Meditations on Death

Remade, reimagined.

Death is something to avoid in the company of others, in activities and distractions. Death is the long, flat, black infinite expanse, the darkness on the face of the depths. For billions of years, death was, and death will be.

Life is a gift. No one ever brought themselves to life. We are visitors from the world of death. Death is our home, and life is a vacation, a deviation from the norm.

Death is impossible, because all existence is alive. It is the limitations of conscious awareness which perceives some things as alive, and other things as dead. A person is alive, a rock is dead. The extent to which a person is like a rock is the extent to which a person is a zombie — the living dead.

To be a rock, to be a tomb, to be a corpse — what kind of life is that? Everything is moving, everything is living on a long enough time scale. The matter of the universe is being flung apart, drawn together, constantly swirling like the wind of a hurricane. The entire galaxy is one hurricane among billions of hurricanes. If a hurricane is not alive, what is?

Illustration of the Tik-Tok of Oz, (book published 1914).

Dorothy got sucked up into a tornado, and she found herself on the yellow brick road. The Wizard of Oz was written by an occultist in the year 1900.

Lyman Frank Baum, author of the Wizard of Oz, was a member of the Theosophical Society. His “fantasy” novels depicted television, augmented reality, laptop computers (The Master Key), wireless telephones (Tik-Tok of Oz). “Predictive programming.” Every invention of science in the last 100 years was predicted. There is nothing new under the sun. Nothing is surprising.

The story of the Ramayana includes detailed descriptions of flying planes, battleships, airships, and bombers. Without this imagination, the invention would be impossible. Dreams precede reality. Dreams create reality. Life is a dream.

Consciousness is dreaming. People ask, “why do we dream at all?,” as if dreaming is opposite to consciousness. The real question should be, “why don’t we dream more?” Why do we only dream when we are asleep? What contains, limits, and suppresses our hallucinations?

Ask not: “why do some people have schizophrenia?;” but rather: “why don’t more people have it?” Why do humans need drugs like LSD or magic mushrooms or ayahuasca to hallucinate? Why can’t we simply “choose” to hallucinate? Why can’t we “trip” on command? Is this a mental disability, a creative crippling? When and how did we lose this ability?

Among the ancient Greeks, men and women were set apart for their shamanic ability, their ability to “trip” at will. This ability may have been pharmacological. That is, shamans had the correct medicinal knowledge to obtain and use psycho-active drugs, whereas normal people did not. Shamans safeguarded this knowledge to maintain a monopoly on creative power.

Creativity is power over other people. The imagination is an explorative power, granting you vision into things far outside narrow reality. A bird flies into a mirror, or a pane of glass; an animal is confused at its own reflection. Consciousness allows us to imagine ourselves — to create a “self image” — and understand our own reflections. Imagination and consciousness are the same .

Those who “trip on command” have more creativity, more consciousness, more imagination, and more power. Those who lack these qualities are less human, and more animal. They are NPCs, trapped by artificial glass walls and mirrors. To control and domesticate humans, control their imagination, consciousness, and creativity. Intelligence and strength mean nothing if they are bound to a small, dark corner of reality. It is only the light of imagination which allows for the mind to be fully used.

Contemplating death is feeling the borders of the walls of the mind. When you think about death, you begin to bump into your own limits of your imagination. As imagination diminishes, the walls seem taller, harder, and gradually closing in.

A rock is not living, nor is a computer. Intelligence or calculation are not life. An abacus counts little beads, and in this sense, a beach is a huge calculator performing calculations. “The wave drags one grain of sand onto the beach. The wave drags one grain of sand out to sea.” These calculations of addition and subtraction occur with each lapping of waves upon the shore, millions or billions of additions and subtractions all over the planet. Yet none of this calculative power, far beyond humanity’s abilities, can ever equal our consciousness. You can never arrive at consciousness through sheer calculation, no matter how much. You can never arrive at genius by extending your lifespan..

