Church of the Churchless

How to cheat death -- without religion

Religions offer up a damn good deal on death: have faith, do what you're told, and you won't die.

If this was really true, I'd sign up in a heartbeat, since then I wouldn't have to worry about what will happen after my last one. Which appears likely to be nothing... death being the absence of living.

But there are worse things than dying and not existing any more. I'd rank the possibilities in this order of preference:

(1) Die and live on pleasantly in another form ("heaven").
(2) Die and cease to exist.
(3) Die and live on horribly in another form ("hell").

Most of us have experienced pain, physical or psychological, that was so extreme, at some point we'd choose death over life if the suffering persisted. Knowing this, religions shrewdly use a good cop/bad cop strategy in marketing their belief wares to potential converts.

The joys of heaven await the faithful. The terrors of hell await the skeptics.

So it isn't surprising that most people in the world accept a promise of salvation from one religion or another. That's the easy way to go.

However, only if you don't think about the promise (better termed a scam) very deeply. Because obviously there's no way to know whether you've cheated death until after the game of life has stopped being played.

Thus no one --repeat, no one -- has ever confirmed for himself or herself a religion's claim that death is the gateway to more life. This claim has to be taken on faith: believe now and get the evidence later.

Well, to hell with that.

Driving around this afternoon, I heard part of an interview with Barbara Enrenreich, who has written a book decrying the relentless promotion of positive thinking in America.

She said that she's in favor of neither positive nor negative thinking, but rather realistic thinking. Excellent advice.

Religions want us to have warm and fuzzy notions of a fantasized afterlife (positive thinking), while fearing the hellish consequences if we don't have faith in the fantasy (negative thinking). 

There's another option: accepting that death is real, but not dwelling on death either positively or negatively.

In this way, death can be cheated honestly -- by not playing the heaven game, the hell game, or the "holy fuck I'm going to die and never exist again!" game. Don't play any game with death. Ignore it.

Easy to say, you may be thinking. But hard to do if you've got a life-threatening illness, or if a loved one has passed away.

Admitted. Sort of.

Yes, it may be hard to break a longstanding habit of pondering death either positively or negatively by envisioning what might happen after someone takes their last breath. However, it isn't difficult to focus on living while we're alive.

All we have to do is do it. Live. Here and now. Not there and then.

Some years back a woman told me a story about her husband's fatal brain cancer. She said that it attacked a part of his brain which controlled his fear of death. So he knew he was dying. And it didn't bother him a bit.

"Sounds like a great way to go," I told her.

Another great way to go is to live life fully, passionately, and whole-heartedly. Then, die. On-off. No mixing up of life and death. No premature dying by envisioning either a pleasant or unpleasant afterlife.

What happens after death (or doesn't happen) will happen. Or, not. 

We cheat death by walking away from the heaven/hell playing table. Eternal non-existence doesn't bother us either, because for now we exist -- thereby giving the finger to non-existence. 

If death has the last laugh, that's fine. We won't be around to be the butt of the joke.

Julian Barnes deals with death...irreligiously

The prospect (what a comforting word, so much better than "certainty") of dying can scare me to death.

So I just had to read Julian Barnes' book, "Nothing to Be Frightened Of." Because it's theme is death, and I want to believe that the title is true.

Barnes is a terrific writer. I don't want to summarize some favorite quotations from his book. I want to share them as wonderfully written.

So, here they are. Enjoy.

-----------------------------------------
Julian Barnes:

I don't believe in God, but I miss Him.

"What's all this about death, by the way?" she continued. I explained that I didn't like the idea of it.

Hadn't Camus said that the proper response to life's meaninglessness was to invent rules for the game, as we had done with football?

And here is the bet [Pascal's] made to sound almost not like a bet: "Go on, believe! It does no harm." ... But there are times, probably, when "it does no harm"-- except for not being true, which some might find irreducible, unnegotiable harm.

If I called myself an atheist at twenty, and an agnostic at fifty and sixty, it isn't because I have acquired more knowledge in the meantime: just more awareness of ignorance.

Adulthood brings approximation, fluidity, and doubt; and we keep the doubt at bay by retelling that familiar story, with pauses and periods of a calculated effect, pretending that the solidity of narrative is a proof of truth.

But Montaigne is a compendious writer, and if this argument fails to convince, he has many others. For instance: if you have lived well, used life to the full, then you will be happy to let it go; whereas if you have misused life and found it miserable, then you will not regret its passing. (A proposition which seems to me entirely reversible: those in the first category might want their happy lives to continue indefinitely, those in the second might hope for a change of luck.) Or: if you've truly lived for a single day, in the fullest sense, then you've seen everything. (No!) Well, then, if you've lived like that for a whole year, you've seen everything. (Still no.) Anyway, you should make room on earth for others, just as others have made room for you. (Yes, but I didn't ask them to.) And why complain of being taken, when all are taken? Think of how many others will die on the same day as you. (True, and some of them will be as pissed off as I am about it.) Further, and finally, what exactly are you asking for when you complain against death? Do you want an immortality spent on this earth, given the terms and conditions currently applicable? (I see the argument, but how about a bit of immortality? Half? OK, I'll settle for a quarter.)

You may have your own personal idea of God, but does God have His own personal idea of you? Because that's what matters. Whether He's an old man with a white beard sitting in the sky, or a life force, or a disinterested prime mover, or a clockmaker, or a woman, or a nebulous moral force, or Nothing At All, what counts is what He, She, It, or Nothing thinks of you rather than you of them. The notion of redefining the deity into something that works for you is grotesque. It also doesn't matter whether God is just or benevolent or even observant -- of which there seems startlingly little proof -- only that He exists.

What will it be like when Christianity joins the list of dead religions, and is taught in universities as part of the folklore syllabus; when blasphemy becomes not legal or illegal but simply impossible?

God is dead, and without Him human beings can at last get off their knees and assume their full height; and yet this height turns out to be quite dwarfish.

Perhaps the most important divide is less between the religious and the irreligious as between those who fear death and those who don't. We fall thereby into four categories, and it's clear which two regard themselves as superior: those who do not fear death because they have faith, and those who do not fear death despite having no faith. These groups take the moral high ground. In third place come those who, despite having faith, cannot rid themselves of the old, visceral, rational fear. And then, out of the medals, below the salt, up shit creek, come those of us who fear death and have no faith.

I would want my afterlife, if one's on offer, to be an improvement -- preferably a substantial one -- on its terrestrial predecessor. I can just about imagine slopping around half-unawares in some gooey molecular remix, but I can't see that this has any advantage over complete extinction. Why have hopes, even timid ones, for such a state?

My brother does not fear extinction. "I say that confidently, and not just because it would be irrational to have such a fear" (sorry -- interruption -- irrational? IRRATIONAL? It's the most rational thing in the world -- how can reason not reasonably detest and fear the end of reason?).

Religion tends to authoritarianism as capitalism tends to monopoly.

I wonder if we can somehow farewell ourselves in advance. Can we lose, or at least thin, this resilient sense of specialness until there is less of it to disappear, less of it to miss?

People say of death, "There's nothing to be frightened of." They say it quickly, casually. Now let's say it again, slowly, with re-emphasis. "There's NOTHING to be frightened of." Jules Renard: "The word that is most true, most exact, most filled with meaning, is the word 'nothing.'"

As a young man, I was terrified of flying. The book I would choose to read on a plane would be something I felt appropriate to have found on my corpse.

I think my sense of death -- which appears exaggerated to some of my friends -- is quite proportionate. For me, death is the one appalling fact which defines life; unless you are constantly aware of it, you cannot begin to understand what life is about; unless you know and feel that the days of wine and roses are limited, that the wine will madeirize and the roses turn brown in their stinking water before all are thrown out for ever -- including the jug -- there is no context to such pleasures and interests as come your way on the road to the grave.

Theorists of mind and matter may tell me that my death is, if not exactly an illusion at least the loss of something more inchoate and less personally marked than I pretend and desire it to be; but I doubt that this is how it will feel to me when the time comes.

I have always mistrusted the idea that old age brings serenity, suspecting that many of the old were just as emotionally tormented as the young, yet socially forbidden to acknowledge it.

Flaubert said: "Everything must be learnt, from talking to dying." But who can teach us to die? There are, by definition, no old pros around to talk -- or walk -- us through it.

Wisdom consists partly in not pretending any more, in discarding artifice.

Be thankful you're not dead

It's Thanksgiving Day in the United States. In the rest of the world, I gather, it's a regular day.

The real point of Thanksgiving seems to be to overeat, spend time with family members, and rest up for shopping tomorrow (big sales start in a few hours).

My wife has made a couple of pumpkin pies. I've got a vegan Tofurky cooking in the oven. There's thankfulness pouring out of every pore of our daily newspapers and Internet news sites.

I'm not big on holidays. I don't like following a societal script. Be thankful on Thanksgiving. Be worshipful on Christmas. Be patriotic on the Fourth of July.

Well, maybe I don't feel like it.

Today, though, it happens that I was planning to write about a subject that can be easily fitted into the thankfulness theme. To me, it's the ultimate -- and foundational -- "thank you." Because without it no other appreciation can be offered.

