Life after Life

In previous posts, we have noted that consciousness is a matter of recursive symbol processing in the brain. One of the most important symbols will be the one named I; moreover, as Hofstadter puts it, "your brain is inhabited to varying extents by other I's, other souls" (Hofstadter, 2007, p 248). The more faithfully your own consciousness represents and resonates with that of another soul, another I, the more affinity you are likey to share with that other soul.

And an affinity of souls means that the people concerned can rapidly come to know each other's essences, have great potential to live inside each other. (250)

So, what becomes of a soul after the physical body has died? For myself, that remains to be seen, but at minimum, the soul lives on within the consciousness of every other soul it has inhabited, or as Hofstadter puts it:

When the sun is eclipsed, there remains a corona surrounding it, a circumferential glow. When someone dies, they leave a glowing corona behind them, an afterglow in the souls of those who were close to them. (258)

Their myth--the story that gives so much meaning to the souls that they inhabit--lives on.