Death

RICHARD: It is the very fact of physical death – everybody alive today on this planet will eventually be dead – which ensures happiness and harmlessness … if everything alive today were to all-of-a-sudden endure forever then everything would matter in the long-term (everything would be of enduring importance (in this ultimate sense) and, therefore, life would be a serious business.

RICHARD: … this naive boy from the farm writing all these millions of words, this big kid with adult sensibilities tapping with two fingers at this keyboard, is perpetually aged circa 14 years (à la the ‘Peter Pan’ chronicles for example) until physical death.

If it were not for physical death one could not be happy … let alone harmless.

RICHARD: It is all part and parcel of the process whereby this universe can experience itself as a sensate and reflective human being: as such the universe can know itself apperceptively. What one does is acquiesce to life by embracing death … one wholeheartedly dedicates oneself to being here as the universe’s experience of itself right now: it is the unreserved !YES! to being alive as this flesh and blood body.

RICHARD: It is the very fact of physical death – everybody alive today on this planet will eventually be dead – which ensures happiness and harmlessness … if everything alive today were to all-of-a-sudden endure forever then everything would matter in the long-term (everything would be of enduring importance (in this ultimate sense) and, therefore, life would be a serious business.

RICHARD: The absolutely undeniable fact of physical death means that, in an ultimate sense, nothing really matters: as nothing lasts forever (matter arranges and rearranges itself endlessly totally wiping out whatever came before) there is nothing worth dying for. Hence playfulness … I could not be solemn if my life depended upon it.

RICHARD: […] the fact of death means that, in an ultimate sense, nothing really matters: hence playfulness. Also, the universe, being infinite and eternal, means that eternity is already always here … now.

The moment of the death of ‘me’ was so real that it was experienced as being that one was going into the grave physically … that is how real ‘I’ am.

RICHARD: Incidentally, the ‘being’ who possessed this flesh and blood body all those years ago found it quite disturbing when he realised, one fine afternoon after the birth of ‘his’ fourth and last child, that to be born, to learn to walk, talk, and so on, to go to school, to get a job/obtain a career, to get married/be in a relationship, to acquire a home, to have children, to teach them to walk, talk, and so on, to send them to school, to have them get a job/obtain a career, to ensure they get married/have a relationship, to have them acquire a home, to encourage them have children, to see them teach their children to walk, talk, and so on – and so on and so on almost ad infinitum – was nothing other than an instinctual treadmill, an inborn/inherent conveyor belt which carried generation after generation inexorably from birth to death, stretching all the way back from an indeterminate inception and heading towards an open-ended conclusion … and all for what?

VINEETO: I am currently attempting to understand the process of approaching death, the combination of self-immolation and doing what is happening. I have always been puzzled by the apparent paradox of the fact that only ‘I’ can bring about my demise and the question how the last bit of ‘me’ is going to disappear. This is how I experience it now –

Richard: It happens on its own in that, as ‘I’ am the instinctual passions and the instinctual passions are ‘me’, there is no way that ‘I’ can end ‘me’. What ‘I’ do is that ‘I’ deliberately and consciously and with knowledge aforethought set in motion a ‘process’ that will ensure ‘my’ demise. What ‘I’ do, voluntarily and willingly, is to press the button – which is to acquiesce – which precipitates an oft-times alarming but always thrilling momentum that will result in ‘my’ inevitable self-immolation. The acquiescing is that one thus dedicates oneself to being here as the universe’s experience of itself now … it is the unreserved !YES! to being alive as this flesh and blood body. Peace-on-earth is the inevitable result of such devotion because it is already here … it is always here now. ‘I’ and/or ‘me’ was merely standing in the way of the always already existing perfect purity from becoming apparent by sitting back and moaning and groaning about the inequity of it all (as epitomised in ‘I didn’t ask to be born’). How can one be forever sticking one’s toe in and testing out the waters and yet expect to be able to look at oneself in the mirror each morning with dignity. The act of initiating this ‘process’ – acquiescence – is to embrace death.

RICHARD: Okay then … generally speaking, an ‘aversion’ to be going about one’s everyday/ workaday life with a general feeling of well-being (a.k.a. ‘feeling good’), for the remainder of one’s life, stems from a basic resentment at being alive – of being in the sublunar realm as a sensitive, affective and cognitive human being with people as-they-are in the world as-it-is – as is epitomised by such expressive plaints as ‘I didn’t ask to be born’ or ‘It’s all just a sick joke’ or ‘Life’s a bitch with death at the end’ and so on.

RICHARD: Properly speaking the word ‘altruistic’ is not a word for a feeling but a word for behaviour or action that benefits others at the expense of self (altruism is the very antithesis of selfism), such as fighting to the death to protect the young, defend the group or secure the territory, and as such could evoke any number of feelings … such as fear, thrill, courage, excitement, exhilaration, euphoria and so on.