Be thankful you're not dead. Or, put more positively, Be thankful you're alive.

Any other sort of thanks fades into insignificance compared to this. I've harped on this theme in other blog posts. I'll almost certainly do so again. The reason:

Many times a day now, not continuously but frequently, I'm struck by a sensation that isn't a feeling, or a thought, or a perception, or an understanding, or any other categorizable content of my consciousness.

Rather, it's more an overarching knowing about what awaits my consciousness. And everybody else's.

Death.

Which, given my churchlessness, is a word that carries with it a big fat series of question marks, extending into infinity.

??????????????????????????????????... No comforting assurance of continued aliveness anywhere along the line.

I used to shun this honest assessment of what likely awaits me after my last breath and heartbeat. Namely, nothing.

Instead, I clung onto conceptions that told me, "Reincarnation is real. Or you might hit the karmic jackpot and do some soul-soaring after death, rising to a higher sphere where peachy-keen life will be yours forever."

Well, that'd be cool. But I'm not counting on it. And it's not what my existential gut is telling me -- the "this is it, dude, all there is" intuitive knowing.

For which I'm grateful.

Because if there's life after death, I'll take it. Gladly (more accurately, ecstatically). However, there's no way to know this will happen. And believing that it will dilutes the probably one-and-only life that each of us is living now.

Religious believers frequently say that life is meaningless if there is no God. Bullshit.

Actually, life is much more meaningful with no God, no belief in life after death, no expectation that heaven and hell are anything other than what is here and now.

This is hard to put into words.

What I experience in those knowing moments is a sense of wonder, of awe, of unimaginably deep appreciation for being alive -- because I realize that there won't be any more living for me to do, ever, than this lifetime.

Sometimes this makes me feel a sense of urgency to get going on important, significant, legacy-like things before death comes and they can't be done. Usually, though, I simply feel thankful that I'm able to do whatever I'm doing at the moment.

I just took the Tofurky out of the oven. I forgetfully tried to lift the glass cover off of the casserole with my bare fingers. Ouch!

The pain, however, was part of life. Ever so much existentially better than not existing at all.

And now I'm about to eat what appears to be a delicious vegetarian Thanksgiving dinner (though I didn't read the fine print on the Tofurky box and defrosted the dumplings before boiling them, so add another adjective, "misshapen," to "delicious" and "vegetarian").

There's a lot to be thankful for, no matter our life situation. The heartiest thanks should go to Life itself, however.

No need to posit a giver of life, such as God. No need to assume a continuation of life, such as reincarnation or salvation. No need to know our condition before we were born or after we are dead.

Now. Life. Living. Gratitude. That's it.

And it's plenty. In fact, perfect.

Death can't be imagined

What do you think will happen to you after you die? If you're religious, many answers are possible. "I'll be in heaven." "My soul will exist without a body." "God and I will be a single consciousness."

But even if you're a non-believer, there's a good chance that you still harbor notions of your continued existence.

Seemingly it's super tough, if not impossible, for the human mind to conceive of nothingness. We're hard-wired to imagine that we'll always be something, rather than nothing.

This is the premise of a fascinating Scientific American article by Jesse Bering, "Never Say Die: Why We Can't Imagine Death." Read it. You'll gain a fresh perspective on belief in an afterlife.

Bering says that new research casts doubt on the common notion that fear of death is what drives religious conceptions of immortality.

According to proponents, you possess a secret arsenal of psychological defenses designed to keep your death anxiety at bay (and to keep you from ending up in the fetal position listening to Nick Drake on your iPod). My writing this article, for example, would be interpreted as an exercise in “symbolic immortality”; terror management theorists would likely tell you that I wrote it for posterity, to enable a concrete set of my ephemeral ideas to outlive me, the biological organism. (I would tell you that I’d be happy enough if a year from now it still had a faint pulse.)

Yet a small number of researchers, including me, are increasingly arguing that the evolution of self-consciousness has posed a different kind of problem altogether. This position holds that our ancestors suffered the unshakable illusion that their minds were immortal, and it’s this hiccup of gross irrationality that we have unmistakably inherited from them. Individual human beings, by virtue of their evolved cognitive architecture, had trouble conceptualizing their own psychological inexistence from the start.

He presents evidence to support this thesis, including the fact that the younger children are, the more difficulty they have imagining that someone who has died really is dead -- meaning that the deceased has no awareness of anything.

If religion was the primary cause of belief in an afterlife, then we'd expect to find that people with more exposure to religious dogma would be less inclined to say, "After death, there's nothing" (and really mean it).

However, the situation isn't that simple. Bering says that our innate psychological inability to imagine non-existence forms the floor upon which forms of religiosity are built:

In fact, exposure to the concept of an afterlife plays a crucial role in enriching and elaborating this natural cognitive stance; it’s sort of like an architectural scaffolding process, whereby culture develops and decorates the innate psychological building blocks of religious belief. The end product can be as ornate or austere as you like, from the headache-inducing reincarnation beliefs of Theravada Buddhists to the man on the street’s “I believe there’s something” brand of philosophy—but it’s made of the same brick and mortar just the same.

I've spent a lot of time pondering death. But there's one thing I can't conceive of: what's it like to be incapable of conceiving. Even the idea of "nothing" is much more of a something than nothingness actually is.

I liked this quote from philosopher Thomas W. Clark. I also found it deeply disturbing (guess I like to be disturbed).

Here ... is the view at issue: When we die, what’s next is nothing; death is an abyss, a black hole, the end of experience; it is eternal nothingness, the permanent extinction of being. And here, in a nutshell, is the error contained in that view: It is to reify nothingness—make it a positive condition or quality (for example, of “blackness”)—and then to place the individual in it after death, so that we somehow fall into nothingness, to remain there eternally.

There's a lot more to like in the article. It challenges some ideas I've accepted rather uncritically.

Like, that deep sleep gives us a foretaste of death. "Hey, I was asleep much of the night and wasn't aware of anything, so how bad could death be if it's just like a really long sleep?"

Some Eastern mystics liken enlightenment to the state of dreamless sleep. I've always wondered what's so great about not being conscious of an elevated consciousness. If I'm not aware of my expanded awareness, what's the point?

Bering points out that when you wake up and say to yourself, "I experienced dreamless deep sleep last night," you're not telling the truth.

For us extinctivists, it’s kind of like staring into a hallway of mirrors—but rather than confronting a visual trick, we’re dealing with cognitive reverberations of subjective experience. In Spanish philosopher Miguel de Unamuno’s 1913 existential screed, The Tragic Sense of Life, one can almost see the author tearing out his hair contemplating this very fact. “Try to fill your consciousness with the representation of no-consciousness,” he writes, “and you will see the impossibility of it. The effort to comprehend it causes the most tormenting dizziness.”

Wait, you say, isn’t Unamuno forgetting something? We certainly do have experience with nothingness. Every night, in fact, when we’re in dreamless sleep. But you’d be mistaken in this assumption. Clark puts it this way (emphasis mine): “We may occasionally have the impression of having experienced or ‘undergone’ a period of unconsciousness, but, of course, this is impossible. The ‘nothingness’ of unconsciousness cannot be an experienced actuality.”

So death is a mystery. We can't begin to imagine what not-existing would be like, because all we know is existence. Our imagination fills the can't begin to imagine void with beliefs about an afterlife.

Those ideas are comforting, and God knows, people need all the comfort they can get in a world that can be so harsh, painful, and cruel.

We just shouldn't fool ourselves: Nothing is the most likely non-something that we're going to be after death.

Since that is impossible to imagine, we should recognize our psychological blind spot for what it is -- and not mistake it for a grand spiritual vision.

My response to offer of eternal life

Sometimes the notion of dying scares me to death. Like I said in "Who has the best deal on death?" it isn't the dying that bothers me so much, it's the not existing. Forever.

A few days ago "Teacher" left a comment on that post, offering me a darn good deal. (I apologize for not replying sooner, Teacher; I've been busy dealing with some neighborhood land use issues.)

As I have taught others, it would not be impossible to teach You how you may transform yourself into a Neo Being with eternal life and preserved consciousness, as in "Brian will always be Brian".

Sounds great. But…

My first reaction was that I took up a similar offer in 1971, when I was initiated by an Indian guru, Charan Singh, into the Sant Mat / Radha Soami Satsang Beas system of meditation.

Supposedly the guru took up residence in his radiant form at my third eye, and was going to guide me through inner regions of consciousness until I realized my true nature as pure soul: undying, eternal, formless, pure vibrational energy.

Never happened.

Doesn't mean it won't (I still meditate every day, though not in the same fashion as before). However, the thirty-five years or so I spent pursuing eternal life in that fashion makes me wary of practices that sound similar.

Namely, learning how to transform one's consciousness under the direction of a teacher, or guru.

Now, it isn't learning from a teacher that concerns me. I learn Tai Chi from an instructor. I learn ballroom dance from an instructor. I've got no problem learning from someone who knows more about something than I do.

It's the nature of the relationship with a teacher that has to feel right. I jumped from traditional Shotokan karate to a more flexible mixed-arts style partly because I got tired of the "sensei is always right" attitude. I liked being able to ask questions, to talk back, to not have to follow rigid formalities.

