“And I saw the dead, small and great, standing before God, and books were opened. And another book was opened, which is the Book of Life. And the dead were judged according to their works, by the things that were written in the books.” (Revelation 20:12)
Consciousness, or the awareness of what is happening to us—our thoughts, impressions, reflections on our experiences, are stored up in our memory. What is immortal in us has to do with our memory. When we leave this lifetime, we shall take with us the memory of our existence here on earth. It will be painful for us to recollect the bad, wicked and evil things we did. Nevertheless, it will happen, otherwise there is not meaning in the warning from God, Bible and Church of the “dread Day of Judgment.” Nothing can be done about it. Those deeds and words which harmed cannot be taken back. We may ask for forgiveness, and may it be that those whom we injured forgive us; nevertheless, the shame remains. Dante in his remarkable writing, Divine Comedy, speaks of two rivers that souls pass through on their way to Paradise: One washes away all memory of the evil, sinful acts on earth, the other restores the memory of whatever good we had done. To become a true person, however, is to take ownership of every action and thought that contributed to make us who we are. Human freedom can do nothing to erase the past. We are what we were, and what we shall become. To face this truth is frightening, but it defines our humanity. God is limited only in this way: All sin is foreign to Him. To have sinned is to have forsaken the Holy Lord. Adam and Eve had tried the alternative, and even today it remains just as foolish. Denial. Refusal to acknowledge that we had freely sinned. We can blame it on somebody else that tempted us, be it another person or the Devil. We can even do as our ancestral parents, and blame God, isolation, and self-delusion. We ask the same eternal question put by St. Paul: “O wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? I thank God—through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, with the mind I myself serve the law of God, but with the flesh the law of sin.” (Romans 7:25).
Immortality has to do with consciousness. Rather than to imagine that some part of our consciousness will be eliminated, it’s the contrary. Here we are only partly conscious. We sleep, we daydream, and we allow our imagination and fantasy to take us from the boredom, fright, and confusions of our present realities. Some use drugs, narcotics, and alcohol to do the same. There on the other side of death we shall have an intensity of consciousness. Free of the needs of the body, we shall be able to realize so much more than we do now. Unburdened of the limits of space and time, we will see and know everything. I think that those without any hope of eternal life are less concerned with the preparation for life everlasting, and because of that are free to live as they please, indulging themselves in the ways of the flesh without any remorse, shame, or guilt. Walt Whitman wrote:
“I think I could turn and live like the animals, they are so placid and self-contain’d,
I stand and look at them long and long.
They do not sweat and whine about their condition.
They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins,
They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God” (Song of Myself)
It’s basic hedonism as found in ancient Greek pagans like Diogenes, the 60’s Hippie philosophy, and the contemporary Playboy spirit, rampant in the world that terms itself post-Christian.
When we strive for immortality, we aren’t thinking of some part of ourselves to survive death—our soul, our memory, or some ideal part of who we are. We are integral creatures. We are body, soul, and spirit. As the fathers put it, a soul without a body is a phantom. A body without a soul is a corpse. A person alive on earth or in God’s Kingdom is a whole integral being. The corpse will not be reunited with the soul, but God will give us a new body; otherwise, how can the saints in heaven be recognized? Here is another great mystery.