From: utzoo!decvax!harpo!floyd!cmcl2!philabs!sdcsvax!sdchema!djo
Newsgroups: net.philosophy
Title: Re: Immortality and fear.
Article-I.D.: sdchema.422
Posted: Thu Feb 17 13:03:52 1983
Received: Sat Feb 19 12:50:35 1983
References: sdccsu3.302 sdccsu3.303

The following as a sort of rambling on the question of why we should
not be afraid to die.

We do not come into this world, we grow out of it.  Here I am because
variety is the spice of life.  But the funny thing is that we have not
been brought up to feel that way.  Instead of feeling that we, each
one of us, are something that the whole realm of being is doing, we
feel that we are something that has come into that realm of being as a
stranger when we were born and we think when we die, that is just
going to be that.  Some people console themselves with the idea that
they are going to heaven, or that they are going to be reincarnated,
or something.  For most people the thing that haunts them is that
when they die they will go to sleep aand never wake up.  They are going
to be locked in a safe deposit box of darkness forever.  But these ideas
all depend upon a false notion of what is oneself.  We have been taught
to dread death as if that were the end of the show, and nothing will
happen afterwards.  Therefore wecome to be afraid of all things that 
might bring about death: pain, sickness, suffering.  If you don't
know, if you are not vividly aware of the fact that you are something
the entire cosmos is doing, you have no real joy in life.  You're just
a bundle of anxiety mixed up with guilt.  When we bring children into
the world we play awful games with them.  Instead of saying, "How do
you do, welcome to the human race.  Now, my dear, we are playing some 
very complicated games and these are the rules.  I want you to learn
and understand them, and when you get older you might be able to think
of better rules...", we say, "Well, so here you are, maybe when you
grow up a bit you will be acceptable, but until then you should be seen
and not heard.  You haave to be educated and trained until you are
human."  So these attitudes are inculcated into us.  The way you start
out is liable to be the way you finish.  And so people feel that the
universe is presided over by this awful kind of God-the-Father Parent
who, yes, has our best interests at heart and is loving, but whom the
lord loveth he chasteneth.  This leads to a sensation of being a 
stranger in earth, a momentary flash of consciousness between two
eternal blacknesses, and therefore in constant contention with
everything.  Not only people, but also with earth and the waters.
Essentially people don't feel that the external world is a part of
them.  The external world is your own body extended.