So my response to Teacher is: sure, tell me what you've got. If you don't want to share it publicly, you can email me via the link at the top of the left sidebar.

Hopefully the practice can be communicated from a distance. I no longer travel for spiritual inspiration. And I don't believe in paying for it, so when Teacher asked what I had to offer, I thought "Not money, for sure."

I guess what I have to offer any teacher, such as my Tai Chi and dance instructors, is diligence. When I study something, I take it seriously. I pay attention in class; I jot down notes afterward; I practice (though my wife and I have been slacking off on dancing during the summer).

The way I see it, if a consciousness-changing practice truly is scientific, as Teacher describes the process of becoming a "Neo Being" to be, it should be able to be communicated without a lot of mystic mumbo-jumbo.

Or, if it truly flows from some divine source, one would think that it could be transmitted directly to someone – in a vision, dream, spark of inspiration, satori, whatever you want to call it.

Anyway, tell me more, Teacher, if you like. I'm always open to new ideas. I liked "The Matrix," so all the talk of Neo Being sounds pretty cool. What I have to offer is…interest.

Who has the best deal on death?

I'm not religious (obviously), but I still could sign up on the faith dotted line if I was assured of getting a good deal on death.

Which would be, basically: living forever. That's the worst part about death for me, not existing. I can handle the dying part. It's the likelihood of an eternal non-afterlife that sort of bugs me. (Actually, quite a bit more than "sort of.")

So I decided to read "How Different Religions View Death and Afterlife" to get a better idea of what sorts of salvation bargains are out there.

I've only read five chapters so far. Each is written by a expert in that religion, so it's nice to get the straight scoop from a true believer. The faiths I've learned about are: Assemblies of God, Baha'i, Baptist, Buddhism, and Unitarian Universalism.

As you can probably tell, the nineteen faith chapters are presented in alphabetical order in the book. I jumped ahead to Unitarian Universalism for a couple of reasons.

One, when I took the Belief O'Matic test a few days ago, I scored 100% on Unitarian Universalist – probably because I answered "don't know" to many of the questions. This bothered me a bit, because I used to be solidly Pagan, and that's a cooler-sounding faith.

Two, my wife's sister and her husband go to a Unitarian fellowship, and I like the sound of it. I could probably become a Unitarian if the group in our area didn't have such Christian overtones (every Unitarian group has its own style, I gather).

Unfortunately, I didn't find a whole lot reassuring about my death and afterlife in the Unitarian Universalist chapter, which, not surprisingly, is one of the shortest in the book.

Unitarian Universalists accept a scientific view of life and see life as lived in the here and now rather than in the hereafter. Whether or not Unitarian Universalists are agnostic about the existence of God, they tend to be agnostic about the existence of an afterlife…We simply admit that we do not know whether or not there is an afterlife.

Well, that's no fun. True, but not very helpful for my aspiration to eternal life at the right hand of Whoever or Whatever. So I went back to the beginning of the book. There I learned about two Christian faiths, Assemblies of God and Baptist.

It's easy to see why Christianity has taken off, believer-wise. Christians get a damn good deal on the afterlife, for not much cost. Basically you just have to believe in Jesus.

Assemblies of God: Death for us is simply transition into the presence of our Lord Jesus where we will share the joys of heaven…The believer who accepts and follows Christ is saved for eternity and retains his same personal identity…From the Bible we see also that we will recognize each other there [in heaven]. We shall know our friends and relatives. We shall enjoy fellowship with the saints of old time.

Baptist: Heaven and hell are conceived of as places where the redeemed and the damned either receive their rewards and undergo eternal felicity or are alienated from God. In one, there is the fellowship with God; in the other, the possibility of fellowship does not exist. The one is characterized by mansions, golden streets, home and reunion with loved ones; the other by outer darkness, fire, torment and isolation.

Hmmmm. Which to pick? Again, I can understand why so many people jump on the Christian train, since supposedly it's headed straight for the promised land – and it doesn't take along anyone but believers.

But, it's not for me.

So I moved on to the Baha'i faith. This felt quite familiar, as Baha'I is based on the teachings of a modern day incarnation of God, just as the Sant Mat faith that I followed for about thirty-five years is. In the 1800s Baha'u'llah revealed the way it is, death and afterlife wise.

There is, from a Baha'I view, but one physical experience for each soul – Baha'is do not believe in transmigration or reincarnation.

By becoming a Baha'I, one is not necessarily assured of salvation or of becoming more spiritual than someone who is not a Baha'i. But Baha'is believe that God has designated Baha'u'llah's teachings as the source of salvation of mankind for this dispensation, a period which shall endure for at least 1000 years. Therefore Bahai's also believe that the best means for the transformation and ascent of the human soul can presently be found in recognizing the station of Baha'u'llah and in following the guidance he has revealed.

Oh, great.

I spent more than three decades following the teachings of another messenger of God, and now I learn that I picked the wrong one. Plus, I'm never going to have another physical existence, so I'm screwed unless I get on board the Baha'I ship pronto.

Problem is, how do I know that Baha'u'llah is the real deal? He makes the same claims as Sant Mat does for their gurus, and also pretty much as Christianity does for its "guru," Jesus. How to choose?

Buddhism offers a pleasingly universal conception of the cosmos. But it sure requires a lot more brain cells to comprehend. Compare this excerpt from the "Buddhism" chapter with the pithy Jesus saves.

Selflessness, in both sutra and tantra, does not mean persons do not exist at all. "Self" here does not mean the "you" or "me" of ordinary language but refers to an overly concrete and otherwise misconstrued existential status. Nothing – neither persons, places, Buddhas, nor enlightenment itself – exists inherently. But they do exist. Only the inherently independent existence attributed to them does not.

Well, Buddhism, I want to exist as me! Otherwise, what's the point? (Guess if I understood that point, I'd be enlightened.)

So the search continues for a religion or faith that (1) makes sense to me, and (2) offers up a terrific deal on death. All offers considered.

I've got fourteen more chapters to read. Maybe Zoroastrianism…

Death is a marvelous backdrop for life

First, kudos to Edward for his comment on my "Finding Meaning in Meaninglessness" post. Like follow kudo'er Adam, I love the line, I have found that my life is none of my business. A comment excerpt:

There is no reason to be sure of anything. My certainty changes nothing of how I engage the world. Even being sure that I know nothing actually impedes my effective participation.

I have found that my life is none of my business. I get that there are (at least) two things going on: what I think is happening; and what is happening. These coincide most when I let the thinking happen, and give it the same valence as dreaming.

This makes a lot of sense to me, which probably shows that I don't understand it. Regardless, all I have to work with is what's at hand. Me.

Who would like to genuinely feel that life is none of my business, because that would mean that death isn't my business either. As it stands, I envision death often – not my favorite subject, especially when I'm being tested on it.

Which I'm not right now, or I wouldn't be sitting here typing on my laptop. But every indication, sadly, points to the fact that one day I'll be taking the final exam.

A Barna Group survey found that about 8 out of 10 Americans believe in an afterlife of some sort. One out of 10 believe that there is no form of life after one dies on earth. And one out of 10 (9%, actually) said life after death may exist, but they weren't certain.

Count me in the uncertain 9%. A percentage that really should be 100%, since neither the 81% of afterlife believers nor the 10% of afterlife deniers can be sure what's going to happen after they die.

The question for me is, what attitude toward death fosters the most living while I'm alive?

Often religious believers say that believing Jesus, Buddha, Allah, God, Krishna, Guru, or whoever will meet them after death gives them peace of mind, contentment, happiness. Well, I'm sure it does.

So does cocaine, amphetamines, ecstasy (the drug), alcohol, marijuana, and other ways of coating one's consciousness with a layer of Ah, everything's all right.

Nothing wrong with this. Nothing at all. Echoing Marx, I just see religious belief as another feel-good "opium." And the problem with most addictive substances is their long-term side effects, not their immediate gift of Ah…

More and more often I've been going along through my day and getting hit with an intuitive out-of-nowhere smack on the psyche: "Life isn't going to last. This could be your one and only living, guy. Not only isn't this moment ever going to come again, after death no moment may ever come again."

Strangely (or not) that smack ends up feeling more like a caress. I'm grateful for it. It's a wake-up call. Brian, don't sleep walk through life like you so often do. Pay attention!

Life shows up most clearly against a well-defined backdrop. Death. Non-life.

So do white clouds coursing across clear blue sky. Out here in Oregon we get a lot of gray clouds hanging below gray overcast. Not nearly so attractive.

When people believe they'll enjoy an afterlife while they're in the midst of this life, the imagined "to come" blends with the actual "this is." Their attention is split between immediate and anticipated experience.

"Ooh, I'd like to do that. But God won't be happy with me when I get to the Pearly Gates, so I'd better not."

Uncertainty about what will happen after death provides a pleasing neutral backdrop to life. It's a lot easier to make out the details of a piece of art when it's been painted on a blank canvas, not one that's already been drawn on.

It's a matter of taste. Some people enjoy the baroque. Dogmas fastened upon theologies attached to beliefs suspended on anticipations.

