In my medical ethics classes, I ask students to define life. They usually begin with biological markers: metabolism, respiration, reproduction, cellular structure. These definitions are practical and important. But I press them: Is that all life is? What about consciousness? What about goodness, truth, and beauty? What about our sense of meaning, presence, and moral depth? The biological markers describe the surface. But the mystery of life runs deeper.
I have come to think of life as vital energy—a natural, animating force distinct from other forms of energy like electricity or heat, yet equally real. Like all energy, it does not end; it transforms. When this vital energy becomes linked to a material entity, it manifests in biological function. In entities with developed nervous systems, vital energy further manifests as consciousness. And when vital energy departs from a form—when it no longer flows through the body—we say that body has died. But the energy itself has not ended. Only its manifestation has changed.
If so, then death is not a substance or force. It has no reality. It is a privation—an absence. It is not some-thing; it is the lack of some-thing, a no-thing. The absence of life. It’s like the silence after music; the emptiness where meaning once moved.
We tend to fear death because we treat it as a thing. But if death is only the absence of life’s expression—then it has no real power. It is not being. It is not presence. And just as elements transform, just as energy changes form, so too does life. It is never lost. It simply appears differently.
If life is vital energy, and consciousness is its expression through form, then consciousness too continues after death—not in the same form, but in a form we cannot yet know. The material body ceases to express consciousness, but that does not mean consciousness ceases to be. It transforms. Silently. Mysteriously. Death is not the end of being. It is the end of one expression of being. And perhaps the beginning of another.
Easter does not erase Good Friday. It does not deny death but reframes it. Easter reveals death as limited—real in the felt absence of life, which is grief, but not ultimate in its power.
The resurrection story speaks not only of Jesus, but of reality itself: that life is what endures, transforms, and ultimately prevails. The disciples did not immediately understand resurrection. They experienced grief, confusion, and fear. But over time, through visions, conversations, and the quiet work of presence, they came to a radical realization: death is not what they thought it was. Death is no-thing. Life had not ended—it had changed form. Resurrection, then, is not about reversing death—it is about revealing the illusion of its finality. The endurance of life, in transformed and mysterious ways, is the core of Easter hope.
So, when I speak of life as vital energy that changes but does not vanish, of consciousness that transcends material form, of G*d present in goodness and love, in truth and beauty—this is not separate from the Easter story. It is a philosophical echo of its deepest truth.
Good Friday morning. The rabbit in the yard. The buds on the magnolia tree—unfurling again, even after the great pine came crashing down. The lightness in the air. The warmth of tea. These were a revelation of life.
So, on this Easter Sunday:
Death is no-thing.
Life is transformation.
Consciousness endures.
G*d is the presence that sustains.
+Ab. Andy