Death Matters

Introduction: Why Death Matters

Death has been the unknown, the mystery of the living since time immemorial.
Countless views and doctrines have been developed to explain death, and in so doing the
purpose of life as well. It, being the unknown, has frightened and confounded the minds
of countless people who try to fathom its immensity and incomprehensibility.
Institutions have been developed, using death as a key means of using that
apprehension towards the mystery of death, for control and power here and now. Life and
death are inextricably linked in more ways than one; saying you know the answer to the
mystery of death gives you immense power in life. Also, you could not have life without
death, death without life.
The intention of this book will be to open the doors of perception as it were, to
see, not only the truth of death, but also the truth of life as well. We will explore death
and life as a process of the universe, as an inescapable truth of life, and what that means
for the individual, as well as death as a means to greater vitality in the intellect of the
mind. The purpose of this book is to expand our understanding of death, and the matters
of death that concern every living being, human or not, to see that it is not something to
fear, but something to be embraced.
Death, when looked at irrespective of the human concept—whether that be a
ghoulish figure with a skeletal face and a black cowl, or a mysterious force that causes
everything to deteriorate, whatever the idea may be—the truth is that death is the key to
beauty; it is the force that causes one event to end, allowing another to begin and
therefore compound of the universe. Death is essential: death matters.
Without such a force, the universe would never have been born in the first place,
we can be sure of that. The first moment of existence would be all that exists forever.
Without the passing or dying of time, all that we are and all that exists could not have
grown into being from the first instant.
So, because death is so essential to existence and life, why is it that we fear it so,
and why is it that so many cultures so deeply instill the fear of life’s end and deterioration
into the mind? No other animal fears death, as we do; no other animal dwells on it,
though they instinctually strive to survive. Why is this so?
I will try to adequately answer these questions and more as the book progresses.

