The Respirator (Repeat, by request)

Man is such a silly creature sometimes. You ever read about robots when you were in the flesh?

No. Why?

The most pressing subject about them was if they actually could have consciousness, awareness – a soul.

But these men deny that they themselves have such a thing.

Yes. Silly, isn’t it?

I don’t understand this existence. Why am I here like this? Will I always be this way?

No. You are still attached to your body somehow. As am I.

But look at us laying there in that ward, hooked up to machines that keep us breathing!

Yes. I am aware of that. I have an idea about it too.

Well, illuminate me!

I think we are sort of trapped here, just temporarily, until someone unhooks us from that respirator.

But that’s grotesque!

Yes. I know.

How long must we wait?

Do you feel anything? The passing of time? Hunger? Thirst? Heat? Cold?

No. It’s just been a few seconds or so. I feel alright. In fact, I have no more pain at all.

It is the same with me. And once I was pretty sick, until I fell into that coma.

So. Here we are.

Do you know how long it has been?

No. No idea.

It has been a couple of months since you ‘died.’

How do you know?

I watch them. The people who maintain our bodies for us. They come in shifts. More than that, there is the passing of the season, outside the window there.

But I know it has only been a few seconds!

That is another quality of our new existence. We are free from the passing of time, it seems.

What?

Think about it. No pain. No hunger. No sense of time passing. What else can we call it?

I don’t even understand how we can think, or see, or hear each other converse! We have nothing to do these things with. Our bodies are down there in that ward, and ‘we’ are up here, stuck somehow.

Well, you said you don’t believe in the Hereafter. That when we die, we cease to exist.

I am having doubts about that now.

Suppose it is still true. Suppose when they finally decide to turn you off, you cease your existence?

Right now, that is a horrid thought!

I know. Perhaps we are still in our bodies, but since we are locked out of their sensations, we think we exist up here, out of our bodies. And it will all end when they pull the plug.

You are not making any sense here! In fact, you are scaring me!

No. I am just going along with your idea that we are nothing when our bodies die.

But I know I am here! I know that even my brain is dead, and there is no way for me to go back to that body. Why would I want to? It is so badly damaged, that I could not live in it.

Well then, you don’t live in it anymore, do you? But you still exist. You still can sense things around you, having no eyes, no ears, and no voice, can’t you?

I am forced to admit to you that this is so. But it is impossible. It is not scientific. We should not exist this way!

I think you lack faith, my friend.

Faith? In what?

If nothing else, in what you are experiencing right now. You are right. It does not seem possible for us to exist this way. We have no body with which to experience anything. Our bodies, and even our brains, have ceased to function. Yet here we are.

But what are we?

We are that which continues to exist, once our bodies have died.

I can believe that much, at least, since obviously we are here. I just cannot explain it to myself.

Sorry. It is not a belief for you now. It is an experience. You know it to be true because you are here and can understand it. Faith is believing in something that cannot be seen or felt.

Cutting words now? Semantics?

No. What is it that you do believe in?

Whatever can be seen or felt. Whatever is physical, for that is all that exists. I was well trained in the Scientific Method. “That which is not real does not exist.”

Alright. Then prove your existence now.

I cannot! You are making me afraid! Stop it!

What are you afraid of? That there is more to our existence than our bodies? That when we die, we continue on?

But that would mean . . .

What?

That there is something that makes us this way. I am fearful of knowing about it. I hope they never unplug me from that respirator!

Even if they never unplug your body from it, don’t you think that old body of yours will someday die of old age? I know we don’t experience the passing of time like this, but you must understand. We are only here like this temporarily.

How is that possible?

Because we are not completely dead yet, are we? Our bodies continue to function.

So, what will happen then? Do you know?

I have faith in what will happen, but I cannot prove it, since obviously, I am stuck here like you are, and I cannot see beyond this place where we are.

What is it you believe will happen to us?

If we had died normally, we would have never had this conversation. We would not have met. You and I would have gone our own way, to the Creator.

(Scoffing)

There is no proof of that! Man is just an animal, and like all animals, they die. Thus it has always been. There is no Creator, you fool! There is only the Universe, and countless eons of time passing, in which we have all evolved. Everyone knows this.

So. Here we are then.

Alright! I cannot explain this part of it. Why should we be any different from other animals? Why should we continue to have consciousness after we die?

What makes you so sure that all animals do not continue on?

What? Dogs and cats? Preposterous!

Why? What evidence do you have that they do not continue on, as we ourselves do, right now?

There has never been any scientific proof of the soul, by anything measurable. I know that for a fact. When a body dies, life ceases to exist. That is true for all living things.

Yet, obviously, you now have your proof to the contrary, don’t you? Here you and I are, talking about our continued existence, after we have ‘died.’

(to be continued . . . in the response area below. Unless you are afraid . . .)

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