I'm more into simplicity (though often you couldn't tell this by looking at the top of my desk). A few flowers in an unadorned vase on a mostly bare shelf.

A few minutes ago I was reading the weekly Sisters, Oregon newspaper and came across a realtor's ad. She said, in bold letters:

I like living here. I do it all the time.

Nicely said.

Some people, though, live here and there – earth and heaven, reality and fantasy – simultaneously. Not advisable, if you really want to enjoy the neighborhood.

Morality thrives without belief in immortality

Why would believing in life after death make us act more morally?

Religions argue that if people didn't anticipate some sort of afterlife – the nature of which depends on behavior in this life – there'd be little motivation to do the right thing here on Earth.

To my mind, there's an even better argument in the other direction: a belief in immortality creates an atmosphere where life as it is here and now is disrespected, disparaged, and downplayed.

That's immoral.

A plane crashes. There's a disaster in a coal mine. A stray bomb kills innocent children. Religious believers say to themselves, "The victims have gone to a better place. They're in the hands of God/Allah/Guru/whoever now."

But what if the dead are just that: dead. They had one chance to live a life. And now it's gone.

How precious does life now seem? Does earthly existence appear to be more or less of a treasure if it's viewed as just a way station on a much longer journey?

I say, less. So if you want to foster a culture of life, don't believe that it continues after death. Nurture life now. Protect life now. Embrace life now.

Consider stem cell research. Or providing condoms to prevent AIDS. Or global climate change. Or any of a host of other social issues where action isn't taken to alleviate a clear and present problem partly because religion preaches that the focus should be on an unseen heaven rather than evident reality.

Since most people believe in the survival of a soul, there's a pervasive, if largely unconscious, attitude that what doesn't get done in this life can be taken care of later on.

Whether it's called karma or God's will, the notion is that whatever apparent wrongs are committed on Earth will be made right in another lifetime or state of existence.

Maybe. But "maybe" is a shaky foundation for morality. It'd be a heck of a lot better if people did what needed to be done out of a clear-eyed compassionate recognition of how life could be made better right here, right now.

If this life is all there is, it's infinitely precious. Every life cut short because of inadequate health care is a freaking tragedy. So is every life lost from any other preventable cause: war, famine, violence, accidents.

Yeah, I'm hearing the song in my head. Maybe you are too. Let's sing it together. And imagine.

[Update: Here's another argument against religion-based morality. There I was a few days ago, waiting at a red light to turn left. Watching kids at both ends of the crosswalk, I didn't immediately notice the left turn arrow turn green.

A nano-second later the guy behind me in an big extended cab pickup, with a large dog hanging out the passenger side window, honks his horn at me in my humble Prius. Not just once, as a signal, but twice -- as a sign of irritation.

I turn left. A ways down the street he floors his truck and passes me on the right, on a two lane road, just to show me, I suppose, how he's still pissed that I held him up for a few seconds.

This sort of behavior is rare in Oregon. I've seen drivers wait through an entire green light behind a car that didn't notice the signal had changed. I've done it myself.

I think, "I don't want to disturb that person unnecessarily. They'll probably notice the light soon. It's no big deal for me to wait a while." I don't act the way I do because of some religious commandment. It just seems right.

But what if a supposedly holy book that lots of people believed in said, "Thou shalt honk when a driver fails to start off immediately when the light changes."

An intuitive sense of right and wrong, which in Oregon at least (don't know about New York City) generally manifests as patience, would be replaced with an artificial code of behavior that isn't as caring and compassionate.

The idea that people are selfish creatures whose negative tendencies are held in check only by religious authority isn't borne out by facts. Our social nature, honed by evolution, urges us toward cooperation and mutual back-scratching.

Religion says "Love your neighbor." But we already knew and felt that. Religion also says, "Do this because you're told to." Man-made commandments get mistaken for genuinely moral principles, leading to religiously inspired craziness.]

Proof of life after death? Not yet.

If truth can't be found on Google, it must not exist. That's my cyberspace-centric view of reality. So here's the result of my hour or so of Googling the question: is there persuasive scientific evidence of life after death?

Short answer: no. As some commenters (one of whom was me) on my "Life is a mystery. Afterlife, ditto" post observed, if such evidence existed, it'd be trumpeted to the heavens – plus the front pages.

Now, quite a few people believe that scientists and the media are censoring evidence of life after death. Such as this guy.

There are two expert opinions as to what so-called paranormal phenomena are, but in this "free" country the British people are only allowed access to the explanation that is politically correct, the first version that is listed below, because it is no danger to the powerful religious and scientific establishments.

Huh? It's difficult to believe that scientists, who are as egotistical and ambitious as everyone else, are willfully ignoring evidence for what would be the biggest discovery of all time – the survival of individual consciousness.

And I'm not sure why religious authorities would be opposed to this truth being revealed either, though I suppose the monotheistic religions could be threatened by someone (maybe everyone) surviving bodily death without the aid of Jesus, Allah, or God.

So if evidence for life after death was as strong as believers in the paranormal and psychic phenomena make it out to be, we'd know about it.

For sure, web sites like the Survival Research Institute of Canada would feature that evidence. Yet I read:

Today there is a growing body of evidence suggestive of life after death, including near-death experiences, death-bed visions, spontaneous apparitions, and spirit communication through mediums. While personal survival of death has yet to be scientifically proven, the potential implications of the evidence to date for philosophy, psychology, science and religion are enormous.

OK, granted. Enormous isn't a big enough word. But let's also pay attention to other words here: "growing," "suggestive," "has yet to be," "potential."

What would it take for this evidence to become strong enough to pass over into a validated scientific theory? Hard to say. To me, there's a difference between (1) life after death and (2) consciousness separate from a body.

Seemingly brain-dependent consciousness could be capable of perceiving events that aren't known to the bodily senses. I don't know how this would happen, obviously, but extrasensory perception doesn't seem to necessarily imply survival of consciousness after death.

Still, near-death experiences are deeply interesting to most people – since we're all going to die without the "near" one day. It makes sense that coming close to death, and returning to tell the tale, would offer insights into the real deal.

I found a Scientific Evidence for Survival web site that was nicely organized. I haven't checked out the 53 categories of evidence very closely, but appreciated that links to supporting information (which I'd bet isn't entirely scientific) were included.

Nonetheless, even this site says:

A scientifically controlled NDE that can be repeated which provides such evidence would be the scientific discovery of all time. However, science does not yet have the exact tools to accomplish this. But, science is coming very, very close. This kind of evidence and others provide very strong circumstantial evidence for the survival of consciousness.

"Circumstantial." Another sign that even those who believe in the survival of consciousness after death recognize this can't be proven to skeptics.

TIME magazine ran an article in 2007, "The Science of Near-Death Experiences." I was curious to see what conclusions a mainstream news organization, armed with fact checkers and hyperbole averse editors, would come to.

Clearly, NDE's are a mystery. Much more needs to be learned about them.

A flat electroencephalogram (EEG) recording doesn't suggest mere impairment. It points to the brain having shut down. Longtime NDE researcher Pim van Lommel, a retired Dutch cardiologist, has likened the brain in this state to a "computer with its power source unplugged and its circuits detached. It couldn't hallucinate. It couldn't do anything at all."

Yet it's in this period, between switch-off and resuscitation, that many researchers believe NDEs occur. "Many near-death experiencers describe heightened perceptions and clear thought processes, and form memories, at a time when the brain is incapable of coordinated activity," says Greyson, director of the University of Virginia's Division of Perceptual Studies. "Our current neurophysiological models can explain NDEs only if one ignores much of the empirical data."

Yet materialistic explanations still are credible.

Science is trying to solidify the brain-based theory of NDEs, which goes something like this: Survival is our most powerful instinct. When the heart stops and oxygen is cut, the brain goes into all-out defense. Torrents of neurotransmitters are randomly generated, releasing countless fragmentary images and feelings from the memory-storing temporal lobes. Perhaps the life review is the brain frantically scanning its memory banks for a way out of this crisis. The images of a bright light and tunnel could be due to impairment at the rear and sides of the brain respectively, while the euphoria may be a neurochemical anti-panic mechanism triggered by extreme danger.

The article's final paragraph pointed in a certain direction, but reflected the uncertainty of life, death, and consciousness.

On balance, it's almost certain that NDEs happen in the theater of one's mind, and that in the absence of resuscitation, it's the brain's final sound and light show, followed by oblivion. Nonetheless, there's still no definitive explanation. There mightn't be a ghost in the machine. But it's a machine whose complexities remain well beyond our grasp.

We don't know what happens after death. That bit of knowledge is worth keeping in mind. So long as we have one.

Religions should offer a better deal on death

Yesterday I spent part of a nice afternoon musing about a not-so-nice subject, death. And here I am doing it again, on an even sunnier and warmer Oregon day.

As I said in "Baby boomers confront the big 'boom,' death," dying is an unwanted intrusion into the pleasant pursuit of existing.

Dying wouldn't be so bad if there wasn't a likely nasty side effect: non-existence. Forever.

That'd be a bummer, to put it mildly (only good side is, I won't be around to be bummed out). So humans have invented religions to reduce anxiety about the hereafter.

