I've appreciated this poem by Rumi (A.K.A. Rumi Jalal ad'Din) since the first time I read it, at least 10 or 20 years ago.
"I Died as a Mineral"
Translated by A.J. Arberry
I died as a mineral and became a plant,
I died as plant and rose to animal,
I died as animal and I was Man.
Why should I fear? When was I less by dying?
Yet once more I shall die as Man, to soar
With angels blest; but even from angelhood
I must pass on: all except God doth perish.
When I have sacrificed my angel-soul,
I shall become what no mind e'er conceived.
Oh, let me not exist! for Non-existence
Proclaims in organ tones, 'To Him we shall return.'
I've always had a sneaky little suspicion that reincarnation is a true belief. As a very small child, perhaps four years old or younger, I had very vivid memories which seemed to be scenes from past lives. I don't wish to discuss them with anyone. Needless to say, they faded over the next seven or eight years. I don't have any particular theology propping up my beliefs, other than a strong hunch that there's something to the idea of past and future lives.
But let's unpack this Rumi poem a bit. Regardless of whether or not you believe in the literal reincarnation of the soul into a new physical body, you'd agree with me that matter and energy are never created or destroyed; they only change form. At some point in the soon-after [1], the entity known as Chris Brannon is going to fully cease to exist in anything resembling their current form. That's a very pretentious way of saying that I'm fixin' to kick the bucket, to fly the coop, to buy the farm, to take the final curtain call, to shuffle off this mortal coil. When that happens, all that was Chris Brannon will go back to nature and the rest of the cosmos. That's just Newtonian physics that I learned in high school. Apparently there are theorems in quantum physics stating that information can never be lost. It seems to me that the soul is essentially information. Perhaps we have an eternal one after all? I don't know as much about this stuff -- specifically quantum physics and its implications or possibilities -- as I'd like to know.
There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
Hamlet, Act I, Scene V
Rumi and I go down separate paths once he starts writing of "to soar with angels blest", but even then, I won't fully discount that notion either.
The one thing of which I am certain is that my component pieces, possibly including an eternal soul, will return to the cycle of nature to be reused to form some new and hopefully beautiful thing. I find this thought incredibly consoling. As Rumi said, "Why should I fear? When was I less by dying?"
Are there some parts of this whole process which scare or sadden me? Sure. I'm scared of pain. I'm sad that I'll be leaving people I love and friends I've made. I'm more sad for the people I leave behind than I am for myself. Then again, if we do have an eternal soul on some quantum informational level, maybe we'll all meet up to compare notes eventually. I'm disappointed that I probably won't meet new lovers and make many new friends during what remains of this incarnation. I'm sure that there is music I'll wish I had heard. I have more sadness and regret than fear.
[1] I can't answer the question "how soon is soon?" Probably six months or less. Hopefully much longer. But I can feel myself fading. I can feel my heart becoming weaker.