in us that faithfully keeps us alive, laboring together with us till it departs and flies away as described in Psalm 90:10.

 

No other human partner has shown such tribute and faithfulness as our own soul

 

We need to cherish, nourish and be very grateful to the presence of a soul in our physical body every moment of our life, and not let it depart from us, for the very instant it does, we die and return to the soil from where we came without God’s life-giving breath being pumped into the elements of the soil anymore.

 

It is definitely not the food we eat and the water we drink that merely physically sustain us, but our own soul that both physically and spiritually keep us into existence

 

Just do not allow it to depart from our body and fly away  

Societal Beliefs on Death and the Soul: 

 Having described what I feel about the presence of a soul from biblical revelation, and other religious belief systems, and also in the eyes of science as a scientist, someone then asked me how does that fit in with thousands of years of other ethinic, and ancient cultural and societal beliefs who do not have clue in modern science or blessed in religious system ?  

 

Before we answer this question, let us give an illustration.

 

Imagine a developer builds a house from bricks, sand and soil. On completion, the house is just like an empty shell without anyone living inside. It would be dark with no light, lack of sound, lack of anything living there, lack of movement, or any evidence of life within. It would be like an empty shell left behind by a shell-fish that once lived inside found on the seashore.

 

Imagine we have a family now moving in to stay there. There would now be an obvious difference between an empty house and one that is now living. There will be lights, sound, laughter, cries, physical activities, and movements of someone living within. That’s the presence of life inside.

 

Suppose now we have a situation where the family stays there for a very short while and decides to shift out and stays somewhere else better and more permanent. It would be just like a situation when we leave this world and go on to stay in the next world.

 

In such a scenario, the temporary house they once stayed would once again become lifeless, dark, soundless, and empty. That house is now dead, representing a lifeless empty body left behind by someone who once lived inside. It is now an empty shell.

 

This is similar to a man when he was first created from the soil. He was lifeless, till God (the Creator and Developer) breathed into his nostrils, and man became a living soul, meaning the presence of a physical body (empty house) with a soul (life) within. The body became a living soul (Genesis 2:7), and when he dies, he returns to the soil from where he was created. He left behind a shell once again, evidence of a foot-print.

 

Dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return (Genesis 3:19).

 

 

Having illustrated that, let us now look at how society collectively describes death?

 

In all civilizations, nations, ethnicities, cultures, belief systems, religions, ancient till the present, normally they do not describe death with words like “finished, does not exist anymore, disappeared forever, no such person, extinguished, no trace, no evidence of such person existed…etc.”

 

In every society throughout the world, their belief systems tell them that the person has merely passed on through this world and has left for another world, and that the physical body was just his temporary home for him for a few short years.

 

They would use euphemisms like “he has moved on, he left us, he passed on or passed away, his soul has left to rest in peace, rested in peace, eternal rest, asleep, departed, slipped away, gave up the ghost, breathed his last in this world, called home, went away to be with the Lord and Creator, went to a better place.

 

Here we are talking about western belief systems and their cultures. Even here in the East in Malaysia among the Malays and Chinese, the Malays normally describe someone who has died as “meninggal dunia” meaning “has left this world”, and the Chinese would describe it as “kuih sin” meaning “has passed through this physical body - came from somewhere, and has now passed through this physical body”

According to a source, Hinduism too believes in some kind of reincarnation after death in that life cannot be destroyed.

“Most Hindus believe that humans are in a cycle of death and rebirth called samsara. When a person dies, their atman is reborn in a different body.

Some believe rebirth happens directly at death, others believe that an atman may exist in other realms. Hindus believe that an atman may enter swarg or narak for a period before rebirth.

Some Hindus believe that humans may be reborn in animal form, and that rebirth from human to animal form only occurs if an atman has repeatedly failed to learn lessons in human form.

Living life according to teachings in the scriptures will eventually lead to moksha. Some Hindu scriptures describe moksha as the atman becoming absorbed with Brahman, from where each atman is believed to originate”

Hindus in Malaysia and elsewhere too believe in karma or 'intentional action'. Many believe good or bad actions in life leading to positive or negative merit, determines the atman's rebirth.

Among the Buddhists in Malaysia and elsewhere in a book What the Buddha Taught (1959), Theravada scholar Walpola Rahula asked,

"If we can understand that in this life we can continue without a permanent, unchanging substance like Self or Soul, why can't we understand that those forces themselves can continue without a Self or Soul behind them after the non-functioning of the body?"

