What happens after death

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Recently, I learned that my mother requested a hymn based on Alfred Lord Tennyson's "Crossing the Bar" be sung at her death.  I had known of this poem indirectly for some time, but had never really read it in its entirety.  Tennyson's poem is a mix of his retrospective view of his life, his hopes that those he left behind would not mourn him, and his yearning for his soul to seek ---and find--- relief and comfort [and understanding] after his death.

When one gets to a certain age, it is perfectly understandable that you should look back on your life, and present it to your friends from your perspective.  Its total meaning, it seems obvious, depends on the point of view; what have you learned during the course of it?  What do you think of as its successes, and what are your regrets?  Your friends can think what they like, but you have the right to present a framework against which you wish you would be judged.

Your hopes for those you leave behind are worthy of putting on record.  Once you're gone, it could make a difference to your surviving friends and family to recall these aspirations, and in your absence, they could choose to take guidance, or encouragement, or warning from those thoughts.

As to your yearning for experiencing the infinite, for meeting your Pilot, that's a charming sentiment, but there is no pilot.  There is just a Universe that simply exists.  If you want to ascribe motives to the Universe, which is a conceit you could certainly indulge in, one imagines it must be on the lines of survival.  [There are Conservation Laws: what we observe is that matter conducts itself in such as way as to keep certain things the same: energy, mass, momentum.  This property seems to require no intervention; we non-religious types believe that it is automatic; mystics could pretend that God looks after it.]  You've done your worst; now the Universe has to try and shepherd the rest of itself along the trajectories established by circumstances beyond everyone's control.  A million fools out there are doing their darnedest to destroy the environment, a score [at least] of species have been obliterated, and the Universe stoically does nothing.  When I die, across the earth a thousand fellow-human beings die at the same time, and we only leave dust behind, in the material sense.

If something is to survive, it must be your kindness, your wisdom, your works, your memory, and your example.  You can't enjoy the survival of these, but you cannot deny their existence.

When I think of immortality, I immediately think of Johann Sebastian Bach.  He is alive today in a way in which he was never alive during his lifetime.  Thousands of people around the earth remember him with deep love and pleasure.  He undoubtedly expected to survive death in some fashion, and be united with that great, all-knowing Cantor in the sky.  Instead, he has a million human, mortal lovers, who pass on the love of his music to their children and their students and their friends.

To some, this is a poor substitute for the immortality that Bach craved in his lifetime.  But I could ask for no greater destiny than to be remembered with one hundredth the love with which Bach was remembered, for a hundredth of the length of time that he will be remembered, by one millionth of the people who remember Bach!

[Added later:

I had assumed that Tennyson, when he referred to My Pilot, was speaking of god, and inferred that he was a religious man, subscribing to the common Judaeo-Christian beliefs.  But why does he remark that he wants to meet the Pilot?  Is it (a) curiosity? (b) To express confidence in his ability to pass muster?  (c) A desire to ask for an explanation for his experiences?  One has to know a lot more than I do about Tennyson to read between the lines here, and decide which of these motives were the source of that line in the poem.  To us non-believers, however, all this curiosity is meaningless.  There are no hidden motives; we have to perceive the potential of every circumstance in which we find ourselves, and do the best we can; the best we can for ourselves, if we do not feel any external obligation, the best for all around us, if we do.]

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