Afterlife: The Quantum Democracy

This all came as... a bit of surprise. Once you live an entire life: grow, get married, produce a lucrative career, see children, grandchildren, great grandchildren... Once you live an entire life as well as you can, you forget what it means to die, and the afterlife becomes more of an after-thought. So it came as a bit of a shock when my time came... and went. I remember I died, but then I didn't. I remember waking up just like after a wonderful sleep, but I was nothing. But I couldn't be nothing. Perhaps I just realized that I was... smaller.

As time, or whatever it was I used to call time, progressed, I learned that I was no long what I was before. I was still human, but in a very different capacity. I was part of something greater. As it turns out, when a person dies, they do not disappear, they only become smaller, to the size of a quantum, and participate in the community that is made up of all the atoms and quantums that made up your life. The human soul is really just billions of other lives who have died before. The collective emotional impulses, the sexual drives, the artistic inspirations... everything has happened before in the lives of others who lived and died in this world. All events are subject to collective agreement, from your career choice and choosing the person to marry, all the way to what you had for breakfast this morning, or even if you chose to have breakfast at all. The soul is a democracy on the subatomic level, and once you die you become like the community of souls that made up your life and what's better, you get to meet them. Each and every one of them.

I remember waking up after dying for the first time. Einstein was staring down at me, and he commented that I sleep too much. I rose and stared at him in amazement, and I realized I was surrounded by people who were long dead, but people I had admired and despised. Presidents, icons, popes, peacemakers, philosophers, artists, athletes... many of them quite famous and their works were well known to me. But those were only the ones I recognized. There were billions more, billions whom I had never seen, but who I would soon meet and begin life with. For what seemed like centuries after my waking I learned who these people were that made up my life, I laughed with them, cried with them, loved them, disagreed with them, plotted against them, made fun of them, flattered them, flirted with them, even married some of them... but in the end we all learned to live together. No one could die in this life, and no one was separated.

There was no lack of resources in this existence. Much to my amazement, whatever I wanted was provided for me. I had only to imagine something, and there it was. If I wanted to learn how to play the violin, one would magically appear before me, and a nearby person would immediately offer to give me lessons. If I wanted a stiff drink, a bar would materialize and as I entered I would be greeted with cheers of friends I had never known, along with the best scotch I have ever tasted. I openly wondered how this was all possible. Einstein tried to explain it to me once, something about living on the brink between matter and energy, where will and life are all that matters, but I soon stopped asking questions and just enjoyed my lot.

I had once asked Spinoza how it was that he came to be a part of my soul as opposed to anyone else's. "Surely there was someone else more worthy of such an intimate and grand possession?" I remarked. He laughed and answered, "My dear friend, it is not only you I am a part of and besides, I do not chose who to 'possess.' My body split into billions of pieces, infinite quantums that spread throughout the world and entered into the lives of many others. I am not only here, but also a part of your wife, a part of your children, and your great grandchildren. Just as they share a thread of your being, so they share a thread of mine. My voice and my influence may not be as large in their story as it is in yours, but that matters little. One day we will all come together to build a great city, and we will live in peace, together, as a part of god."

I loved this life after death that my companions showed me. I learned more about everything, everything that life could offer and I had such willing teachers. I even began to perfect my own story and its telling to others, as some small way of giving back. Then it happened that one day, there was a gathering like none before. It was a giant banquet, where all those who had formed my life and whom I had gotten to know so wonderfully well came together to feast. The light was brighter then, and a great table filled a giant hall. Everyone was there, and in the midst of the food and festivities I turned to a nearby companion and asked, "What is all this?"

"Its a celebration!" she exclaimed, "Someone is about to be born!"

I learned that it was now time for the community to come together once again, with me as the newest addition, to form a life. There was a joyous outcry as the light began brighter, and a great wind rushed through the room and with it, a baby's cry. So many laughed and cheered, and they're echos rang in my mind as the light grew to a blinding intensity, and then... the baby was born.

I now live as part of someone else. Our community continues to thrive, and while we are quarrelsome from time to time, we share an admirable peace. All the griefs and joys this child has are shared through each and every one of us in our own unique way. Its magnificent to see the spectrum of human emotion expressed through billions of quantum souls, one comforting another's sorrow, one celebrating another's happiness, one quelling another's wrath... And from time to time, the child encounters another community of souls, and in the sharing of life that they have, I encounter myself, a mirror quantum in another person's body. I'm told this happens from time to time, and that I should take advantage of the opportunity to interview my own experiences, but I find it is better to just sit, to be with myself and the others I have met, and to be present with this quantum life that is greater than any afterlife I could have ever imagined.