There is much to think about, here. I am struck by two things. First, that there must always be the counterforce, that without it there is no harmony. This challenges us to consider that if harmony is missing we must search for the missing counterforce to the situation or relationship. I like the elemental simplicity of that.
“Anything that exists will return… to dust.”
Second, this notion of adding the phrase “to dust”. Why stop there? Here are some examples I can think of that expand upon this line of thinking:
- If anything is missing, it will return or once again become known.
- Anything that exists will return, to exist once more.
- If something other than dust existed, and then becomes dust once more, then it is inevitable that it must also once again become something other than dust. You can’t have one state of equilibrium without the necessity of the other.
- If a person exists, eventually they won’t. But if they don’t exist, eventually they will. In other words, there are counterforces to both existence and non-existance. Otherwise, there is no harmony.
- If a person exists (from one frame of reference) and then doesn’t exist, then what is it that lies in the middle?
Finally, upon re-reading I find myself wondering how to more inclusively define the ‘eternal soul’. This phrase can mean many things. For example, we can find much in literature and religion that discusses the eternal, ranging from soaring poetic verses that speak of the intertwining of lovers to the eternal nature of consciousness.
In science and in everyday life, we struggle with the concept of the eternal with the ideas suggesting there is no beginning and no end, with the absence of an Alpha and Omega. I tend to tie this struggle into the fifth point I made above: that if we assume no beginning and no end, then what is it that lies in the middle? I propose that it is consciousness.
Consciousness seems to me to be the binding between the Nothingness and the Everything. Consciousness is the center. Consciousness is the center.