Which is more properly called the nothingafter, given the dearth of solid evidence that life continues after death.

However, thinking like Donald Rumsfeld – absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence – religions fill the void in our knowledge of what awaits our last breath with some supposedly reassuring notions about the afterlife.

Problem is, those notions don't come close to fulfilling my fantasy of what I want to have happen after I die.

If religions did a better job in this department, I'd be more likely to embrace some fantastical theology. After all, I'm not against feeling good. If a religion could make me look forward to death, rather than dreading it, hey, I might sign up.

I've read a lot of books about the world's religions, but not this one. It's on order, so when I read it, maybe I'll find a fantasy-fulfilling faith that fills the bill.

I doubt it, though, based on what I know now.

Christianity. Kind of vague. The whole deal about the dead being raised bodily at the Second Coming – creepy. I'm not big on sticking with my current body for eternity. Heaven sounds better, but the Bible is distressingly imprecise about the conditions there. I need more info. before I make a reservation.

Islam. The 70 virgins thing sounds fine. However, don't you have to die as a martyr to get them? I'm also worried about the patriarchal sexism of the Islamic paradise. Not much, to tell the truth, but I need to say that in case my wife ever reads this post.

Judaism. Once I sat next to a Jewish couple on a long flight to Hong Kong. I was enthused about learning how Judaism views death. I asked them what they think will happen after they die. I was told, "Jews don't think much about that; we're into celebrating the holidays." Scratch another religion.

Hinduism. Reincarnation is appealing, for obvious life-loving reasons. I'd prefer to know that Brian is still alive though, instead of starting over as a new person. Or as an animal, which would seem to be a demotion. Likely I'd be reborn as my dog's pet, she becoming a human, given how much she owes me for the pampering I give her.

Buddhism. It can't decide whether the Buddha taught that a soul exists. I'm not wild about my karmic tendencies being reborn, but not me. Alternatively, Nirvana (like the Hinduish merging with Brahman) is supposed to be akin to a drop merging with the ocean. What's wrong with a drop staying a drop?

Neoplatonism. In the course of writing a book about the Greek philosopher Plotinus, I learned that he said it'd be ridiculous for Socrates, say, to cease being Socrates just when he attained what he'd been searching for: the One (a.k.a. God). Cool. I could embrace Neoplatonism (but wouldn't have much company).

Taoism. It bothers me that there's so many stories about Taoists trying to become immortal. If returning to the Tao is so wonderful, why do they want to postpone it? Also, Taoists do a lot of joking about death. That's fine, but I'd find dying more humorous after I'm assured that I won't really be dead.

Sant Mat. This religion with roots in north India was my faith for a long time. It says that we can keep on going in astral and causal forms after death, which sounds excellent. But reincarnation also is a distinct possibility. And in the end, there's the drop merging with the ocean thing – sure sounds like extinction to me.

Oh, yes. Just remembered that, like Islam, Sant Mat literature also talks about how the disembodied soul can be tempted by visions of the most luscious women (or men, depending on your taste) who offer up all sorts of astral sensual delights.

That always sounded great to me. But then I'd read that the disciple is supposed to turn away from all that and keep to the company of the astral form of a bearded old man, the guru. Yeah, right. Give me a choice, and I'll see what I do.

Bottom line: no religion offers up a perfectly pleasing vision of how I want to spend my afterlife. Plotinus' Neoplatonism comes closest, since his description of the non-physical Platonic realm of forms basically is "everything we enjoy here on Earth, but without the bad stuff."

I have to admit, though, that I'm not really sure what my ideal eternal existence would be like, even if I could design one from scratch.

I mean, forever is a long time. Even timelessness, an alternative to eternity, could get boring.

Looks like I'll have to take my chances with whatever death serves up. Not that there's any alternative. But like I often say before I meditate in the morning:

If there's any being out there who can bestow a pleasant life after death, make me an offer. My anti-religious sentiment could be discarded super fast in the face of a really real reality.

Embracing a Stoic view of death

Like I said at the end of my previous post about dealing with death, there isn't much to add to the philosophic options given to us by the ancient Greeks and Romans.

After all, there are only so many different ways of looking at reality. The ancients ran though them all. Metaphysical. Natural. Atomistic. Holistic. Rational. Mystical.

So when I found myself leaning toward a "nature knows what it's doing" attitude toward death, it didn't take me long to realize that I was walking on well-trod Stoic ground.

I love Marcus Aurelius' Meditations. Aurelius was a Roman emperor who penned philosophic observations while campaigning against his enemies.

He's helped me get through a bout in the dentist's chair and frustrations with Microsoft. Granted, those aren't quite as serious a problem as death, but Stoicism is well-suited to coping with just about anything.

Because one of its main tenets is to focus on the thing itself, not our reaction to it. It's amazing how problems fade away when we don't spread our own mental crap on top of what's really going on.

"His ship sank."
"What happened?"
"His ship sank."

"He was sent to prison." But if you add the proposition "a terrible thing happened to him," then that is coming from you.

These quotes are from Epictetus, a Stoic philosopher who Marcus Aurelius much admired. They're in Pierre Hadot's The Inner Citadel, translated by Michael Chase.

The "citadel" being referred to is what's under our control: the judgments we make about what's happening. Ships may sink. Jail doors may close. Death may be at hand.

Those are facts. How we look upon them is something different. The Stoic ideal is to see things as they are, not as how our imagination considers them to be.

An objective or adequate representation is one which corresponds exactly to reality, which is to say that it engenders within us an inner discourse which is nothing other than the pure and simple description of an event, without the addition of any subjective value-judgment.

"He was sent to jail.
What happened? He was sent to jail. But 'He is unhappy' is added by oneself [i.e., subjectively]"

Thus both Marcus and Epictetus draw a clear distinction between "objective" inner discourse, which is merely a pure description of reality, and "subjective" inner discourse, which includes conventional or passionate considerations, which have nothing to do with reality.

As I wrote about in my previous post, I (obviously) was very much alive when I began to envision my death. Even more, there wasn't anything or anyone threatening me. Certainly not the full moon.

The thoughts of death that produced such a disquieting feeling in me came from…me.

To a Stoic, it's natural to be startled by things that go bump in the night. And that includes self-induced bumps, such as One day I'm not going to exist anymore!

However, what happens next often is unnatural. We start talking to ourselves. This subjective inner dialogue imagines all kinds of things.

"Somebody's broken into the house. They're coming to get me." "Death is going to cast me into eternal nothingness. I'll be non-existent for eternity."

Who says? How do you know? What in the here and now supports these notions of there and then?

Often, if not usually, zilch. Nada. Nothing.

My anxiety about nothingness is rooted in nothing. Crazy.

Yet this is a reflection of the normal state of human affairs. We're always making up stories in our heads. We project plot lines both forward into the future and backward into the past, even though we're not in control of the action, nor do we have a view of the entire stage.

When death comes, die. Until then, live – in reality, not fantasy.

If we want to become aware of our true selves, we must concentrate upon the present. As Marcus puts it, we must "circumscribe the present," and separate ourselves from that which no longer belongs to us: our past words and actions, and our future words and actions. Seneca has already expressed this idea:

"These two things must be cut away: fear of the future, and the memory of past sufferings. The latter no longer concern me, and the future does not concern me yet."

Death shines under a full moon

Walking the dog last night, I turned around when we got to the path that leads to Spring Lake. A full, or almost full, moon had risen above the tree tops.

Clear and cold. No sounds. Moonshine on the fir trees. Beautiful.

I spoke to whoever the heck it is I talk to on such occasions. "Thank you. For letting me be alive. To be aware of this moment, right here, right now."

But my gratitude had a flip side. And it made an appearance almost immediately.

Because I couldn't help going on to envision my death. No more dog walks. No more moon-jestic Oregon nights. No more anything.

Just nothing. Except there wouldn't even be "nothing," because consciousness is needed to be aware of nothing, and death will take away that.

It was a familiar feeling. Like standing on the edge of an abyss, teetering, knowing you're going to fall. Probably not now. But eventually. Guaranteed.

Dread mixed with the gratitude. Existential emptiness lay under the full moon.

In the next twenty minutes, as dog and man continued their walk around the lake and back through the forest, I ran through the basic philosophic and religious tricks that death-fearing people have used throughout history to keep the heebie-jeebies at bay.

Deny reality. I thought, "It'd be great if I kept on living after I died. That'd solve everything." Problem is, I'm no longer capable of believing in comforting beliefs like that. I know what I'm up to: seeking reassurance to life's biggest problem – not living – by denying it exists. Scratch that trick.

Embrace the angst. I shifted gears to facing the prospect of nothingness head on. I tried to talk myself into a positive answer to "How bad could not-existing be if I'm not around to know it?" Going to sleep is pleasant enough. Never waking up adds in a decided creepiness factor, though. Good try, but not good enough.

Lower expectations. "Okay," I told myself. "Look at it this way. You've been alive for 59 years. It could have been zero. Every year, every day, every hour, every second you're conscious is an inconceivably precious opportunity or gift. Appreciate it, you ingrate. Instead of feeling bad that you won't live forever, feel good that you've been alive at all."

