Creation, Animals, and Diet: A View from Torah and Soloveitchik

Between Heaven and Earth from Eden to the Flood and Beyond:

a Torah study by Rabbi Rick Brody

Genesis, theology, and the role of humanity in relation to other animals—in conversation with the wisdom of Rabbi Joseph Dov Soloveitchik and classical commentaries

[Some material adapted from Rabbi Yonatan Neril and Evonne Marzouk of Canfei Nesharim]

[Translations of Biblical Hebrew adapted by Rabbi Rick Brody]

Soloveitchik citations from: The Emergence of Ethical Man, Rabbi Joseph Dov Soloveitchik, KTAV Publishing House, Inc., 2005, pp. 31-38

I. The basis for the relationship between human and non-human creatures

בראשית א:כד–ל

כד וַיֹּאמֶר אֱלֹקים תּוֹצֵא הָאָרֶץ נֶפֶשׁ חַיָּה לְמִינָהּ בְּהֵמָה וָרֶמֶשׂ וְחַיְתוֹ־אֶרֶץ לְמִינָהּ וַיְהִי־כֵן: כה וַיַּעַשׂ אֱלֹקים אֶת־חַיַּת הָאָרֶץ לְמִינָהּ וְאֶת־הַבְּהֵמָה לְמִינָהּ וְאֵת כָּל־רֶמֶשׂ הָאֲדָמָה לְמִינֵהוּ וַיַּרְא אֱלֹהִים כִּי־טוֹב: כו וַיֹּאמֶר אֱלֹקים נַעֲשֶׂה אָדָם בְּצַלְמֵנוּ כִּדְמוּתֵנוּ וְיִרְדּוּ בִדְגַת הַיָּם וּבְעוֹף הַשָּׁמַיִם וּבַבְּהֵמָה וּבְכָל־הָאָרֶץ וּבְכָל־הָרֶמֶשׂ הָרֹמֵשׂ עַל־הָאָרֶץ: כז וַיִּבְרָא אֱלֹקים ׀ אֶת־הָאָדָם בְּצַלְמוֹ בְּצֶלֶם אֱלֹקים בָּרָא אֹתוֹ זָכָר וּנְקֵבָה בָּרָא אֹתָם: כח וַיְבָרֶךְ אֹתָם אֱלֹקים וַיֹּאמֶר לָהֶם אֱלֹקים פְּרוּ וּרְבוּ וּמִלְאוּ אֶת־הָאָרֶץ וְכִבְשֻׁהָ וּרְדוּ בִּדְגַת הַיָּם וּבְעוֹף הַשָּׁמַיִם וּבְכָל־חַיָּה הָרֹמֶשֶׂת עַל־הָאָרֶץ: כט וַיֹּאמֶר אֱלֹקים הִנֵּה נָתַתִּי לָכֶם אֶת־כָּל־עֵשֶׂב ׀ זֹרֵעַ זֶרַע אֲשֶׁר עַל־פְּנֵי כָל־הָאָרֶץ וְאֶת־כָּל־הָעֵץ אֲשֶׁר־בּוֹ פְרִי־עֵץ זֹרֵעַ זָרַע לָכֶם יִהְיֶה לְאָכְלָה: ל וּלְכָל־חַיַּת הָאָרֶץ וּלְכָל־עוֹף הַשָּׁמַיִם וּלְכֹל ׀ רוֹמֵשׂ עַל־הָאָרֶץ אֲשֶׁר־בּוֹ נֶפֶשׁ חַיָּה אֶת־כָּל־יֶרֶק עֵשֶׂב לְאָכְלָה וַיְהִי־כֵן:

Genesis 1:24-30

And God said, Let the earth bring forth animated life, [each] according to its species, beast and creeper, and earth-life, [each] according to its species; and it was so. 25 And God made the earth-life, [each] according to its species, and the beast(s) according to its species, and every ground-creeper according to its species; and God saw that it was good. 26 And God said, Let us make a grounds-keeper (humanity) with our imprint, like our character; and let them have dominion with the fish of the sea, and with the fowl of the sky, and with the beast(s), and with all the earth, and with the entire [range of] creeper that creeps upon the earth. 27 So God created the grounds-keeper with God’s imprint, with the Divine imprint God created it; male and female God created them. 28 And God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion with the fish of the sea, and with the fowl of the sky, and with all life that creeps upon the earth.” 29 And God said, “Look, I have given you every seed-bearing herb, which is upon the face of all the earth, and the entire [range of] tree that has a seed-bearing tree-fruit on it: to you it shall be for food. 30 And to all earth-life, and to all fowl of the sky, and to every creeper upon the earth that has animated life in it, [I have given] every green herb for food;” and it was so.

