The Unaging Soul

The difference between the body and soul becomes a matter of actual experience as we advance in age. Our bodies call attention to themselves as their functions slow and problems manifest. The unity of the two structures weakens. This arises one fine day when we pass a mirror and the reflexive thought arises, “Who is that old man?”—and the question, for a nanosecond anyway, is quite sincere. Then comes the time when the unaging soul becomes quite aware of the fact that it is now in charge of a huge pet that’s getting very stumbly. Those who’ve owned an aging dogs and nursed it to its end will know what I’m talking about. As with dogs, so with our bodies. When they’re young they need to be restrained—and the exuberant messes they create need cleaning up—and so with bodies as they age. And in that process, gradually, there is a genuine, visceral sense of separation. The reaction will depend on temperament and situation. Poor old body—on the one hand. Damnation! I can’t do that any more!—on the other.

Some might argue that the soul ages as well, but I’d dispute that. That it doesn’t is quite obvious to those whose inner vigor has always been high, but I’ve also seen quite old, decrepit people suddenly come alive, laugh and joke like children, tell stories in excitement, their eyes suddenly full of light—when appropriately stimulated.

Identification with the body comes naturally in youth, persists in maturity, and then becomes virtually impossible in age. When that identification isn’t allowed to break, the price is depression or, minimally, grumpiness. These are the lessons of experience—rather than the derivations of some theory.  Indeed you can make use of the experience to judge various theories.

The theories are largely built by people in their youth and their maturity. When we get old they have less force; experience has come to rule. That we have unaging souls underlies belief in the afterlife. It is dismissed as the wishful thought of people who can’t go for gusto any more, but that is pure baloney. Death with total disappearance doesn’t phase a person of my age—nor, I’d venture to add, most people, especially those who suffer debilitating ailments. Hey. Let it stop. And if there isn’t anything thereafter, so what? What you don’t know can’t hurt you. The soul, however, isn’t all that sure that it will simply go out like a blown candle. Many people, indeed, hope it will. If it doesn’t, there is that uncertainty again that has plagued us all of our life.

But what has plagued us, all of our life, all arises from our physical dependencies, one way or another—our own and that of those we love and value: their bodies’ health, their children’s bodies’ health, their income, safety, on and on. What that unaging soul anticipates—beyond the body’s final pains—is the pain of separation from people we have loved and once more being reunited with people we haven’t seen for many decades now but who’re still there, we think, in the hereafter.