Chapter 1: Punishment and Paradise

Religious institutions across the globe have used the afterlife as a means to
restrict the impulsive behavior of mankind. Whether this is for better or for worse is up
for debate, and presumably always will, but the fact that this occurs is not up for debate;
religions and religious institutions, without exception, include some form of afterlife
whereupon the person will be punished or whatsoever for their actions in life.
The question becomes whether this afterlife exists in the first place, but then also
whether this promise of punishment or reward actually works to diminish the sins of
people. It may well work for some people, but not for others; or it may work, but not
without instilling intense anxiety in people, causing suffering in their daily life; or it may
not work, and cause people to do the opposite, to spite this punishment, or cause the
person to believe they are a lost cause, and may as well do whatever they want since they
know their fate is already sealed.
Further, if this idea is carried into the opposite direction, that people believe that
some form of paradise awaits them, it then permits them to do whatever their holy book
may vaguely describe as the way to that paradise, and in so doing perform acts of
kindness and good for their fellow man, or acts of harm. However, what this paradise
ultimately does in the mind is to, by spoken and unspoken rationalization, turn the world
in which we live into a waiting room to that paradise, and even permits it to be a hellish
place. Who cares anyway, this world is unimportant, what is important is that paradise
afterwards.
The problem that either proposition will inevitably develop is a nasty world for us
to live in. The small amount of good that the conditions for entering paradise entail is
overshadowed by the immense negativity that it inadvertently creates in the real world.
Paradise or Punishment, the notion will be destructive.
Rather than an event that we will eventually come to, it is only when death is
viewed as an activity, which is always taking place—as the passing of time—that we
allow for the progress and improvement of the conditions of the living world to take
place, and in so doing, allow the present moment to become the paradise that we would
want to see in that after life. Afterlife, in this sense, is a rebirth that takes place in the
individual, and consequentially in the society, after this activity of death is allowed to
take place.
In this world, law more than religious dogma is the system that impedes the
supposed chaos of mankind. Law promises nothing objectively, but subjectively it
promises the same things as religion, and fails to provide them just as well; it promises
punishment, but under such failed systems as today’s, with millions incarcerated for petty
crimes, and many psychopaths and other more dastardly criminals getting fat and rich,
where is the justice of laws punishment; and law also promises paradise through the
promise of punishment, the idea being that if people know they will be punished, they
wont commit crime—well the problem is that a) people don’t necessarily know they will
get caught or think about that while they are committing the crime, and b) that the
paradise is then reliant on prison systems being fed with people.
The more things government makes illegal, the more people will be incarcerated.
It’s simple. However, the premise of paradise and punishment under the law requires that
the people take the system of law seriously; it must be revered and be shown to work
effectively. The result of this agreement is a prison society, in which the government
makes more and more laws under the misguided precept that this will cause order (by
instilling the fear of punishment in the people), and the resulting increase of incarceration
both tells the government officials that its working, and that they need to step up their
efforts because crime is somehow increasing (for they fail to see or willfully ignore this
process as it is happening), all for the subjective promise of paradise on earth, when in
fact they are creating a world of punishment and imprisonment.
Yet another example of this is that of the corporate system. The subjective
promise of the corporate world is to create a paradise of satisfaction and fulfilled desires.
The punishment of this system is the lack of having that comes with non-participation of
the system (of course, this punishment is only punishment to those indoctrinated to
believe in the system in the first place; people who are not jaded by flashy trinkets would
not see having-not as a form of punishment, but their perspective is a choice; without
choice, having not is indeed punishment, but so is the lack of choice in the first place,
indoctrination therefore is punishment as well).
The problem of the subjective promise of paradise by corporate leadership is, as
in the previous examples, that it gives the opposite effect paradoxically. People
indoctrinated by this system are usually idiots, and willfully ignorant of the world around
them. The paradise proposed by this order is one of, “you can have whatever you like,”
and “everything will be easier if you buy our product.” Now, the problem with this is that
this causes paralysis of the mind, through disuse. People no longer have to think under
such conditions, and their behavior is at the whim of their baser desires.
Worse still, consider the culture of fear that this is creating overall. These
institutions are sources for anxiety, fueled by the fear of either punishment, or the desire
to be worthy of paradise. The actual pursuit of perfection is more destructive than the
pursuit of perfection without the desire to actually achieve it.
The resultant world is a hell on earth, where the people know nothing, and the
people who do are doomed to a life worse than hell—at least you can know for sure that
in hell you will be in union with those suffering with you, in this kind of world, everyone
around you is basically drooling from the mouth, and real friendships are few and far
between. And those who are indoctrinated are too stupid to know they are living a hellish
life, but the symptoms are there if they would open their eyes to see them: failed
relationship after failed relationship, unwarranted hatred and aggravation, confusion,
extreme health issues, quoting others instead of forming ones own opinion, a disinterest
in worldly affairs, impaired memory, etcetera.
The fact is, this paradise that is usually subjectively promised, inevitably results in
the inadvertent punishment of the individual, and therefore the society as a whole. The
problem is not the active striving for improvement and progress towards paradise; it is
when the idea or promise becomes all that it is, and the actual legitimacy of the activity
itself is lost, that the promise of paradise becomes a problem.
We become slaves to paradise, because the promise of either paradise or
punishment causes us to stop thinking critically. When punishment or paradise is the
choice, there is no room for consideration, no room to be critical. Living decency then, is
indecent when the question (why) is absurd, because to question the system is to live
outside of the system, and to live outside of the system is, as it was in the dark ages:
heresy, profanity, obscenity, etcetera.
Ultimately, this process of punishment and paradise are because of a fear, a fear
of the unknown, and a fear of the shadow of our own selves. The fear of the unknown
causes us to desire an answer, any answer, and the answer that is provided or forced upon
us is either punishment or paradise: punishment of the behavior caused by ignorance of
the shadow, or behavior that is judged as worthy of paradise, causing us to ignore the
shadow and focus upon superficial behavior. The process is thus turned into a cycle, and
in so being is perpetual unless we see this cycle as pointless and destructive, and choose
to find out for ourselves what the real answer is.
And so if the aim of life is not to avoid punishment or achieve paradise, what is
the aim? Instead of the pursuit of paradise and ignorance of the world around you, the
aim of life is to learn how to die, psychologically. Instead of the fearful avoidance of
punishment, the aim of life is to find the courage to think for yourself against conformity:
learn to find your own voice.
The punishment of the fear of punishment is far greater than the punishment that
is promised by whatever institution. The paradise that comes into view, that was always
in front of you, when, in the confusion of the unknown and psychological death, you
open your eyes, is greater than the paradise promised by whatever institution. The truth is
always greater than the lie and the life that is created by the world of the lie.

