I AM A LIVING SELF...
I am much more than I seem to be. I am a living self. I am not just the sum total of flesh, bones, hair, teeth, muscles, blood. I am much, much more. I am not just a machine fed with food to keep it going. Nor am I just a storehouse for out-of-date information. I am not just a tool of nature to be used up and cast aside at long last. I am not just a dummy clothes rack. If I assume that I am just a "body," then my person would become large as I gained weight and small as I lost weight. I am much, much more than I seem to be.
There is something different about me. I am a living self. I am not like a plant, for a plant has no known consciousness; it cannot think as I can. I am not like an animal of the field, for animals do not use words as I do, nor do they shape sounds, nor do they have a written language. Animals show no real progress through centuries of their lives. Animals do not and cannot build fires to warm themselves. Animals usually do not have an opposable thumb enabling them to take hold of things. Animals do not make or use tools as I do. I have spiritual development. I live in a world of values. I search for goodness and truth. No plant does that, no animal does that. Weigh me just before I die; weigh me just after I die. My weight before and after remains unchanged, but there is something different about me alive and dead.
I dream. There is a succession of mental images and thoughts I experience while my body lies motionless in sleep. Something within me is alive and active and moving while my physical eyes are closed. Something within me is seeing, hearing, and sharing life while the fleshy part of me is unconscious. What is it about me that has dreams? To say that I am not a living self, a continuing self, is to leave dreams unaccounted for. I am a living self.
I remember. The material body cannot remember. No part of my flesh existed three months ago. The chemical elements that make up my body are all of the disappearing kind that always need to be renewed. Face, hair, arms, legs --- all is but a current of molecules, a ceaselessly renewing substance. how can memory continue in a changing object? There must be something in me other than physical, something that carries memory's millions of impressions, all clearly preserved. I may select or evoke what I want from memory. This I could never do if memory had changing brain matter for its substance. Memory is there because the living self maintains itself through all the body's changes. The self has deep continuity of being. Its object is the body. And to say that I am not a living self is to leave memory unaccounted for. I can dream, I can remember. I am a living self.
I think. It has been said that "thought is a secretion of the brain." I consider, however, that my body is a mass of known chemicals, and chemical masses cannot think! But I do think. Indeed, I have the ability to compare and to judge. The process of making comparisons and giving judgments may not sensibly be pointed out as the work of something whose essence is material. I examine things and ideas. I measure weight and distance. I reason and seek to come to logical conclusion. There come to me ideas of honor, goodness, beauty, truth. Yet none of these ideas have size, color, shape, weight. Ideas of honor, goodness, beauty, truth --- these are spiritual. I may know them all only with my living self.
Consider truth. Truth is not motion in matter, for then truth would be apt to change every three months with the changes going on in my body. My consciousness has a unity which mere matter, or matter in motion, can never explain. The cynic will say that the self is in part dependent on the brain, but to be dependent upon something does not mean to be identical with it. My brain may be the seat of thought, but it is not the source of thought. My thoughts are related to my brain, but they are not initiated by it. I like to read, but I must do all my reading with one eye because the sight of the other eye has been so affected as to be useless to me. But my almost useless eye is not identical with me. The totally blind person is utterly right saying, "I am so glad to see you!" The blind man does see, but not with his eyes; he sees with his living self. I too am a living self. I am much, much more than I seem to be. There is something different about me. I dream, I remember, I think.
So then I hold to the conviction that no matter what happens my real self will always be left. Do what you want with me; I remain. Be brutal and try to destroy me. Cut off my hands, my arms, my legs. Yes, pluck out my eyes, cut off my tongue --- still I am left. Yes, kill my body, kill the whole material part of me --- my real self will always be left. No surgeon's knife can reach the real me. My body is just the temporary house I live in. When I am ill, I have a temporary housing problem. My flesh is subject to time and to decay, but I am not. Death means the disintegration of something into its parts. My body may die; it has parts. But I am a living self, and my self cannot die because it is not composed of parts. You cannot bury my real person. I am a spiritual being, I am a living self.
This deep conviction that I am a living self keeps me sane. It sharpens my understanding. It gears my life toward forever. My living self is the image of God in me, and the Eternal will not destroy this his image. I will not be reduced to nothing. I will live forever. So it is in this direction that my life is geared. You see, it is hard for me to think of myself as being dead. It is difficult for me to imagine my real self as being out of existence forever and completely. Try even for a moment to think of yourself as being dead, and see for yourself how difficult it is. I can only think of my self as being alive forever more. I am a living self.
But what of time, what of now? Now I live in the womb of time, only now. My mother's body held me before I was born, readying me not for continued life in my mother's body, but for life in this world. Now I live in the womb of time. Now I am being nurtured by the limitations of this world. Now I am being made ready for another birth, which some falsely call "death." I shall move out of the womb of time some day --- I know not when. But this I do know, I am a living self and shall forever be a living self.
Charles H. Schmitz; "Windows Toward God"
The last statement by Mr. Schmitz mentioned above is quite true. But what is the real truth? We will live forever... to that there is no doubt... but where we spend eternity is the real important question. Will you spend it in Heaven with God... or will you spend it forever seperated from Him? The choice is yours... choose wisely. You may even be confused about your choice much like Thomas was when Jesus pointed the way to him.
"Don't be troubled. You trust God, now trust in me.
There are many rooms in my Father's home, and I am going to prepare a place for you. If this were not so,
I would tell you plainly.
When everything is ready, I will come and get you, so that you will always be with me where I am.
And you know where I am going and how to get there."
"No, we don't know, Lord," Thomas said. "We haven't any idea where you are going, so how can we know the way?"
Jesus told him, "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one can come to the Father except through me.
John 14:1- 6 NLT
