Now let me try to get this right. I’m said to have a soul,
A “something” which survives me when I’m in that six foot hole.
This “animating principle”, if I have got it straight,
Departs my body when I die and then pursues its fate.
Most Christians and Mohammedans believe this soul survives
In heaven or the other place depending on their lives.
That’s quaint enough but others have a comic fantasy,
The sort of scheme one might dream up while dropping LSD.
They hold when life has ended that this soul is free to roam,
To enter some new being, settle down in its new home,
Amoeba, snake or man or any living thing on earth.
Do they not know that such a theory engenders mirth?
I’d like to have an open mind but have no hesitation
To shout “There’s nothing quite as loony as reincarnation!”
I find these doctrines hard to grasp, it’s something of a strain.
What some call soul, to me is mind, the buzzing of the brain.
While many deem this soul to be a hallowed mystery,
I think it’s really nothing more than neurochemistry.
It’s clear the brain is functioning when one can plainly see
The ups and downs and waves and patterns in the EEG.
In the dying these will falter, in the dead they’re flat.
When brain is dead the mind is dead, and that, my friend, is that.
~ William M Tarnowski
