Henri Bergson taught that we need more than reason alone to make sense of this world: we also need intuition.
Science teaches us that energy is always conserved, and never lost.
Religion teaches us that spirit goes on, and does not die.
Perhaps spirit IS energy, and energy is spirit. My intuition tells me that it may indeed be so.
So what, then, is matter? We know that it is not solid, that it is mostly empty space, and is held together by energy: in other words, by spirit.
What, then, is the world? Was Madonna right when she sang that she was a "material girl," living in a "material world?" Her own life makes us doubt, considering her later fascination with Kabbalah and with Hinduism.
Perhaps Shakespeare was right when he wrote that "all the world's a stage, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."
Granted that the world is a grand illusion, just on the face of the physics of it, does it really signify nothing?" My intuition says "no."
I don't think we can get answers to these questions from theology, which assumes a dogmatic knowledge that it does not have. It cannot tell us anything about Divinity, because Divinity is for us not thinkable.
So we are back to what we can see with our eyes, illusory or not.
If we apply both reason and intuition to this world, we may at least be able to tell good from evil.
Henri Bergson is gone. He died of pneumonia on January 4 1941, at the age of 81, after standing in line for many hours in the winter cold of Paris, waiting to register with the Nazis as a Jew.
Did any part of Henri Bergson survive his physical death? My intuition says "yes."
Requiescat in pace. May his memory be for a blessing.
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Copyright © 2020 by Donald C. Traxler aka Donald Jacobson Traxler.
