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.