Spirits and computers
The Other Side
By Hill Cox

Last time I mentioned a "spiritual" look at life and it occurred to me that some sort of definition is in order.

A quick look at a dictionary describes "spirit" as the source or "…force animating the body." I doubt I could put it more directly in as few words.

We are like a computer with an operating system that tends to work in the background. A computer does nothing without programs being added to it and they in turn do nothing without input in some form. Like a computer, our body would remain in a coma-like state without a spirit to manipulate input from our sensing of the world around us. We even have short-term and long-term memory like a computer. There are many similarities between the machine and the human but I'll leave the computer behind for now.

Directly speaking, my definition of "spirit" is that it is consciousness in the form of electromagnetic energy experiencing life in slow motion in the physical world. It's more complicated than that of course, but that's about six hours of class time in a few words.

The lessons from this are fairly simple. If we are conscious energy as I suggest, then we can never die because the science of thermo dynamics declares that energy does not die, it only changes form. And if our "spirit" is our operating system, we don't become a spirit -we are already one.

Another comparison would be that of a scuba diver who dons a wet suit and other gear to experience life beneath the sea. On surfacing, the gear the diver wears is a hindrance that is discarded as we do with our body when we move on to a different type of existence.

The only things new about these ideas are the comparisons. The ancients discovered these concepts long ago. They used stories and plays to describe "spirit" some of which were borrowed by organizations looking for converts to their view of what life was all about.

But similar stories are still there to a certain extent - wearing new clothes - and next time I'll look at how television and the movies deal with "spirit" and spirits.

Hill Cox is a member in good standing of The Spiritualists National Union of England. He has taught classes in Toronto and Brampton.