Science of the mind
A life built on logic and analysis relies, to a great degree, on an adherent’s mind functioning in a context. And, for the most part, that context doesn’t change much over time. The mind changes, instead.
With reading, discourse, analysis and reflection comes a new internal and external worldview that perhaps offers a little more peace, until the mind can no longer read, discuss, analyze and reflect.
Fading in
My first memory is from when I was 18 months old. Few people believe me, but my mother confirms my recollection. I was toddling down a hallway in a boarding house in Wildwood New Jersey, holding her hand. Consciousness faded in and out. I don’t know what happened just before and don’t really remember much else until going to kindergarten, just before I was five years old.
Fading out
A close friend recently lost his wife to the ongoing effects of Alzheimer’s disease. Her decline was fast — less than two years. My friend is a writer and very good with words.
He painfully and beautifully described an experience with his wife, within three or four months of her passing where, when he looked into her eyes, she looked back at him as if he was a stranger. The woman with whom he had spent 50 years was gone before she was gone.
He remarked of that feeling of an older woman’s soft, loose skin wrapping around the bones of her hand. Knuckles evident. Tendons strung. Geometry, evidence of genetics taken and given.
Her pulse could be felt in the web between her thumb and index finger. Every breath moved her whole body and, therefore, her hand. Fuel was at a premium.
He said he could “feel the machinery”. Her soul was gone, but the body had months of work ahead of it.
That place where the machinery operates is a holy place. Millions of holy places fade in and fade out every day.
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