That last inner dialogue had the most effect on me. It bounced me back to the present moment, to hearing my boots crunch on the gravel on top of the dam, the distant hooting of an owl.

Fear of death requires the thought of dying. If I'm only aware of being here and now, the prospect of not being there and then can't arise.

After I got home and fed the dog, who is an excellent example of living in the moment – food! good! yum! sleep! – I mulled over a more refined version of my philosophy of death.

I was struck by how religions almost invariably view death as a obstacle to be overcome. We need our souls to be saved, our bodies to be resurrected, our karmic bonds of birth and rebirth to be broken.

But this presumes there's a problem, that nature, God, Tao, whoever or whatever runs the cosmos, has seriously screwed things up.

And it takes a savior, a guru, a god-man, a revelation, a miracle, to get life and death back in order.

Funny. Nobody talks this way about other laws of nature. Gravity seems to work just fine. Ditto with electromagnetism.

Sure, some people fall off high places and go splat. Others get electrocuted. But we accept that the universe is set up, law-wise, just the way it should be. It's our job to adjust to the laws of nature, not for them to change to suit us.

With death though, it's the opposite. We want to cheat death, to block its game plan, to derail the Grim Reaper train that's transporting us hell-bent to god-knows-where.

In short, to get a very special favor: not die. (Along with an enjoyable afterlife, thank you very much.)

Well, as with almost every other philosophical notion, the ancient Greeks and Romans got there first. A fact I reminded myself of this morning when I browsed through some Marcus Aurelius.

(to be continued…I hope)

Near death experience revelation: “No B.S.”

Today I talked with an old friend. We'd only spoken once before since our college days, when we were initiated on the same day in 1971 into the Indian mystic-religious faith of Radha Soami Satsang Beas.

We're both heretics now, a comfortable state for each of us. He'd been perusing some of my Church of the Churchless posts and felt like giving me another call.

I'm glad he did. I enjoy conversations that start out with a bang, in this case with "I died this year." Yeah, that grabbed my interest. He had me at "I died."

Which was true.

And disturbing, because he's a few years younger than me, and I don't like to hear about guys having heart attacks at 57, since I'm 59. Especially when they've been a vegetarian for as long as I have (thirty-seven years), had normal cholesterol, and no symptoms of heart disease.

Well, life happens. That was the main theme of our conversation. What is, is. Deal with it. There's always only one thing going on: what's going on.

Wishing, thinking, believing, hoping – nothing makes any difference, except the one thing that's actually happening. In this case, a heart attack.

He had just enough time to dial 911 before falling unconscious. In the ambulance his heart stopped. He was resuscitated (obviously). Not many people with this sort of coronary blockage survive. He did.

Naturally I wanted to know what he felt, aside from a lot of pain, after the heart attack hit. He'd once been a believer. Now he wasn't.

Did he get any inkling of what happens after death from coming so close to dying? Nope. He told me that he wasn't scared after he realized what was happening. He just knew that soon, real soon, he might stop existing. Forever.

Or, not. He might live on in some other non-bodily state. There wasn't any sense that one was more likely than the other. Just that either was a possibility, and either was all right.

What is, is. When you're dead, you're dead. When you're not dead, you're not dead. Pretty darn simple.

We agreed, happy heretics that we are, that having faith in life after death or salvation won't make any difference when the last breath or heartbeat comes. It isn't faith that is going to rule at that point, but reality.

Descriptions of near death experiences sometimes are exceedingly sickly religiously sweet. The person who has drifted to the Other Side and come back to tell his or her tale talks about being filled with light, the glorious presence of Jesus, or some other life-altering experience.

So it was refreshing to have my friend tell me that the big difference in him now is that he's utterly unwilling to put up with B.S. Bullshit, for those unfamiliar with American slang abbreviations.

That's understandable. If you've gotten that close to not existing for forever, which he thinks is the most likely destination after death, I can see why you wouldn't be interested in frittering your remaining life away on meaningless crap.

The question is, of course, why any of the rest of us would want to do that either. For me, that includes not putting up with religious crap – beliefs, concepts, imaginings, superstitions and such with no connection to here-and-now reality.

I enjoyed hearing about someone coming this close to dying, and remaining as confident that there's no life after death as he was before.

Not that I wouldn't like there to be life after death. Just as he would.

But we agreed that it's much better to live life fully, right here and right now at every moment, than to live partly here and now, and partly there and then – in an imaginary anticipation of what will happen in the next life, and what God or the guru requires of us so that we'll enjoy the afterlife.

Enjoyment is now. Life is now. Reality is now. Awareness is now. Experience is now. There and then will only be true when it comes into the here and now.

What is, is. Including B.S.

But we don't have to put up with it. Or have to nearly die in order to realize this.

Death no big deal to most over 50

I rarely pick up the AARP magazine, but a stint in my eye doctor's waiting room got me reading "Life After Death." The article describes the results of a poll that asked people over 50 questions about death, religion, heaven/hell, reincarnation and such.

Death scares me. Not as much now as it used to, but I've still got a primal fear of not-existing.

Looks like I don't have a whole lot of company, since only 20% agreed that "Thinking about my own death and what happens to me after I die scares me."

Interestingly, the somewhat religious were more afraid of death (25%) than the very religious (16%) or not at all religious (13%). Uncertainty breeds fear, it seems.

Given that 94% believe in God, it isn't surprising that 88% of those polled believe they'll be in heaven after they die. However, those responding said that just 64% of all people get to heaven.

Only 17% thought that people who don't believe in Jesus Christ go to hell, which is lower than I would have expected. In fact, just 29% said that believers in Jesus enter in to heaven. This points to less fundamentalism among American Christians than is generally believed to exist.

Another sign: 23% believed in reincarnation. The article quotes Jeffrey Burton Russell, a historian:

If you took this study 50 years ago, the belief in reincarnation would be down at about one percent. Generally, the traditionally clear Christian vision of Heaven has declined, while the vaguer visions of the continuation of life have taken its place.

Sounds like a good trend to me. I can understand why people seek reassurance from their religion that death won't be the final chapter in the story of their existence. The End isn't an appealing final plot twist.

But divisiveness and intolerance sprout when visions of an exclusive heaven dance through religious heads, the gates to paradise thought to be open only to a select few.

So it was nice to learn that just 40% believe heaven is "a place," while 47% say it is a state of being. I wonder, though, where you reside after death in your state of heavenly being. No place? Placelessness? Every place?

(Detailed poll results are in a PDF file here).

Salvation isn’t so serious to me anymore

Here's something curious (or, maybe not). Back in my fundamentalist days – yes, there's Eastern fundamentalism also – I was deeply concerned about my salvation.

I felt just like Woody Allen:

I don't want to achieve immortality through my work. I want to achieve it through not dying.

Yet now that I've evolved to a more open and non-dogmatic form of spirituality, I don't obsess nearly as much over whether I'll live on after I die. Or in what fashion my rebirth will occur, should that be in the cards for me.

So when I was nominally more religious, a true believer in the Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB) branch of Sant Mat, I was seriously worried about what was going to happen to this ego-encapsulated being known as "Brian."

Yet isn't religiosity supposed to make you humble and egoless? I got to thinking about this after reading the July 2007 issue of the Western USA RSSB newsletter:

Sant Mat tells us…We have the opportunity to attain immortality…jivan mukhti, salvation before death.

Well, my first thought was "how can you be saved before you die?" I can see how you could believe you're saved from hellfire, rebirth, or whatever before your physical death.

However, until you actually die, that's just a hypothesis. Death is the ultimate spiritual experiment. It separates truth from falsehood cleanly, just like that!

My second thought was, "immortality sounds nice, but if it doesn't happen, that's OK too." As if I had a choice in the matter.

I was struck by how calmly I could accept precious little me being gone forever, imaginatively at least (hold a gun to my head and my reaction might be quite different).

Again, isn't this curious? Religious people fret over whether they're doing everything just right to ensure their personal salvation. This points to a Me-Me-Me mentality.

I know, because I once had it. And knew many others with the same "Thank god I'm saved, while others aren't" mentality.

That seems self-centered to me now. Plus, it doesn't show much faith in the goodness, justice, and harmony of the cosmos.

With my current Taoist sensibility, I'm pretty much content to accept that what will be, will be. I'm not looking for any special salvationary treatment.

On a Metolius river walk today, I came across a natural bridge that spanned the water.

Another stopped halfway. But the end of it displayed a burst of beauty.

I don't know which comes closest to being an analogy for what happens when we die. Do we fall into deep waters, never to rise again, or do we cross to another side?

Whichever, it seems to me that flowing along with whatever comes along is the best (and, really, only) course of action.

“Body Worlds 3” helps death lose some of its sting

Yesterday afternoon I spent two hours looking at dead bodies. Plastinated ones, so skillfully presented and preserved the smallest nerves and tendons could be seen.

I got tickets to Body Worlds 3 at the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry (OMSI) in Portland because it was my wife's birthday. Laurel wanted to see the exhibition. I wasn't as wild about the idea, given that I've got this decided preference for existing rather than not-existing.

I've also been known to ask our estate planning attorney, "Instead of saying When Brian dies…, could you substitute When Brian gerbils…? We'll know what you mean, and I won't get so anxious."

