What Steve Jobs Saw

Maybe I missed it.  Maybe you did, too. Maybe not much was made of them, and surely they should have been as well heard and seen as all the accomplishments which were repeated over and over.

 Steve Jobs' last words on this earth. 

According to the eulogy of his sister, the author Mona Simpson, as he looked past his family, and drew his last breath Jobs said,

 "OH WOW, OH WOW, OH WOW." 

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/30/opinion/mona


So, what's it all about? What did he see?

Let me step backward in this meandering.  I have heard the word "wow".  I have used the word "wow." But I thought I might peruse a couple of definitions for a bit of a foundation.  Here's one, right from my microsoft word thesaurus (sorry Steve, never got to an apple computer). The word is an interjection used to express surprise, admiration, wonder or pleasure. It is also a transitive verb where the speaker records being impressed or delight in a person or thing being presented.

So, somehow Mr. Jobs was surprised, admiring, feeling of wonder of something, or someone he saw beyond the people he loved on this earth. He saw SOMETHING.

Jobs told his biographer (who pulled no punches about his subject's talents or frailties) Isaacson that it was a fifty-fifty shot about whether God existed. So, this wasn't a faith groupie. He had been, if anything, a Buddhist, which, though most attractive for many of the areas which transect the sectarian, is not God based.

There are those who would say that near death and end of life experiences, things like tunnels of light or seeing loved ones, or God Himself, is explained by simple brain chemistry, something I seem to remember about the occipital lobe that governs our vision(s). Thus, what Jobs saw, he did not in fact see, except in some evolutionary protective mechanism softening the flipping of the switch to nothingness. (Jobs did not like off swtichs as it happens).

But equally possible is that Jobs discovered the God of Whom he doubted until the very last. He was impressed by the brain's illusion, or he was impressed by the visage of God Himself. Which would I, or you, devoutly wish?  Really, you'd rather that there was no God who loved you so much He prepared eternity for you?