There is no Death

...There is the Force.

We've all heard that a million times, eh? But something got my mind back on that topic and seeing it in a slightly different light. That something was the movie Solaris. Don't worry, I won't give away plot points.

My point in posting this is that the movie made me rethink that line of the Code. If there is no death, what is life? The only answer I can come up with is that life is everything, be it in this human form, some animal, or the spirit that lets go of the body after what we call death.

So we must always be moving on, from one form of life to another. There is no "real" and "unreal". No "life" and "afterlife". It all just flows, like a river taking bends in many directions, but is still always a river. And who knows what is floating in that river with us? What is the source of the water? What ocean does that river flow out to? We are here, in this life, this existence, but what makes it real? (please no Matrix references) For all I know I could be "dead" and living in some reality that I am creating with my mind. Is there even a difference?

I know this is all just metaphorical rhetoric, but I suppose if you want to understand why I wrote this, watch the movie.

Love that film. Which version?

I didn't know there was more than one version, so I can't really answer that question. :dry:

Streen wrote: I didn't know there was more than one version, so I can't really answer that question. :dry:

If it looked "new" then it's the latest one (the other two versions were in the 60s and 70s).

Funnily enough, the author of the original story doesn't really like the movie adaptations. He says they focus on human sexual relationships at the expense of his main idea (that is: it's likely that humans would ultimately fail to communicate with an ET). Quote:

This is why the book was entitled "Solaris" and not "Love in Outer Space"

:laugh:

While I have not read the book, nor watched the movie, I understand what you are saying. It is very similar to my own beliefs, and has shaped my personal ability to deal with death and the perception of loss. It's pleasent to know that others have similar views.

There is no Death there is the Force.

The earth is a living breathing organism. Outside of the spiritual sense of things its obvious that your body is borrowed from the earth. In time it must be returned. So upon death you dont go to a place where dead things are you go to a place of life. There is no Death there is only the Force is an observation of this. It may be OUR code but its not a law of the universe. Its just how we understand death. :lol:

The simplest metaphor I've yet to contemplate for my perception of the nature of life and death:

Take a blanket (the universe... the force)

Grab one small area of it

Twist it up into a thin "focused" cone protruding out of the blanket (one human, animal, plant, or other life)

After a while, let go of it and let it relax again (death)

The part you grabbed is still there. It's just not focused into a single point anymore. The whole time, what you were grabbing was the blanket. You would be more thoroughly correct to call it "grabbing the blanket" than only saying "creating a twisted cone", because the cone is simply the shape of that part of the blanket. In the same way, each entity of "life" for us is the universe focusing itself into different shapes out of its whole fabric. Its nature, however, is that of constant change (its always moving, always "happening"), so eventually, that focal point of energy leaves that area, relaxes back into the whole of the fabric, and the energy that created that focal point is re-distributed to other parts of it, to create other focal points of energy in other areas of the fabric. Each focal point of energy is created out of a combination of energies from other parts of the fabric (the force). But the whole time, all everything is, is simply the blanket (the Force). "There is no death, there is the Force" in this case, is saying "You do not end, you simply blend back into the fabric of the universe."

That is a very apt explanation, Proteus It's funny in a way, because we tend to think 2-dimensionally, so the blanket metaphor works well for our limited brains. When I try to take it a step further in the 3-dimensional world, my brain does a backflip because I can't mentally pull matter out of "nothingness", like the cone from the blanket. Which, for me, brings another dimension into play.

I know most scientists say that that Time is the 4th dimension. That may be true, but what is the dimension from which "we" are pulled? Maybe it's Time. Throughout the timeline we do "pull up" and then "flatten out" again. Of course, one may ask, is there a 5th dimension that we return to after we flatten out?

I have a headache now. :ohmy:

EDIT: I just noticed that my current signature is actually relevant to this conversation

Well actually even if there is another dimension that doesn't mean we've came from it... because dimensions are not places... mathematically speaking... we - thinking we are from a 3d world- are part of more... yet we can't see or move in them... but we are still in all of them, because if the world is 4d or more, a 3d objects can not exist in it... like that we don't have a 2d object in our 3d world.. not sure if that makes sense to you.