What is death?
How does the mechanical become alive? Because, really, a body is quite mechanical, but left on its own doesn't move much.
Like a car, once the ignition is turned over, there are certain energy burning functions that seem to be on automatic, given enough fuel.
Also like a car, it seems like someone needs to be driving it. Who or what makes the decision, provides the will?

Even in a "self-driving" car, someone has made the decision as to where it will go. If its systems fail, we may say that the car has died, but we don't actually think it was a living entity.

Yes, the body is more complex, and our relationship with it is more intimate. And we attach special significance to the brain. The delicate bio-electric chemistry varies with our moods, activities, focus and with our state of awareness and degree of aliveness.

But what causes living? Is it simply a combination of mechanical processes? And conversely, is death simply the ceasing of all these processes?

Individuals who have experienced death and been revived, or those who have been near death, experience a sense of being outside of their bodies.
Sometimes this happens in other extraordinary states as well, such as when a performing artist, feeling a closeness with the audience, actually experiences
occupying the entire space of the venue. The spirit is the driver, the creator. The one who decides, and directs the doing. The brain may react in response or support of the being. It is not the driver. An individual is a spiritual being, the body, including the brain, only responds.

When the scientist, who can not believe his own perceptions, espouses mechanics as the cause of living, he only preaches his "gospel."
"Even the 'mechanist' and 'materialist' of today sound much like the priests of old as they spread their dogma." L. Ron Hubbard.

@waytohappinesstampa www.thewaytohappiness.org