Chrono's Journal

[Kub933]

@Vineeto

Respondent: Is not the sense of being a human being tied up with the belief in permanence, i.e. the belief that ‘I’ am at the root of everything (as a permanent entity)?
Richard: As the (sensorial) ‘sense of being a human being’ is tied up with impermanence – as in mortality – you can only be referring to the intuitive ‘sense of being a human being’ (as in immortality) … the affective feeling of being a ‘presence’ inside the body (aka ‘being’ itself), in other words, as a psychological/ psychic entity (a metaphysical identity) rather than the sensitive feeling of being this body as a sensate/ material entity (a physical creature).
Hence spiritualism has it that, whilst the ego-self is impermanent, the soul-self is permanent and that ego-death, while the body is a living body, is essential to reveal who one really is – an immortal spirit-being – whereas actualism has that identity-death in toto (extinction) is essential to make apparent what one actually is (a mortal human being) … and therein lies the rub: as a spirit-being one is so very real, so very, very real at times, one is prepared to do virtually anything – virtually anything at all – than go blessedly into oblivion so that what is actually permanent can become apparent. (Richard, AF List, No. 54, 7 Nov 2003).

I find this topic very fascinating, it’s somewhat all back to front for ‘me’… I remember Richard wrote :

‘Being’ is the root-cause of the perceived tragedy of life. Life is seen to be tragic because it has death at the end; if it were not for death, according to the received ‘wisdom’, life would be good. In actuality, the concept of living forever, as a psychic entity, is the original cause of abject sorrow and malice … not extinction.

Me and Sonya have been watching the show Supernatural, it’s about 2 demon hunters essentially . Currently in the show one of the hunters made a deal with the devil, that in order to bring his brother back from the dead he would sell his soul, and that in precisely 1 year he would be sent to hell for eternity.

And actually this makes Richard’s point exactly, death as extinction does not have any of these kinds of problems associated with it. It is only because deep down ‘I’ feel and believe that ‘I’ am eternal that heavens and hells have to be invented to continue on ‘my’ story, for eternity.

But it is exactly that which is what ‘I’ find so terrifying about death, that since ‘I’ am (apparently) immortal then ‘I’ will simply discard this body, but then where do ‘I’ go? Is it into some abyss where ‘I’ will exist alone for eternity? etc. Essentially ‘I’ cannot conceive of not ‘being’ so ‘I’ imagine ‘myself’ ‘being’ even past this body’s physical death, which of course cannot happen.

So this is where the back to front thing comes in… In that accepting mortality would actually be a release for ‘me’, which is not how ‘I’ typically would experience it.