Well, maybe I'm making some progress in accepting death. For I had no problem spending quite a bit of time with dead bodies that let it all hang out.

Also, upside down.

The main thing I learned from the exhibition was this: we're meat. Strip away our skin and humans look an awful lot like what you see in a butcher shop. Which shouldn't be surprising, because we're animals.

Animals, however, who can think about death and dying.

All sorts of people, young and old, toured Body Worlds 3 along with us. I was perusing a display about hip degeneration when I noticed an older woman with a cane looking at the bones with more interest than me. Understandably.

Another woman reclined in a motorized wheelchair, accompanied by a friend. Her body wasn't working so well either. Each of us is going to join that club one day, no matter how healthy we are at the moment. Death is an efficient equalizer.

As I walked from display to display, looking at dead bodies in astoundingly creative poses, moving along with other mortals, each of whom eventually was going to end up in the lifeless state we were so fascinated by, I felt a bond with my fellow OMSI-goers.

Now and then I'd interact with a person next to me, asking a question or making a comment. It was easier to reach out to a stranger than it would be, say, at an art exhibit. We all had a lot in common: being alive, after which we'll be dead.

The creator of Body Worlds, Gunther von Hagen, wants this to be more than an anatomical learning experience. He says:

The human body is the last remaining nature in a man made environment. I hope for the exhibitions to be places of enlightenment and contemplation, even of philosophical and religious self recognition, and open to interpretation regardless of the background and philosophy of life of the viewer.

Scattered throughout the exhibit were quotations from great thinkers about death. I appreciated that, being a philosophical sort. I especially appreciated some quotes from Seneca and Epicurus.

Via a Google cache, I located the Body World Seneca passage.

Death is the release from all pain and complete cessation, beyond which our suffering will not extend. It will return us to that condition of tranquility, which we had enjoyed before we were born. Should anyone mourn the deceased, then he must also mourn the unborn. Death is neither good nor evil, for good or evil can only be something that actually exists. However, whatever is of itself nothing and which transforms everything else into nothing will not at all be able to put us at the mercy of Fate.

Makes sense. I don't fret over my state of nonexistence prior to my birth. Why, then, should I get hot and bothered over my not existing after I'm dead? I won't be around to be bothered then. As for now, I'm still alive.

This was pretty much the same argument in the Epicurus quote, which I wasn't able to locate verbatim online. Here's the chain of logic, though. (And here's a similar Epicurus sentiment).

(1) Death is annihilation.
(2) The living have not yet been annihilated (otherwise they wouldn't be alive).
(3) Death does not affect the living. (from 1 and 2)
(4) So, death is not bad for the living. (from 3)
(5) For something to be bad for somebody, that person has to exist, at least.
(6) The dead do not exist. (from 1)
(7) Therefore, death is not bad for the dead. (from 5 and 6)
(8) Therefore death is bad for neither the living nor the dead. (from 4 and 7)

OK. I'm convinced. But I'd still rather be alive than dead.

But wait. I am! Cool.

And Oregon State just won the College World Series. Again. It's a great time to be alive.

Of course, any time is.

Coping with death and the fear of non-existence

I got an email from someone who'd read my "Death and the primal fear of non-existence." She said:

I completely understand where you are coming from. I have been having the very similar thoughts more recently.

It completely numbs me up. I often need to choke/scream out aloud to bring myself back to sanity.

These days I sometimes fear the thought of having that feeling even.

I was wondering whether you have developed a coping mechanism? Or can share anything else with me about how it is/has been affecting you.

I am very much looking forward to your response. I haven't been able to completely relate to anyone else who is as overwhelmed as I am about these thoughts of non-existence.

Here's my open letter back to her:

-----------------------------------------

My friend in fearing non-existence, the first (and maybe most important) thing I want to say to you is bravo! Pat yourself on your trembling back. Embrace your shivering self.

Really. I'm not making light of the panic you've been feeling. I'm just suggesting that you deserve kudos for looking into the depths that most people shy away from.

I realize this isn't of your own doing, in a sense. I mean, the thoughts you've been having about dying and not existing, forever, spring from a source beyond your conscious self.

If you're like me, the thoughts about death that you're able to share with others arise from an unsharable experience. You're looking into a void of non-being that shakes you to the core. Nothingness can do that. It penetrates every defense.

As crazy as this may sound, from my perspective you're fortunate. So am I. We've had glimpses of an ultimate reality. Most people live their lives firmly within the bounds of the familiar. You've peered over the edge of everyday existence.

And what you saw scared you. Understandably.

But here's the thing: that experience is yours, just as my experience is mine. It is real, since it exists. Yet it isn't part of the fabric of objective reality in the way that the computer I'm typing these words with is. Using my mind, I can't make my computer disappear. However, fear is much more malleable.

Understanding that, I've been learning to cope with my own primal fear of non-existence. Well, "cope" sounds too negative. "Embrace" is more like it. I'm grateful for the soul-shuddering anticipation of death that I've had. It's given me the opportunity to live more vividly.

It may well be that this life is all there is. After death, finis. The end. If that's the case, I want to make the most of the moments that I have left. By contrast, people who believe in eternal life, or a lengthy afterlife in some heavenly paradise, are partly here and partly there.

Their imaginings of what awaits them beyond get mixed up with what is here, now. I don't want that to happen to me. So I try to use my glimpse of nothingness as motivation to embrace more fully the everything I'm currently aware of.

I still sleepwalk through life more than I should. But feeling death's fingernails on my spine makes me more awake than I would be otherwise. For that, I'm grateful.

I spend some time every day meditating. Basically, I try to die. Not physically, mentally. I want to get as close as possible to what I fear the most: not existing as the person I am now. I've found that the terror of non-existence is strongest when I fear the fear.

When I say, "bring it on," whatever or whoever is responsible for the terror I've felt holds it back. Kind of strange. But not really. Like most fears, running away enlivens the threat. Staring it down makes it shrink away.

This doesn't have to be an aggressive posture. Sometimes I speak to non-existence in more of a "teach me" tone. Looking into the primal emptiness that each of us is familiar with, I sense that it's both highly repellent and highly attractive.

Religion, mysticism, and philosophy are worlds apart from the raw experience of what's been numbing you. And at times in my life, me. Words can't help us. I've been told by well-meaning friends, "Why be afraid of death when you won't be around after you die?"

I appreciate their intention to soothe. However, I've found that the light of reasonable words, no matter how bright, doesn't touch the darkness lying on the other side of my last breath. I'll enter it alone when I die, and I've got to deal with the anticipation of it in my own fashion while I'm alive.

You too. So all I'm doing here is sharing how I've been dealing with my fear of death. Your way might be very different from mine. Trust your heart. Don't hesitate to go where you're drawn, even if you're the only one on that path.

That said, I'll close by reiterating what has worked best for me: putting out a welcome mat for what I wish would never show up at my door.

Death comes for us all. I can either peek through the curtains of my life with fear and trembling or say to my eventual visitor, "Let's get acquainted as best we can now." For I'm pretty sure that if I could rehearse some mini-dying, the maxi-dying of my final performance will go more smoothly.

Sitting quietly in my meditation closet, I enjoy closing my eyes and simply saying to myself, "I am." Or, when the saying has run its course, even more simply experiencing non-verbally what those two words point to.

I try to leave aside all the descriptors that could be added to "I am… ." A man. An American. An agnostic. A husband. A father. A blogger. A Tai Chi student. A person who muses about death and the primal fear of non-existence.

Somehow, the less I feel myself to be, the more being I seem to feel. Whether this points to some sort of survival after death, I don't know. Naturally, I hope so.

Regardless, I know that "I am" for the moment. How many moments more, I don't know. That's not up to me. As a song I remember from the '50s said, "What will be, will be." Yes.

I'm grateful that I've been able to have the experience of being. Anything.

I could not have been at all. Which would have meant that I never would have had to worry about dying. But I'm happy to trade that worry for living my fifty-eight years.

Today I saw two Canadian geese land on the lake that I walk our dog around most afternoons. They flew low over our heads, honking. Fluttering down onto the water, they started in on what might have been some sort of goose mating dance.

Beats me. I'd never seen anything quite like it before. One goose would flap its way along the surface, honking like crazy. Then the other would catch up to it, echoing its cry. And so they went across the lake, water splashing, engaged in early spring goose living.

I felt a tear begin to form. A tear of gratitude. I too was alive. And able to be part of life.

For a moment, that was enough.

It may well be, for every moment that is enough.

[Next day update: In the course of completing a compilation of Church of the Churchless posts, I just came across "I'm alive. Wow!" It echoes what I was trying to say at the end here, perhaps more clearly.]

Keeping it real: facing death without God

You'd seen most of your family killed with machetes and guns.

You'd been taken away, marched to the edge of a pit with some other abductees, and left for dead after bullets missed you.

You'd spent hours trying to climb out of the pit, stumbling through blood and guts.

Somehow you survived. You made it from Rwanda to England. Now you want to tell your tale. You can't write in English very well. You need the help of a writer who works with refugees.

