If you could know the absolute and total truth to one question, what question would you ask?

@bijouxbroussard That would be my question too

@bijouxbroussard You could basically get that off of a decent biologist and/or mortician though.

@bijouxbroussard Hopefully reincarnation.

@BlueVeins My friend’s a mortician. It goes away, that’s basically what they can tell you. I’ve observed that much at deathbeds. But to where, if anyplace ? That’s the eternal mystery. 🤔

@NativeOregonian That would be amazing. Many cultures believe that our essence passes into other beings yet to be born.

@bijouxbroussard Exactly, my Grandfather was a firm believer in it.

@bijouxbroussard Well, it's not like the energy within a person is stable and constant. Energy constantly flows in when you eat and catch sunlight, and it flows out in a number of ways, including through heat, and that outflow of heat doesn't stop immediately when you die.

A lot of the energy stays trapped in chemicals in your cells, which naturally decay over time (creating heat) and are consumed by micro-organisms in your body (as well as multicellular life in a natural context). Those life forms then repeat the process.

If you're ever wondering where all the energy goes, the first step is to getting an infrared camera and taking pictures of some people. You can literally see the energy flowing out of them.

@BlueVeins Perhaps “energy” is the wrong word. The question I would ask would be, where does that life force that animates the living, go ? I think of it as energy, but that specifically is much more.
I’ve been with people who’ve died, holding their hands, and felt the life force leave them. The body was there, but what made them, them, suddenly wasn’t. 😔

@bijouxbroussard Do you mean consciousness?

@BlueVeins Not specifically. Even someone unconscious but alive still has that life force.

@bijouxbroussard I think what you're talking about is something called "vital energy," which was widely believed to have been the driving power behind all living things and is fundamentally different from the rest of nature. As modern chemistry advanced through the first half of the 20th century though, vitalism fell by the wayside. The modern scientific understanding is that there is no other driver, and that it really is just all chemicals and electricity.

20% of the energy we get from food goes into powering our brains; when we feel like our life force is leaving, it's because that supply is cut off. As strange as it sounds, that's really all we are.