Soloveitchik

“Let us be clear that this rule [regarding diet] was not given to man as an ethical norm but as a natural tendency; it is absurd to speak of a law imposed upon ʻevery beast of the earth, and to every bird of the air, and to everything that creeps upon the earth.ʼ …. [T]his injunction was a physiological pattern that dominated manʼs sensory drive. Primordial man neither desired nor was tempted by any food other than of the vegetative realm. The verse concludes ʻand it was soʼ: the ethical norm became a behavior pattern, an expression of the ontic order. Man and animal were not driven toward killing or devouring other living creatures.”

Questions

1. Soloveitchik points to a similarity between human beings and other animals, a shared place in the cosmic order and a shared reception of a natural tendency. Is the word “species”) / min used in reference to the creation of humanity? Is humanity / adam a “species” in the same way the other creatures are categorized? What might our answer teach us?

   1. God says “Let the earth bring forth…” in regard to animal life, but then the text says “God made.” Then, God says, “Let us make…” in regard to the grounds-keeper, but then the text says, “God created.” What is going on here?

   2. Was God talking to the animals when God said “Let us make adam…”? Do (or did) the animals possess the Divine imprint and character (since God says “our”)? Did the appointing of a grounds-keeper take some of that quality away from the other creatures? If so, is that Divine quality ever available to them again? Can any creature be adam? (See question 3.)

   3. What is the difference between the dietary rules for adam and for the other creatures? Why might this distinction exist and what might it teach us about our relationship to food today?

2. We know that this (mythic) natural order did not persist, either for human beings or for many other animal species. How might the Torah want us to understand that divergence in real life (i.e. not simply through the flood narrative)? Should we understand that divergence to have occurred similarly for humanity and the other species?

3. What, then, distinguishes humanity? Is this distinction guaranteed or might it be conditional? Is it fully realized from the start or is it a potential state within an evolving humanity? Is it a distinction that is necessarily limited to the biological species homo sapiens?

בראשית רבה ח:יב

:יב וּרְדוּ בִּדְגַת הַיָּם: אמר רבי חנינא: אם זכה, רדו ואם לאו ירדו. אמר רבי יעקב דכפר חנין

את שהוא בצלמנו כדמותנו ורדו, את שאינו בצלמנו כדמותנו ירדו

רבי יעקב דמן כפר חנן אמר: יבא צלמנו ודמותנו, וירדה לשאינו דומה לצלמנו כדמותנו

Bereishit Rabbah 8:12

AND HAVE DOMINION (REDU) OVER THE FISH OF THE SEA (Gen. 1:28).

Rabbi Chanina said: If [humanity] has merit, [God says,] ‘ur-du’ (and have dominion); while if they do not have merit, [God says,] ‘yerdu’ (let them descend) [or ‘yeradu’(they shall be dominated) / they will be taken down / let other [creatures] rule over them)].

רש“י בראשית א:כו זכה — רודה בחיות ובבהמות. לא זכה — נעשה ירוד לפניהם והחיה מושלת בו Rashi: If he merits, he rules over the living things and over the beasts. If he does not merit, he becomes subservient to them, and the living things rule over him.

Rabbi Ya’akov of Kefar Hanin said: Of one who is with our imprint and like our character [I say] ‘ur-du’ (and have dominion); but of one who is not with our imprint and like our character, [I say] ‘yerdu’ [or ‘yeradu’].

Rabbi Ya’akov of Kefar Hanan said: Let [the one who possesses] ‘our [Divine] imprint and character’ come and have dominion over the one who is not characteristic of ‘our [Divine] imprint and character.’

Questions

1. What does dominion here suggest?

2. What does merit refer to?

3. What might it mean for other creatures to have dominion over humanity? Is this the same dominion that humanity would have over them?

