Chapter 23: New Things, Old Things, Retired Things, Junkyard Things.
Over the course of a lifetime, I have owned a remarkable fleet of vehicles. My inventory began simply enough—my own body, then a tricycle, a bicycle, several skateboards—before expanding into a procession of motorcycles and automobiles: a 50cc Honda, a 1970 350cc Honda, a ’62 Buick Skylark, a ’66 Ford, a ’66 Dodge Dart, a ’66 Chrysler New Yorker, a ’66 Chrysler Imperial, a ’74 Dodge Dart, a ’77 Datsun 310, a ’92 Acura Integra, two Subaru Outbacks, a 2007 Toyota Hybrid, a 2018 Mazda Miata, and a collection of bicycles—hybrid, and two tandems, including a Cannondale—that collectively carried me well over 700,000 miles.
Each one arrived with its own story. Some were given in generosity, others acquired by good fortune or reasonable negotiation. In the early days, repair was accessible and communal—parts were cheap, and unsolicited mechanical opinions were always free. I rebuilt two of my motorized vehicles almost entirely by hand: the ’66 Ford and the 1970 Honda motorcycle. I maintained every bicycle myself. And when the time came, I let each one go—some passed down to grandsons who completed their destruction with great enthusiasm, others surrendered directly to the junkyard. Today, only three remain in service: the 2015 Subaru Outback, the 2015 Cannondale tandem bicycle, and the 2018 Mazda Miata.
What is worth noting—and what took me years to fully appreciate—is how deeply I bonded with each of these vehicles. While I owned them, each one felt irreplaceable. I named two of them, which only deepened the attachment and made the eventual parting more difficult. Yet every single one of them wore out. Every last one ended up more suited to a junkyard than a service bay. No amount of affection, maintenance, or repair could alter that trajectory. The entropy of physical things is non-negotiable.
The Body as Vehicle: Who, Then, Is the Driver?
Here is where the metaphor deepens into something far more interesting than a personal inventory of transportation.
In many spiritual and metaphysical traditions, the human body is understood not as the self but as the vehicle of the self—a temporary conveyance for something far less perishable. The Vedantic tradition names it the pranamaya kosha, the vital energy sheath surrounding pure consciousness. The ancient Egyptians distinguished the Ka from the Ba—the animating spirit from its physical housing. Taoism speaks of Qi flowing through the body’s meridians, much as current moves through wire.
And there is A Course in Miracles, which states plainly: “I am not a body. I am free. I am as God created me.”
What does that mean, exactly? If we accept this premise—even provisionally, as a philosophical thought experiment—then the body is not the driver. It is the car. It is the wire. It is the lamp. And consciousness, awareness, spirit—whatever name you prefer—is the current running through it.
The author Bruce Paullin, in his work on death and consciousness, uses this precise metaphor: “The screen is not the image projected upon it. The current is not the wire through which it moves. When the wire fails, the current does not cease.” Elsewhere, he frames the body as a “Christmas tree”—a structure of delicate ornaments held in place by an invisible electromagnetic field. Remove the tree, and the ornaments fall. But the underlying field? It does not disappear. It simply reorganizes.
This is the question that truly animates the vehicle metaphor: when the car is totaled, where does the driver go?
Modern neuroscience offers a curious data point. At the moment of physical death, the brain does not dim gradually like a fading signal. It surges. Researchers have documented a massive spike in high-frequency gamma oscillations—the very brainwaves associated with deep memory recall and heightened, integrated awareness. In other words, the final moments of the body’s life may represent not a closing, but a crescendo. Not an ending, but something closer to a launch.
Quantum physicist Robert Lanza’s Biocentrism goes further still, arguing that consciousness is not a product of the universe but its very foundation—and that a conscious being cannot, by definition, subjectively observe its own non-existence. If consciousness is the observer that creates the experience of reality, then the death of the body is not the death of the observer. It is, at most, the retirement of one particular instrument.
The Name on the Vehicle
Now consider this: you likely remember a car you once named. Perhaps it was an old, battered thing that had earned a personality through years of quirks and repairs. The naming changed everything—it made the car feel like a companion rather than a commodity, a who rather than a what. And when it finally died, the grief was disproportionate, wasn’t it? Because you had confused the vehicle with the driver.
Your parents did something similar when they named you.
That name—your name—arrived before you had any say in the matter. It was attached to your body, your face, your developing personality. And over decades, you became it. You identified with it so thoroughly that the boundary between the name and the named grew invisible. Your attachment to your own continuity, to your own survival, is not entirely different from the attachment you felt to that named, battered car you refused to trade in for years past its time.
Both attachments are understandable. Both are, in a philosophical sense, a case of mistaken identity.
Honoring the Vehicle While Knowing What It Is
None of this is an argument for neglect. Quite the opposite. You would not run a beloved car into the ground carelessly, especially one you depended on for all of life’s terrain. The body deserves the same stewardship. Keep it well-maintained. Get the necessary diagnostics. Fuel it with care, rest it properly, and do not ignore the warning lights.
But hold it with open hands.
Every vehicle I ever owned—tricycle, skateboard, motorcycle, automobile—followed the same arc. I acquired it, I used it, I maintained it, I bonded with it, and eventually I returned it to the earth. The body will follow the same arc. The “dust to dust” of Genesis is not poetic exaggeration—it is biochemistry and entropy operating exactly as designed. The great recycling that sustains all life on this planet depends, quite literally, on the return of used materials.
What the traditions disagree on—and what no empirical instrument has yet settled—is what happens to the driver when the vehicle is finally scrapped. Does the current dissipate? Does it seek another path, as electricity always does, toward the ground? Does it shift, as quantum language might suggest, from particle to wave—from a localized signal to something diffused across a wider bandwidth?
These are not rhetorical questions dressed up as conclusions. They are genuine openings.
The Road Beneath Every Road
Here is what I know from a long life of vehicles and the miles they carried me: the attachment was always real, and the loss was always survivable. Every vehicle I grieved the loss of was eventually replaced by something new, something with its own character and story. The journey continued. The driver persisted.
Enjoy your time on planet Earth. Honor your vehicle of consciousness—this extraordinary, temporary, biological miracle that allows you to perceive sunlight and music and the face of someone you love. Maintain it. Respect it. But do not be it.
You are the current. The wire will eventually fail. The current does not.
