What is personal immortality? Unamuno, Life 6.17

If we allow our faith in personal immortality to triumph over our reason, which would deny it, what then will we conceive our immortality to be? How will we confront the fact that we have no rational expectation of what is essentially an irrational imagination? Unamuno confronts this question.

Y la más fuerte base de la incertidumbre, lo que más hace vacilar nuestro deseo vital, lo que más eficacia da a la obra disolvente de la razón, es el ponernos a considerar lo que podría ser una vida del alma después de la muerte. Porque, aun venciendo, por un poderoso esfuerzo de fe, a la razón que nos dice y enseña que el alma no es sino una función del cuerpo organizado, queda luego el imaginarnos que pueda ser una vida inmortal y eterna del alma. En esta imaginación las contradicciones y los absurdos se multiplican y se llega, acaso, a la conclusión de Kierkegaard, y es que si es terrible la mortalidad del alma, no menos terrible es su inmortalidad.

Pero vencida la primera dificultad, la única verdadera, vencido el obstáculo de la razón, ganada la fe, por dolorosa y envuelta en incertidumbre que ésta sea, de que ha de persistir nuestra conciencia personal después de la muerte, ¿qué dificultad, qué obstáculo hay en que nos imaginemos esa persistencia a medida de nuestro deseo? Sí, podemos imaginárnosla como un eterno rejuvenecimiento, como un eterno acrecentarnos, e ir hacia Dios, hacia la Conciencia Universal, sin alcanzarle nunca, podemos imaginárnosla ... ¿Quién pone trabas a la imaginación, una vez que ha roto la cadena de lo racional?

Ya sé que me pongo pesado, molesto, tal vez tedioso, pero todo es menester. Y he de repetir una vez más que no se trata ni de policía trascendente, ni de hacer de Dios un gran Juez o Guardia civil; es decir, no se trata de cielo y de infierno para apuntalar nuestra pobre moral mundana, ni se trata de nada egoísta y personal. No soy yo, es el linaje humano todo el que entra en juego; es la finalidad última de nuestra cultura toda. Yo soy uno; pero todos son yos.

The strongest basis for uncertainty—the thing that most shakes our desire to live forever, making it easier for reason to accomplish her work of dissolving our attachment to life—is considering carefully what the life of the soul after death might be. For even should we manage to conquer reason by the power of our faith, overwhelming the rational insight that teaches us to regard the soul as merely a function of the body that emerges from its organization, still we would have to imagine what the immortal and eternal life of the soul could be. The more we imagine this, the more contradictions and absurdities emerge, until we reach the conclusion of Kierkegaard, perhaps, that the immortality of the soul is no less terrible and terrifying than its mortality.

Once reason is vanquished, the first and only real obstacle to faith is overcome. However painful or uncertain our victorious faith emerges from this conquest, she abides to promise us that our personal consciousness will persist beyond death. With reason out of the picture, what prevents us from imagining our persistence however our desire may dictate? We can imagine ourselves growing younger forever as easily as older, drawing ever nearer to God—to universal consciousness that transcends every world—without ever reaching him finally, or terminally. We can imagine it, certainly! Who puts any bounds on our imagination, once the chain of reason has been broken?

I know that I am being annoying, and a bit tedious, but it is all necessary, I promise. Here I must repeat again that we are not talking about some kind of transcendental politics or economy: there is no question here of turning God into a great Judge or Policeman. We are not discussing heaven or hell as means for sustaining our poor mundane world, nor are we looking at anything purely or selfishly personal. The game here is not about me, per se, but the entire human lineage. We are talking about the ultimate end and purpose of all our culture. I am one thing, in that great whole; but it contains many other things, many other egos who call themselves I.