1. Eyes Wide Closed

 

1. Eyes Wide Closed

 

Question) What do you call a person who goes to cross a road, but in the middle of the road he stops to look at the cars driving by- thinking about how one day he is going to drive a nice car too. And he looks at the children and the women on the other side of the road, thinking how he wants to have a family- but he misses the cars heading towards him – and SPLAT!

 

Answer) a fool!

Why is he a fool? Because in the process of thinking and planning about his future- for events which may or may not happen (the car he wants to buy, the family he wants to have)- he stops thinking about what is definitely happening in the present (the cars speeding towards him!)

 

How many people think like this fool in life? They make plans for their future- for events that may or may not happen- but neglect preparing for that single most definite event!

So you see them preparing and planning for their education, their jobs, their careers, their children and their families,  but with no guarantees that they will be successful in their plans. They have no guarantee that all the events that they plan for – their jobs, their promotion, their careers, their graduation from university, their children, that perfect partner to settle down with- will even come to pass!

And while they get lost in all of this, they fail to plan for the most definite event in life-that single event that will be guaranteed to happen- DEATH!

Yes, it’s coming towards you like that car in the road!

But unlike that car in the road you don’t know what speed it’s hurtling towards you at!

When will you get hit by death?

Do you think you can afford to wait a while?

Do you think you have time before it hits you?

 

Now imagine that the car on that road is an invisible car speeding towards you- you don’t know when it will hit you!

Do you think you will have time to jump out the way before it hits you?

How many people have made plans for the future only to have death hit them before they realised their plans?

This is the reality of our lives- living without knowing when death will strike.

Only a fool stands in that road ignoring that carriage of death speeding towards him!

 

So how do you prepare for it? 

I don’t mean the funeral arrangements- the physical side of death. I mean the soul, the spirit (whatever you want to call it)- the non-physical part of your existence. 

Some people will even doubt the spiritual side to themselves- saying that it is all just a physical existence in this universe- that there are no non-tangible entities. But there are differences between the living and dead and if it were just a physical process then why can't we just produce the smallest living entity from non-living material? What is this magical secret of life that we cannot harness? Clearly there is a difference between something living and dead which is not just physical- otherwise you would not be able to read this and consciously scroll down the screen or turn over the page- you would just be a set of eyes  staring blindly at the page. What directs you to turn over the page? It isn't something physical because we can’t measure it. It is your free will connected to your life.

Likewise the thoughts in your head are non-physical but also exist. That voice in your head that you hear echoing these words that you read are not physical entities that can be observed. Sure there are electrical impulses in your physical brain’s neural networks as you read but that is different to the understanding that you have in your mind of these words. The difference between you and a computer! A computer can be programmed to have electricity running through its circuits in order to perform certain functions like scanning a piece of text and playing it out loud. But a computer will not appreciate the meaning of those words. The meaning of those words that you understand that can evoke different feelings within you as you read them causing you to pause or choke, to cry or to laugh!

So- back to the point: how will you be ready for death?

 Only if you could know what happens after death!

But who knows what happens when death collides with us? What can tell us what happens when we die? No one has ever come back from the dead to explain it.

But there is another way of knowing. And it can’t be through guesswork- you have to be sure! You only get one chance to prepare yourself-so you have to be certain!

There is one way of being certain…and I’ll give you a clue:

What is death? Is it not just the end of your life? So shouldn’t you be asking:

“What gave me life?”

“Is there a creator of this universe that gave life to all that is within it?”

“If there is a creator that created life, wouldn’t it also know the secrets of what happens after life?”

“How would I be able to even know if this creator has communicated these answers to us anyway?”

These questions will all be explored in the following chapters laying down a methodology to provide certainty.

So where do we start? We could  talk about the nature of the human and analyse him and ask what makes the psychology of a child different to an adult. We could talk about the difference between man and animal and how the gift of the mind has allowed the human to become the master of his environment whilst the animal will die out if it doesn’t adapt.

This journey will be one that  any human can undertake- from first principles of thinking that a person with any religion or no religion can apply in order to understand the truth about why we exist.

 Everything starts with thinking