Brechdan reflects that he would be the Hand of the Vach Ynvory:
"...for a few decades before he gave this flesh to the soil and this mind to the God."
-CHAPTER THREE, p. 23.
Quoting, I must carefully note not "his" but "this."
A Merseian captain who intends to kill the fleeing Flandry and Persis when they refuse to surrender advises them to:
"'...prepare your minds for the God...'"
-CHAPTER FOURTEEN, p. 145.
I find these remarks ambiguous. They do not necessarily imply Merseian belief in a hereafter. When flesh returns to the soil, the matter that had composed the body is recycled but the body itself is not reconstituted or reanimated. Do the Merseians believe that something analogous occurs on the mental level, that mental faculties return to the God?
Personally, I think not that matter and minds coexist but that brains generate minds just as combustion or electrons generate light and that consciousness ceases when brains die just as light is extinguished when its sources, stars, candles, electric bulbs etc cease to function. But what do Merseians believe?
3 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
I have to disagree. When Brechdan thought of returning "this" body to the soil and mind to the God he still meant HIS mind and body. Nor does that necessarily means he believed his consciousness ended with death. It's simpler to say Anderson was here trying to show us how aliens like the Merseians might think and speak.
And I don't believe our consciousness ends with bodily death. But that is an old bone of contention between us! (Smiles)
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
The phrase, "this flesh," acknowledges that the flesh ceases to be his when it no longer constitutes his body. The soil absorbs the matter that had formed the flesh of living bodies. Might the Merseians believe that the God absorbs the dispositions and memories that had formed the consciousness of living minds?
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
Of course I agree the bodies of the dead decomposes back into the soil. And the problem with the second part of your statement is that the idea of returning one's minds to the God is not explicitly said to be the Deity's absorbtion of the dispositions/memories of those Merseians.
Also, if Merseians did believe their minds were "absorbed" by the God after death, I can think of two possibilities. One, they might have believed absorbed minds retained their consciousness. Second, they believed minds could have been absorbed the way you apparently suggested, into a kind of Nirvana.
Ad astra! Sean
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