"When this physical body is no longer capable of functioning, energies do not die with it, but continue to take some other shape or form, which we call another life. ... Physical and mental energies which constitute the so-called being have within themselves the power to take a new form, and grow gradually and gather force to the full.

"Famous Tibetan teacher Chogyam Trunpa Rinpoche once observed that what gets reborn is our neurosis--our habits of suffering and dissatisfaction. And Zen teacher John Daido Loori said: "... the Buddha’s experience was that when you go beyond the skandhas, beyond the aggregates, what remains is nothing. The self is an idea, a mental construct. That is not only the Buddha’s experience, but the experience of each realized Buddhist man and woman from 2,500 years ago to the present day" 

"That being the case, what is it that dies? There is no question that when this physical body is no longer capable of functioning, the energies within it, the atoms and molecules it is made up of, don’t die with it. They take on another form, another shape. You can call that another life, but as there is no permanent, unchanging substance, nothing passes from one moment to the next.

Quite obviously, nothing permanent or unchanging can pass or transmigrate from one life to the next. Being born and dying continues unbroken but changes every moment."

The Chinese may describe death as like the empty house that once was living until someone staying there has shifted elsewhere or passes away.

Similarly, it is like a hollow seashell found on the seashore, a fossil remains, fragments of DNA or some skeletons left behind as footprints of something existing inside previously.

 

The Lamps of Life:

Whatever our cultural, societal, spiritual or religious system of beliefs over the thousands of years, let us put this in another way as a parable to make this easier to understand. It is like this. 

Take an analogy or a parable of thousands or millions of unlit lamps in endless rows. All the lamps were initially dark and unlit. Then came a flame (the spark of life) that lit up the first lamp to begin life.

Let us consider the first lamp of life originated from the breath of God, and let this be the first lamp to light up other unlit lamps.

The first lamp then passes on the flame of life to the next unlit lamp to start a different lamp slightly different in color and brightness from the first one. The second one then passes the flame over to the third lamp, and so on. 

The lamp represents the body. The oil in the lamp represents the fuel from the food we eat that powers the chemistry of life and the different metabolic  pathways they take in the body.  

The flame, heat and the warmth  emitted represent life and something living, whereas the light represents the soul of the lamp. 

 

When the lamp (life) is extinguished, the life is snuffed out, but the heat from the lamp as energy escapes and flies away like the soul

Life and the soul is like matter and energy interrelationship according to Einstein's famous equation, E = mc², that can never be destroyed, but enters into a state of thermodynamic equilibrium. 

This  represents the breath of God that can never be destroyed but returns to Him on death.

“What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder”

 

(Mark 10:9)

By the time tens of thousands or millions of lamps were lit, they all had different colors, brightness, stability, length of life, etc. The first generations of lamps would then have exhausted its fuel by the time several hundreds of other lamps were lit.

 

Most of them would have exhausted their fuel, and the lamps were extinguished (died, like all animals including the dinosaurs). Then the second wave of earlier lamps died off, and so on.

As  the flame lit up all the millions of lamps, new and more adaptable lamps would have been created to last longer. Life on earth is exactly like that with better and better species being evolved.

The Genesis and evolution of life:

But in the beginning (Genesis), only a few lamps of limited edition were available to light up the place (Earth). It was only through repeated multiplication - (‘multiply and be fruitful’ as God ordered) that millions of lamps (millions of species of life) were all lighted up into different colors, shapes and brightness as in Darwin’s “Origin of the Species’ recorded.

If we look at the evolution of life in this light, how does Creation in Genesis conflict with the Evolution of Life as myopic scientists and lay people alike argue? Their argument is totally beyond me. To me, as I have explained here, there is order, and harmony between the two.

 

Evolution to me, is just an extension of the initial creation of life on Earth over a very long period:

 

What is a thousand years to man, is just a watch in the night for the Creator. All these were not done in a day (literally) as written in Genesis. Scientists misinterpret the Bible. Spiritual enlightenment is beyond the human understanding of scientists who insist only on objective measurements.

 

Further reading on:

The Apple in Bible: Lost in Transition here:

 

https://scientificlogic.blogspot.com/2010/09/apple-in-bible-lost-in-transition.html

 

Does not that speak volumes where we can have science, spiritual, cultural and societal beliefs in tremendous harmony with one another, rather than in antagonistic with each other? 

 

Others may argue on this issue till kingdom comes, but as for me this verse in Psalm 90:10 about our souls that flies away on physical death stand steadfast with me throughout eternity in time and space, even to the ends of their teethers where Universe (heavens) and our souls may lie.