II. The shift in the relationship

בראשית ט:א–ד

א וַיְבָרֶךְ אֱלֹקים אֶת־נֹחַ וְאֶת־בָּנָיו וַיֹּאמֶר לָהֶם פְּרוּ וּרְבוּ וּמִלְאוּ אֶת־הָאָרֶץ: ב וּמוֹרַאֲכֶם וְחִתְּכֶם יִהְיֶה עַל כָּל־חַיַּת הָאָרֶץ וְעַל כָּל־עוֹף הַשָּׁמָיִם בְּכֹל אֲשֶׁר תִּרְמֹשׂ הָאֲדָמָה וּבְכָל־דְּגֵי הַיָּם בְּיֶדְכֶם נִתָּנוּ: ג כָּל־רֶמֶשׂ אֲשֶׁר הוּא־חַי לָכֶם יִהְיֶה לְאָכְלָה כְּיֶרֶק עֵשֶׂב נָתַתִּי לָכֶם אֶת־כֹּל: ד אַךְ־בָּשָׂר בְּנַפְשׁוֹ דָמוֹ לֹא תֹאכֵלוּ:

Genesis 9:1-4

And God blessed Noah and his sons, and said to them, ‘Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the earth. 2 And the fear of you and the dread of you shall be upon all earth-life, and upon all fowl of the sky, with all that shall creep on the ground, and with all the fishes of the sea; in your hand are they delivered. 3 Every creeper thing that lives shall be food for you; even as the green herb have I given you all things. 4 But flesh with its animation—its blood—you shall not eat.’

Soloveitchik

“Man-animal became a life-killer, an animal-eater. He became blood-thirsty and flesh-hungry.
“Is the Torah very happy about this change? Somehow we intuitively feel the silent, tragic note that pervades the whole chapter. The Torah was compelled to concede defeat to human nature that was corrupted by man himself and willy-nilly approved the radical change in him. ….
“Animal-hunters and flesh-eaters are people that lust. Of course it is legalized, approved. Yet it is classified as ta’avah [Num. 11:4, 34], lust, repulsive and brutish.
“The real motif that prompts such unquestionable antagonism toward slaying of animals is the aboriginal Jewish thought [that]….man and animal are almost identical in their organic dynamics that is equated with life, and there is no justifiable reason why one life should fall prey to another. Why should a cunning intelligence that granted man dominion over his fellow animals also give him license to kill?”

Questions

1. According to Soloveitchik, what fundamental distinction exists between human beings and their “fellow animals”?

2. How far does he believe that distinction should extend?

3. What other fundamental value does that distinction come up against?

Ramban, Commentary on Torah, Bereishit 1:29 Flesh was not permitted for human consumption until the children of Noach, as our Sages have explained. And this goes according to the plain meaning of the Torah’s text. The reason for it is that mobile creatures have a certain spiritual attribute which in this respect makes them similar to those who possess intellect (i.e. people); they are capable of looking after their welfare and their food and they flee from pain and death. And the verse says, “Who knows that the human’s spirit is that which ascends on high and the beast’s spirit is that which descends below to the earth?” (Kohelet/Ecclesiastes 3:21) …

רמב׳ן, בראשית א:כט הבשר לא הורשו בו עד בני נח כדעת רבותינו. והוא פשוטו של מקרא: והיה זה, מפני שבעלי נפש התנועה יש להם קצת מעלה בנפשם, נדמו בה לבעלי הנפש המשכלת, ויש להם בחירה בטובתם ומזוניהם, ויברחו מן הצער והמיתה. והכתוב אומר ׳מי יודע רוח בני האדם העולה היא למעלה ורוח הבהמה היורדת היא … (למטה לארץ׳ )קהלת ג כא

Nevertheless, humanity was not given reign over the [animals’] life-force, for it was still forbidden to eat a limb off of a live animal. At this point it also became forbidden to consume blood, for it is blood that maintains life, as the verse states, “the blood of every living creature is associated with its life-force; tell the Israelites not to eat any blood, since the life-force of all flesh is in its blood.” (Vayikra/Leviticus 17:14). All that was permitted was the body of the non-speaking (i.e. non-human) animal after it has died, but not the life-force itself. This is the reason for shechitah (ritual slaughter); even though it is otherwise prohibited by the Torah to cause pain to animals (Talmud Bavli, Bava Metziah 32b), we nevertheless make a blessing “who has sanctified us with Divine commandments and commanded us regarding the shechitah.”

