The more I think about it and the more I read it seems to me that the correlation between inner and outer is far more extensive and deep rooted than we can ever dream or imagine. I was reading about the difference between objective and subjective survival after death. The latter is a worry. It is impossible to imagine disembodied existence. Out of the body and near death experiences are no help really because they always occur in the context of the body and relate to the body. The problem arises when there is no body at all; when the body has decomposed and all that remains are scattered atoms and molecules. What then? I think the solution, or a possible solution, lies in the insight of Irenaeus. “God became man so that man might become God.” This is not to be thought of as a drop of water falling into, and becoming merged with, the ocean. Much more it is becoming in the sense of union without loss of individual identity. A participating in the being and the activity of God. Unimaginable. Yet the incredible thing is that it is a present reality – the only thing is that it is not a reality of which we are conscious. Sometimes there are glimmerings that we are standing on the threshold of an unimaginable vastness of being, sometimes a sense that this so solid and substantial world is translucent and reality is only an enclosing shell. Crack through the shell, break out of the egg and then we shall know.