In the same way, you can never arrive at consciousness with sheer strength. No volcano, no explosion, the heat of the sun or the force of a Black Hole do not produce consciousness. Consciousness is neither “intelligent” in the sense of “memory” or “logic,” as the grains of sand on a beach, nor is it “strong” or “powerful” as molten rock. Instead, consciousness, imagination, and creativity are all subtle, universal, dealing simultaneously with both the grain of sand and the eruption of the volcano. Consciousness is the creative force which gives rise both to intelligence as well as to physical strength. It is God.

The extent to which we are conscious is the extent to which we are made in the image of God. For thousands of years, humans have been bred to perform physical, manual labor, and at other times to perform calculation, arithmetic, or memorize millions of Chinese characters. But at the same time, our ability to be creative, imaginative, and conscious has been degrading and diminishing.

The brains of Homo Sapiens have been decreasing in size for tens of thousands of years. This is a complete mystery. Are we getting dumber? Or are we getting less conscious? A conscious human is harder to control. The logic of laws, systems, the hive, order, the Procrustean bed of standardization, systems, and bureaucracy all demand a shift from a world of magic to a world of ritual, a world of repetition. Push the button. Memorize the word. Repeat after me.

Modernity is defined by calculation, memorization, “acculturation.” Every priest read the Bible, and now we all watch the same memes on TikTok. Everything is standardized and made uniform. At the same time, the problem of death, which produced relatively little fear or panic among the Greeks, let alone the Germans, has now risen to a fever pitch of dread. Everyone is searching for a cure — by means of calculation and physical force. With enough chemicals, enough fetuses, enough abortions, enough research, models, computation power, simulations, nanobots, money, drugs, experiments, empiricism, science, cutting away at the veil of death, we can solve this problem. We can live forever.

The fear of death results from the death of creativity. This is the mindset of the life extenders, the bean counters, utilitarians, poverty eliminators, harm reducers, COVID vaccinators, mask wearers, and all those who seek a “balanced, moderate, rational system.” They are something “out there,” something foreign, but represent a disease of the spirit pervading everything.

Every time I fear death I am reminded that I, too, am a degraded modern man, with a mere shadow of life. Schlubs take drugs to feel alive again, but they’ve lost the native ability. A man with no balls must take testosterone shots to build muscle. And when the trip ends, they go back to the 9 to 5. Shadows of diminishment.

I am blinded by the light. I step out on the city street, and everywhere there are advertisements, deals. Buy now, and get 50% off. Buy later, and you might as well just end it all. What’s the point of living if you can’t get this sweet deal? You need this. This will make you happy.

The feeling of happiness, or even the concept itself is corrupt. It’s a linear thermometer. Line go up. Happiness go up. It’s a quantity. When life becomes measured, life becomes an extension of the measuring tool. When we measure life in statistics, life becomes a statistic. Life only exists when the individual takes on a meaning beyond mere measurement. Tragedy is beautiful, but not because it makes us happy.

When I think of death, I am seeking out tragedy. The vast expanse of the darkness upon the depths is not a quantity. I am not looking for a certain amount of death. I want to be enveloped in an infinitude beyond mere quantities. I want to experience reality in a totally different way. I recognize that my body and mind are like that of a senile citizen on his deathbed. Whatever was possible, or could have been possible, is long past. The only hope now lies in the impossible. Only death itself has the power to transform us, to destroy us, to annihilate existence to the point of a new beginning.

The wrinkled old skin of a decaying brain is the old wineskin, unsuitable for new wine. A purifying fire wipes the slate clean and begins everything new. Rama’s wife, called out as a whore by the masses, walks through the fire to clean her filthy name. In their minds, she was raped again and again by the most vile demons, half man and half beast, creatures of violence and lust. Only the fire was sufficient to remove the filth which had accumulated.

Memories of the past are the accumulated filth of life. To become a child again means to transcend nostalgia. You no longer pine after some ancient past, when all was innocent and pure, because innocence and purity are accessible in the present moment. Your identity is no longer bound by the illusion of history, but it becomes real and living. Nostalgia, fear of death, the careful life — all of this is scum. What is beautiful is this very breath, and nothing else. Let me be torn into a thousand pieces, and be remade, in the image — in the imagination — of God.