ועם כל זה לא נתן להם הרשות בנפש ואסר להם אבר מן החי. והוסיף לנו במצות לאסור כל דם, מפני שהוא מעמד לנפש, כדכתיב )ויקרא יז יד( ‘כי נפש כל בשר דמו בנפשו הוא ואמר לבני ישראל דם כל בשר לא תאכלו כי נפש כל בשר דמו הוא,’ כי התיר הגוף בחי שאינו מדבר אחר המיתה, לא הנפש עצמה. וזה טעם השחיטה, ומה שאמרו )ב“מ לב ב( ‘צער בעלי חיים דאורייתא‘ וזו ברכתנו שמברך אשר קדשנו במצותיו וצונו על השחיטה

Question: Why would God forbid the consuming of a creature’s life-force? What would such an act do or represent?

3. After Noah: Continued limitations in the relationship to non-human animals

ויקרא יז:ג–ד

ג אִישׁ אִישׁ מִבֵּית יִשְׂרָאֵל אֲשֶׁר יִשְׁחַט שׁוֹר אוֹ־כֶשֶׂב אוֹ־עֵז בַּמַּחֲנֶה אוֹ אֲשֶׁר יִשְׁחָט מִחוּץ לַמַּחֲנֶה: ד וְאֶל־פֶּתַח אֹהֶל מוֹעֵד לֹא הֱבִיאוֹ לְהַקְרִיב קָרְבָּן לַה‘ לִפְנֵי מִשְׁכַּן ה‘ דָּם יֵחָשֵׁב לָאִישׁ הַהוּא דָּם

שָׁפָךְ וְנִכְרַת הָאִישׁ הַהוּא מִקֶּרֶב עַמּוֹ:

Leviticus 17:3-4

3 Any man from the house of Israel who slaughters an ox, or lamb, or goat, in the camp, or who slaughters it out of the camp, 4 and does not bring it to the door of the Tent of Meeting, to offer an offering to the Eternal before the tabernacle of the Eternal: blood shall be imputed to that man; he has shed blood; and that man shall be cut off from among his people;

Soloveitchik

“The implication is clear. Whoever kills an animal for non-sacramental purposes is guilty of bloodshed, of murder; the term shefikhut damim applies equally to the slaughter of man and animal. Under a certain aspect, the life of the animal has been placed on equal plane with that of man.”

The Torah has not yet explicitly allowed for the non-ritual consumption of animal flesh (let alone a completely gratuitous taking of animal life).

דברים יב:כ–כא

כ כִּי־יַרְחִיב ה‘ אֱלֹקיךָ אֶת־גְּבֻלְךָ כַּאֲשֶׁר דִּבֶּר־לָךְ וְאָמַרְתָּ אֹכְלָה בָשָׂר כִּי־תְאַוֶּה נַפְשְׁךָ לֶאֱכֹל בָּשָׂר בְּכָל־אַוַּת נַפְשְׁךָ תֹּאכַל בָּשָׂר: כא כִּי־יִרְחַק מִמְּךָ הַמָּקוֹם אֲשֶׁר יִבְחַר ה‘ אֱלֹקיךָ לָשׂוּם שְׁמוֹ שָׁם וְזָבַחְתָּ מִבְּקָרְךָ וּמִצֹּאנְךָ אֲשֶׁר נָתַן ה‘ לְךָ כַּאֲשֶׁר צִוִּיתִךָ וְאָכַלְתָּ בִּשְׁעָרֶיךָ בְּכֹל אַוַּת נַפְשֶׁךָ:

Deuteronomy 12:20-21

20 When the Eternal your God shall enlarge your border, as God has promised you, and you shall say, I will eat flesh, because your life-force lusts to eat flesh; you may eat flesh, with all the lust of your life-force. 21 If the place which the Eternal your God has chosen to put the Divine name there is too far from you, then you shall slay from your herd and from your flock, which the Eternal has given you, as I have commanded you, and you shall eat in your gates, with all the lust of your life-force.

Soloveitchik

“Nevertheless, the Torah again calls a desire for meat ta’avah, lust; while the Torah tolerates it, it is far from fully approving it.”

Questions:

1. What have we learned about life-force / nefesh?

2. Could we interpret the permission to consume flesh as contingent upon the continued existence of the Divine name in the place God has chosen (the Temple)?

3. What might be the relationship between the expanding of borders and the lust of the life-force?

4. How could we read “expand your borders” metaphorically and creatively—and potentially in a way that differs from or can prevent the lustful results that Deuteronomy anticipates?

