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).
Kuba: I find this topic very fascinating, it’s somewhat all back to front for ‘me’ … I remember Richard wrote:
Richard: ‘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.
Hi Kuba,
I see you returned to the same topic that you started more than a year ago –
Kuba: I guess it is somewhat funny that ‘I’ can feel resentful towards this universe for the fact of mortality, for not ‘getting enough time’ and yet ‘I’ am busy wasting each moment anyways.
Furthermore it is this fact of mortality which makes life precious anyways, so what is it that ‘I’ am asking for? An eternity to suffer?
I find this whole thing quite fascinating, what is kind of hanging in front of me now is – is it that mortality is actually a gift and not a curse? (15 Jul 2024)
And again:
Kuba: And if ‘I’ was to get ‘my’ way and things were of a lasting importance, that is not a good outcome at all, life would be a serious business. And if ‘I’ was to live eternally, what about those other human beings that are yet to be born, they would never get to experience the joy of being alive. How weird that the thing which is felt/ believed to be at core what is ‘wrong’ with the universe – mortality – is what in the grand scheme of things ensures a happiness and harmlessness for all. (1 May 2025)
And yet you still say “it’s somewhat all back to front for ‘me’”, in other words ‘you’ still seem to look for a resolution in the real world, which perhaps is hidden in fantasy and supernatural fiction? Somewhere deep down ‘you’ want to live forever, else why be object to ‘my’ extinction?
Kuba: 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.
Here is the reason –
Richard: …because of ‘being’ itself an atheistic materialist cannot help but be, to some degree at least, metaphysical in outlook … (Richard, AF List, No. 27h, 2 Apr 2004)
Kuba: 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. (link)
Something far more is needed than “accepting mortality”, accepting that you will physically die one day. What is required is to inquire with utter sincerity into the spiritual dream of being an immortal soul. Upon such utterly genuine inquiry you might come to see, to apperceptively understand, that ‘you’ are standing in the way of perfection and innocence becoming apparent –
Richard: ‘(…) by ‘my’ very nature ‘I’ am defiled; by ‘my’ very nature ‘I’ am corrupt through and through; by ‘my’ very nature ‘I’ am perversity itself. No matter how sincerely and earnestly one tries to purify oneself, one can never succeed completely. The last little bit always eludes perfecting. By ‘my’ very nature ‘I’ am rotten at the innermost core’. (Richard, AF List, No. 7, 22 Aug 1999).
When you let this understanding penetrate the very core of your ‘being’ something amazing starts to happen.
Cheers Vineeto