Vineeto to Chrono: If that is what you are saying you have certainly hit the nail of the head – coming down to earth from lofty heights, embracing the very physicality of being alive, and as such also your mortality, is how you are able “to unreservedly say yes to being alive right now”.
Andrew: I am not savvy enough with my iPad to put this in my journal, but this is such a significant thing for me to embrace. It’s been in the forefront of this whole endeavour, with a powerful first hand, everyday experience of why the spiritual path is so addictive to the majority of the world.
Accepting death as final, the end, oblivion, IS accepting this is the only moment of being alive.
Scientifically, we have between 2 and 20 seconds from the last time our heart beats before our brain runs out of oxygen, we have a few minutes at most before there is no chance of reviving us. (link)
Hi Andrew,
I am pleased to read you say that. It is indeed vital to fully accept that I am mortal and that nothing will survive physical death.
Richard: It is a fact that I, as this body, am mortal. As such, I will die in due course … this heart will stop beating, these lungs will cease breathing, this brain will quit thinking. The flesh will decompose, if buried, or will be dispersed, if burnt, as smoke and ash. There could be nothing more final, more conclusive, more complete, of an ending to me than this. (…)
Human beings have various attitudes towards death. As far as it has been able to be ascertained, humans are the only creatures that are aware of their own demise. The ability to reflect upon one’s own death has been a source of inspiration to philosophers, theologians and their ilk down through the ages. To other people, death is a subject to be avoided, to be not thought about; it is a taboo topic for dinner-table conversation. It is not until a close friend or relative dies that they are brought face-to-face with their own mortality … and they usually endeavour to ‘get over it’ as soon as possible. A sure way to be told that one is morbid is to talk about death: to invoke an uneasy reaction, one needs only to ask if they have ever considered the ramifications of death; of no longer being alive; of not being a ‘human’; of not ‘being’ at all. Nevertheless, why avoid the subject? Surely it is of the utmost importance to explore all the unknown aspects of being a ‘human’ – especially those that bring trepidation – for therein lie the causes for not only one’s uneasiness about life, but all the problems that beset ‘humanity’. Anything that remains hidden will continue to influence one’s life in an unconscious way, continuously plaguing one’s every moment of being alive and affecting one’s state of well-being.
Death is viewed by most as a calamity, a tragedy. ‘I’, being non-material, cannot accept, let alone embrace, that which is physical, that which is actual. Mortality is a physical phenomenon; it is a fact to be met and understood. To act otherwise is a denial of the actual. This universe was amazingly able to give birth to me, it is marvellously capable of bearing me and will, eventually, wondrously manage to end me. This is the physical ‘scheme of things’ in this, the only universe there is … and this universe is so enormous in its scope, so grand in its order, so exquisite in its form, that it is sheer vanity and utter insolence to presume that birth and death is somehow ‘wrong’. With an attitude like that, no wonder people hate having to be here on earth. It is no wonder that they feel that they have to ‘get on with life’ and ‘make the best of things’ whilst waiting for death to release them. It is such a shame that billions of human beings are missing out on the unadulterated perfection of being fully alive; missing out on rejoicing in being here now; missing out on deriving immense pleasure at living this moment, here on earth.
There seems to be a general consensus among human beings that death is a mystery that one cannot penetrate, and that the ‘Mystery of Life’ will be revealed only after death. There, most say, lies ‘Peace and Ultimate Fulfilment’ … yet there is nowhere else but here and there is no time but now. Anything else than here at this place in infinite space – now at this moment in eternal time – exists only in an enthusiastic imagination … enthused by ‘me’, by ‘being’ itself. Any fear of the death of ‘me’ is an irrational reaction to the demise of an apparently enduring psychological and/or psychic entity. The ending of ‘me’ (the ‘death’ of ‘me’) is an autological non-event; ‘I’ do not actually exist in the first place. There is no actual ‘me’ to either ‘die’ or to have ‘Eternal Life’.
It all appears to be an exercise in futility to think about and feel into what is entailed in physical death (which is the guaranteed end of ‘being’) because the end of ‘being’, at physical death, can only ever be a speculation; it has to be experienced to know it. Just like one cannot know the taste of something until one eats it … so too is it with death as the end of ‘being’. Yet to wait for death will be leaving it too late to find out what it is to not ‘be’ … as death is oblivion of consciousness there will be no awareness of not ‘being’. The question is: can one experience the end of ‘being’ before this body dies and therefore penetrate into the ‘Mystery of Life’, in full awareness, and find that Ultimate Fulfilment … here on earth? [Emphasis added]. (Richard, AF List, No. 7, 25 Aug 1999)
Here is another way of Richard explaining why all metaphysical dreams of living forever have no basis in fact –
Respondent: Richard, you say [quote] ‘If it were not for physical death one could not be happy … let alone harmless’ [endquote]. How is that possible?
Richard: I have sometimes asked peoples of a ‘Jehovah’s Witness’ persuasion, when they come knocking on my door and showing me paintings of their imaginary paradise on earth after their god has annihilated 5,993,000,000 of the 6,000,000,000 human beings currently alive by treading them in a winepress, whether they have ever considered what it would be like in fact, rather than fancy, to be the flesh and blood body they are for ever and a day (locked into being a specific body-type, a female, for instance, endlessly giving birth to baby after baby for all eternity).
Which means for billions upon billions of years … and still more billions to come.
Respondent: I can understand that being locked as ‘identity’ (with all the sorrow and malice implied) for eternity as not desirable … but I don’t quite understand that the scenario to be the same for a person who is actually free from the human condition.
Richard: Only an identity, being forever locked-out of actuality, desires immortality … the very stuff of a flesh and blood body, being the same-same stuff as the stuff of the universe, is as old as the universe (which is eternal).
*
Respondent: How does it have anything to do with being happy and harmless?
Richard: It basically has to do with endurance and, therefore, seriousness.
Respondent: Can you please elaborate on this point?
Richard: Sure … this planet, indeed the entire solar system, is going to cease to exist in its current form about 4.5 billion years from now (or some-such figure). All these words – yours, mine, and others (all the dictionaries, encyclopaedias, scholarly tomes and so on) – will perish and all the monuments, all the statues, all the tombstones, all the sacred sites, all the carefully conserved/ carefully restored memorabilia, will vanish as if they had never existed … nothing will remain of any human endeavour (including yours truly).
Nothing at all … nil, zero, zilch.
Which means that nothing really matters in the long-term and, as nothing actually is of enduring importance (in this ultimate sense), it means that life can in no way be a serious business. [Emphases added]. (Richard, AF List, No. 66, 26 May 2005a)
Now when you combine this awareness of death being the end and that “nothing actually is of enduring importance” with the fact that “this is the only moment of being alive”, the only moment you can ever actively experience, then something profound can happen. You can allow yourself to slip out of your normal way of thinking and feeling, and experience the actual world as it is, for the first time.
P.S.: Don’t cut it short or dismiss this due to your conditioning to fail (link) – this is your journey to your destiny (peace on earth).
Cheers Vineeto