Death and the Mind

However, yet another facet of this paradigm of afterlife (whether that be life
engaged in the system, and afterlife therefore being life after that engagement such as
work, or whether that is everything in the life of humanity that is said and done, and
afterlife therefore being after life itself, or whether that is life as a physical process, and
therefore afterlife as an end to that individual process), is that we psychologically get
pleasure and a sense of superiority in our knowledge that we will be praised while others
will be punished by this process. That is not to say that this is the case for everyone, but it
is a fact that this happens, and it’s a contributing factor to why this process exists in the
first place.
The reason such a response is possible, is not because it is in human nature
necessarily, because this would be a psychopathic characteristic. The reason it is possible
is because of the cultural mode that the modern age instills; it is a selfish mindset,
encouraged by the systems in place (punishment and paradise), and developed by the
think tanks that govern policy in government and corporations alike. It is characterized by
a general dislike of the other, or the unknown.
This dislike of the unknown is also not the natural response of mankind, it is a
cultural response, which is instilled at an early age by the corporate systems, and then
exploited by the very same systems in place to gain profits, and public compliance. To
fear or dislike the unknown is then beyond death, into anything that is unknown to you.
Yet somehow to be ignorant is more praise worthy in some of society than to have real
knowledge; “I mean if you are going to have some knowledge, please, for the sake of
decency just let it be frivolous knowledge.”
The conundrum then, is that people are willfully ignorant of most of the world,
actively avoiding useful and powerful knowledge, and then they are trained to fear what
the unknown; they end up fearing the whole damn world! People are more interested in
knowledge that will help them in social situations than to know things that will help them
in real life, or to seek the mystery of reality.
The interesting thing is that this mindset of willful ignorance is only a recent
phenomenon in social dynamics—maybe fifty or so years this has been the case, maybe
less. It was a convergence of two social groups that caused this, as far as could be
discerned; one is the pothead that rose out of the seventies, the other is the evangelical
Christian group that rose to power in the eighties. Both groups rose out of circumstances
of the times, and both groups feed off of one another. They are two massive groups, and
feed into the left and right paradigm of the political structure. Both groups though, are
willfully ignorant of the world, and of one another.
A flaw, which is beholden to most every ideology, is the idea of personal life after death.
The idea that the person, the ego, will live on after death is in fact a belief that the ego is
eternal, and therefore god. The identification of the spirit with the system based in the
physical, displays the materialist view, which is skewed into spirituality—all physical
things come into being from another, and pass into another, they are eternal in that sense,
but what passes is gone forever; this is what makes that thing beautiful, its impermanence
is its perfection. That each life is here for but a moment in the scheme of universal time is
what makes each life priceless and glorified.
Similarly, the beauty of the unknown is that it is unknowable, because the endless
pursuit of it, though without horizon, has the potential to become endlessly clearer with
attention, endlessly beautiful with investigation.
The inherent flaw of thinking or believing the ego is the spirit dashes all truly
spiritual inquiry, and tarnishes any insight thereafter. When the person dies, what lives on
is what they aught to have identified with from the beginning: their consciousness. That
is the truly eternal aspect of our personality, which has absolutely no ego or mind in it at
all, it is not fragmented or limited in any way.
The question can then be asked, why is my consciousness limited? The reason is
that the physical apparatus called the body or brain, is limited, and therefore can only
receive a limited consciousness, filtered by the constraints of energy output, and total
mass. Then also, we should be keen to recognize that if consciousness or god were to
want an experience, totally different from its own, wouldn’t it design the creature or
conduit in such a way that the infinite consciousness were restricted, allowing separation
to occur—something totally incomprehensible and interesting to it.