 

New Ways of Understanding Soul

New Ways of Understanding Soul

by Rabbi Rick Brody

Soul is not some thing, no “stuff” that is (temporarily) attached to (but fundamentally separate from) my body. No, soul is the totality of my body, all its experiences, and all the meanings it both internalizes and externalizes — through both my brain (my inner life — my impressions, my sensations, my feelings, my cognition) and my self’s interaction with the world “outside of me” — my relationships to others, my deeds, my communications, my contributions to a greater whole.

People are fond of quoting C. S. Lewis as saying, “You don’t have a soul. You are a Soul. You have a body.” Also popular is Pierre Teilhard de Chardin’s quip that “We are not human beings having a spiritual experience; we are spiritual beings having a human experience.” I think that simply throwing around these pithy statements as wisdom actually reduces them to pablum. We need to examine them. Both of them trouble me. While I think there is truth in these words, I do not think they tell the whole story; at the least, they are misleading, suggesting to the naive reader some kind of mythical narrative about a soul (or spirit) that lives eternally, enters a body — or, better, takes on a bodily form — and then maintains a conscious existence after it “leaves” the body — or “sheds” it, like snake-skin (some contemporary critics of classical theology derisively refer to this presumed process as a “soul-ectomy”!) — leaving it behind as an ultimately irrelevant tool that mainly obscures our awareness of a deeper, disembodied truth. I see some elements within this narrative that meaningfully characterize our experiences and our place in the Cosmos, but I think there are also aspects to this narrative that themselves are obstacles to enduring meaning.

Teilhard de Chardin’s statement is more troubling. Am I, at my core, not a human being? As I will discuss below, I believe I start out entirely human, and my journey of self-conscious interaction with the world outside my human body opens up a process of “spiritual” or soulful growth, discovery, and becoming. But the human experience isn’t “part” of my journey — it is my journey; it just happens that this journey extends beyond the limitations of my physical human body. But all of my experiences are physical — or at least are necessarily mediated through the physical (this view fits in with a current outlook in philosophy of science and philosophy of mind called “nonreductive physicalism”). Without my physical brain, “i” will lack the apparatus to have conscious, subjective experiences. I will “live on” in ways that I believe are part of the soul-process, but I do not expect to have awareness of that life.

I am a human being. Or, more appropriately, I am a human becoming. It’s the becoming that I think we tend to identify as “spiritual,” but I fail to see how that quality has a fixed essence that could be described as a “spiritual being.” It is certainly more a process than an entity. But more to the point is that it requires the body. There is no spirit that is me that precedes my body. Rather, that quality of transcendent becoming, that sense of participating in something greater than “me” is one that emerges from the reality of our bodily existence, a reality at the core of our being/becoming, of our sense of self — and not one I wish to undervalue.

I believe there are levels of self and that indeed we are restricting ourselves if we confine our understanding of self to be synonymous with our bodies. Clearly, Lewis is worried that people see the soul as something “smaller” than the self-defined-as-body, contained by it, subservient to a “greater” self that possesses a soul. It seems right to want to debunk this misconception. But it also seems dangerous to want to dismiss the fundamental role that the body plays in defining and constructing self, in making me me. And I believe that level of reality precedes that of soul. I believe there is a “me” that is smaller than my soul — a “me” that mediates between what seems to be a completely inner life of mind and an outer world that we touch through our bodies and that in turn touches our bodies and, in rapid succession, our minds. Soul is a process that encompasses all these other processes and that begins with the body.

The metaphor of an ecosystem is instructive here. It seems that much of the quest for meaning, particularly within religious contexts, involves an effort to transcend that sense of “small self” — an individual tree, for example — and become fully in touch with the greater self that is not just an intermediary, but rather the great forest itself, the entire system. But the system, as grand and impressive and awe-inspiring as it is, consists of the individual trees. You can’t have a forest without them. They comprise the whole, each one playing a vital, necessary, and sacred role. There is no “other side” where we can arrive by climbing a ladder of enlightenment, transcending the role of being a singular tree to simply being the entire forest. Rather, we are constantly becoming more and more of a tree, and that becoming contributes more and more to the becoming of the forest, of which we are a part.

