In some of the NDE groups I hang out in, there is a question that keeps coming up due to “new age” teachings that on the other side, we are simply light beings. We have no physical bodies. We can’t touch. Some even say we are pretty much devoid of emotion. I guess we just float around all day just “being’ according to this model. I’m not buying it.
A self described touch feely person asked about being able to get a hug in heaven. She likes hugging her kids. Someone even suggested one of the reasons we incarnate into this world is so we can experience physical sensations. That makes no sense to me.
Why do we want hugs? What we want to feel is the love. In this realm we experience love through words, through glances and through touch. We can’t experience love directly. So, you glance at me, my eyes pick up the photons being reflected off of your eyes which stimulate nerve cells. My brain senses you are looking at me and interpret that glance. You speak to me. Your vocal cords create sound waves which strike my ear drums which causes a fluid to vibrate which creates an electrical impulse which my brain hears as words a and interprets as ideas which I take as love. You hug me, which causes nerve cells in my skin to fire and send impulses to my brain and I feel your touch. All of these things are expressions of love, but they’re not the love itself which we cannot feel directly. They are approximations. The best we can do.
Why would we think we are going to miss the firing of these neurons in the afterlife? Are we going to lack a way of expressing and feeling love? I would expect we will experience a more direct feeling of love, a more intense experience. I think it will be one that we can’t even imagine because all we have ever known is being trapped in these meatsuits. I don’t think we’ll sit there looking at each other wishing we could hug. And finally resigning ourselves to the fact that we have to come back here to do it.