I start out as a body. The problem is that I am not really an “I” yet. I am “mere fluid,” a clump of cells, a mass of tissue, and ultimately an intricate network of physical processes that is ready to engage the process of interaction with the world that will give birth to new soul. That new “soul” will interact with the wider soul-process to which it contributes and with which it grows, evolves, and becomes.

My soul doesn’t “live” inside of “me.” My mind lives inside of me. (Some philosophers of mind wish to talk about “mind” the way I am speaking of “soul,” as extending beyond the body. I find it helpful to distinguish between the two and keep “mind” as the “inner life,” with “soul” being the resultant interactions between these various networks of inner lives.) It dwells entirely in my network of nerves (my nervous system) — the mode of communication of sensation — which is headquartered in my brain. My soul, however, is the sum of all that is “me” (bodily, including my brain) and all of the extensions of me beyond my bodily definitions. It is “me plus.” I cannot contain it — I am subsumed within it. And it depends on me, on the entirety of my bodily existence. My body is a necessary predecessor to my soul, just as it is to my mind. The soul emerges as a result of the body’s obtaining of consciousness (mind) and its interaction with its environment — which not only reacts to and is transformed by its interaction with such a conscious body but simultaneously engages in a partnership wherein it exerts influence on that very body and its mind. This mutuality, this complex of interactions, this ecosystem, is the matrix in which soul “lives.”

There is no “part” of me that is not “part of” my soul. My soul continues to grow and evolve, throughout my biological epoch and forever after as my legacy. It doesn’t “go” anywhere — it doesn’t “leave” my body. It is always extending beyond my body through the world of meaning, impact, and influence. This quality, in theory, my body shares with all of physical existence. What most physical bodies lack, however — as far as we know — is the internal experience, the consciousness that allows me to identify myself as a subject. It is this quality that we are referring to when we speak of subjective experience. If “i” have no subjective consciousness, then it seems i am not (directly) involved in a soul-process. And what if there is no external consciousness to have an internalized awareness of what “i” have done, my influences, my legacy (e.g. if I were alone on the proverbial desert island)? Does that absence also negate the soul-process, or at least suggest that the entire process is completely terminated with my bodily death (or however else my consciousness ceases to function)?

Perhaps it is more helpful to say that we participate in our souls. These souls include our body, the entity that has a sense of self, a sense of participating in the activity of soul-ing. It can be correct to say that “i am a body” — “i” as small self that is physically bounded; and that “I am a Soul” — “I” as larger Self that emerges from the interaction between my “self” and the world, especially those “parts” of the world that consist of other “i” entities, other selves that comprise the ecosystem.

The degree to which we enhance our own consciousness and our interaction beyond our bodies is the degree to which we participate in soul (and that participation is still morally neutral, filled with potential for good, evil, or nothing). So, I’m not really any more comfortable saying that I am a soul that has a body than I am saying that I am a body that has a soul. I might be comfortable saying that “my soul” emerges from my body’s participating in a greater whole and that with that emergence, my soul becomes the “greater I,” “greater” than the “i” that is my body, continuing its existence — through meaning — even after my body has decayed. Rabbi Brad Artson has offered his own contribution to the conversation, shifting towards classical Biblical language and claiming, “You don’t have a nefesh; you are a nefesh.” Note that he does not echo Lewis by adding the qualifier, “you have a body.” I believe that the nefesh Artson is referring to—in keeping with its Biblical meaning—is the totality of processes that “i” experience that lead me towards “I” (or it might be “I”). This idea is not the same as what English speakers or translators tend to mean when they speak of “the soul.”

I don’t believe that this “greater I” has consciousness separate from the consciousness that my body experiences — at least I cannot conceive of such a consciousness. But I do believe that the “greater I” that our ego-selves, our individual trees, seek to know or commune with — the totality of the forest in which our individual trees participate (“foresting”) — may be the goal to which we aspire during the quests for meaning throughout our bodily human existence. So, yes — “I” am a soul, and that soul consists of the bodily “i” that is an integral part of that soul-process. And my body will sometimes know or commune with that “I” during its existence. And yes, “I” will continue to exist even after my body no longer does, but “i” won’t know about it, and as far as i know, “I” will have no knowing at all without my conscious body. It is thus my opportunity and my obligation to get my conscious self, my “i,” to know the “greater I” of my soul-process — that which “i” am creating and that emerges from my completely human experience — as much as possible during my limited time of human consciousness. This is my time.