Last night I saw Sonja Linden's "I Have Before Me a Remarkable Document Given to Me by a Young Lady from Rwanda" performed by the Salem Repertory Theatre. It was, in a word, remarkable.

Our front row seats offered us an intimate view of Renee Noonan and Ted deChatelet, who played Juliette (the Rwandan) and Simon (the writer).

Linden's play is founded on the reality of an actual woman from Rwanda who saw her family murdered. She sought both healing and a testimonial act in writing about it.

The play is powerful.

Watching Noonan, a marvelous actress, become Juliette for ninety minutes, I was struck by how "acting" of this sort is a misnomer. Noonan's voice, expressions, and mannerisms exactly reflected what she was experiencing. The inside of Noonan/Juliette also was the outside—no evident difference.

By contrast, I'm frequently (if not usually) presenting a face to the world that differs from my subjectively experienced visage. If I'm angry, I try to hide it. If I'm happy, I try to tone down my exuberance. If I'm anxious, I try to appear calm.

With Juliette, what you saw was what she was. When she was sad, it showed. When she was joyful, it showed. Actress Noonan showed this audience member what it is like to not act as anything other than what you are.

Similarly, Juliette dealt with death as it was. There wasn't a single mention of God. Nor, to my recollection, any "why?"

God and why? are meaningless concepts when Hutu killers have been led to your Tutsi family door by a neighbor you considered a good friend, and the U.N. troops you hoped would be protectors ended up firing their guns only at dogs chewing on corpses.

Juliette looked death in the face. She didn't pretty it up, nor did she uglify it. In a moving scene, she lights a candle for each of the family members who were killed.

I liked how she talked about them as realistically as she faced death. They were human beings, not saints. She liked some things about her relatives; she didn't like other things.

Juliette never doubted her feelings. She spoke and lived from the heart, teaching her teacher, Simon, how to write more honestly, just as he was urging her to do the same (the first draft of her book was dry description; Simon drew out from her the perspective of the person behind the describing).

Death is scary. In Rwanda, for almost a million people it was brutal, nasty, painful. To be afraid of dying in that way (or indeed, any way) is normal. To be afraid of being afraid—that's an unnecessary complication.

Just as feeling bad about feeling bad is. Or doubting your doubt. Or being anxious about your anxiety. Reality is best lived simply, not complexly.

There weren't any answers in "I Have Before Me a Remarkable Document Given to Me by a Young Lady from Rwanda." Nor were there any questions. Death doesn't deal in Q and A's.

It is what it is: ugly and beautiful, bad and good, terrifying and delightful, an ending and a beginning. Juliette engaged with death in an authentically human fashion, head-on, with no turning away toward a mythical God or imaginary afterlife.

May we all be so bold. And so honest.

Living in the now

What if this is all that there is? This. Right here, right now. A succession of moments in the physical world. After we die: nothing. No more “this.”

As I so often repeat here at the Church of the Churchless, I don’t know. I sure hope there is life after death. As Woody Allen put it, “I don't want to achieve immortality through my work I want to achieve it through not dying.”

But here’s another Woody Allen quote: “You can live to be a hundred if you give up all the things that make you want to live to be a hundred.”

Recently a friend, Randy, and I shared some thoughts via email about Eckhart Tolle and his “The Power of Now” philosophy. A while back I started to read the book but it didn’t grab me. With over 600 mostly positive Amazon reader reviews, obviously a lot of other people resonate with his message.

As they should. I fully agree with Tolle’s prescription for a happy, fulfilling, and enlightened life. It’s just the way he packaged his “be here now” advice that left me literarily listless.

I told Randy that the mystic spiritual path we both were initiated into many years ago has some failings. Like most other religions, it preaches withdrawal from this world in the hope of entry into a better one. I said:

Sant Mat seems to emphasize a "this world is shit, get out of it" mentality. That may be good advice, but the downside is that it encourages people who already are depressed, withdrawn, unsocial, etc. to embrace their dysfunction. I've come to think that it'd be a cruel joke if this world really is all that there is--no life after death--yet so many religious people end up trying to ignore it in the hope that heaven will be their reward for detachment.

It seems strange that God would choose to create our physical universe, and then desire above all that souls escape from it. In Islamic thought we are told, “God was a hidden treasure and wanted to be known.” Meaning, creation is the observable manifestation of hidden divinity.

So why not enjoy God’s gift? Fully. Enthusiastically. Passionately. Every day I sit for an hour or so in meditation with closed eyes and ears, trying to tune in to whatever may lie beyond the physical. But the rest of the time I seek to drink in the sights, sounds, and other perceptions of materiality.

Why ignore what is here now? This. If this is all that there is, then every earthly moment is infinitely precious, for there is no infinity to look forward to. Yet even if there will be life after our deaths, it still seems that each moment is to be richly savored, for it never will come again.

God may have other sorts of existences ready for us, but this present earthly one is the gift to be enjoyed now.

I don’t usually listen or agree with Dr. Laura. However, while station-surfing as I was driving around this afternoon I heard this radio psychotherapist advise a woman with a sexual problem: “You don’t want to die, looking back, at 102 and think of all the nights of passion you’ve missed.”

Today I spent a highly enjoyable hour watching belly dancers with evident joie de vivre and listening to Middle Eastern music at Salem’s World Beat Festival.

Yes, God certainly has given us lots of treasures. When you’re married, though, there’s a limit to what can be known about some of them.

[Tomorrow I'll probably post more belly dancing photos on my HinesSight weblog. Yesterday's post was about a less-joie de virvre'ly first day at the World Beat Festival.]

Rumi, love, and non-existence

It’s Valentine’s Day. Love is in the air. But at this moment my thoughts are on non-existence. Which, actually, isn’t far removed from love, according to Rumi. This 12th century Sufi mystic extols non-existence as the highest possible spiritual state, for it opens the door onto Oneness.

So since my previous two posts focused on the fear of not-existing after death (or before it), I decided to dig into Rumi for a much more positive perspective.

These quotes are from William Chittick’s wonderful book, “The Sufi Path of Love.” Chittick organizes Rumi’s outpouring of poetry and prose into clear thematic categories. He also offers his own summary of Rumi’s teachings on each subject.

I went through my phase of being Rumi-crazed before I evolved into my current churchless leaning. However, Rumi still speaks to me. Especially when he talks about non-existence.

What could be more churchless than this? In the non-existence of what we currently consider “existence” to be, there are no dogmas, no religions, no theologies, no gurus, no spiritual practices, no enlightenment, no salvation.

In short, no anything. Which leaves... Something? Nothing? That’s the big question. Here’s how Rumi approaches it:

Non-existence is an Ocean and the world foam. The Sea’s boiling brings the foam into existence. Iran and Turan are but two of its flecks. In this boiling, tell me, what is effort? Why do these patient men boast of their patience?

God has made nonexistence appear existent and respectable; He has made Existence appear in the guise of nonexistence. He has hidden the Sea and made the foam visible. He has concealed the Wind and shown you the dust.

The whole world has taken the wrong way, for they fear nonexistence, while it is their refuge.

The Absolute Being works in nonexistence—what but nonexistence is the workshop of the Maker of existence?

Return from existence to nonexistence! You are seeking the Lord and you belong to Him! Nonexistence is a place of income, flee it not! The existence of more and less is a place of expenditure. God’s workshop is nonexistence, so everything outside the workshop is worthless.

What do I know if I exist or not? But this much I do know, oh Beloved: When I exist I am nonexistent, and when I am nonexistent I exist!

Were your body’s existence to be naughted, then your soul would be exalted—after naughting is complete, you will be in but God’s Oneness.

For a lifetime you have made trial of your own existence. Once you must try out nonexistence!

The beloved said, “You have done all these things, but open your ears wide and listen well: You have not accomplished the root of the root of love and devotion—what you have done is the branches.” The lover said, “Tell me, what is that root.” She said, “To die and become nonexistent.”

Therefore be bewildered and distraught, nothing less, so that God’s help may come to you from before and behind. Once you have become bewildered, dizzy, and annihilated, then your spiritual state will say, “Lead us on the Straight Path!”

In this path, anything other than confusion and madness is distance and alienation from God.

Oh God, show to the spirit that station where speech grows up without words, so the pure spirit may fly toward the wide expanse of Nonexistence—an expanse exceedingly open and spacious, from which this imagination and existence find nourishment.

Images are narrower than Nonexistence—therefore imagination is the cause of heartache. Existence is still narrower than imagination—therefore within it full moons become crescents. The existence of the world of sense perception and colors is still narrower, for it is a cramped prison.

The cause of narrowness is composition and multiplicity, and the senses drag toward composition. Know that the World of Unity lies in the other direction from the senses. If you want Oneness, go in that direction!

More thoughts about the fear of non-existence

I really appreciate the comments on my “Death and the primal fear of non-existence” post. I still find the all-too-likely prospect of not-existing deeply disturbing. But it’s somewhat comforting to know that I’m not the only one who feels this way.

Over the years I’ve had many discussions with friends and family about what happens or doesn’t happen after death. Invariably I’ve expressed surprise when someone tells me, “I’m not afraid to die.” Or, “I’m ready to go.” I ask them, “So you wouldn’t mind if I pulled out a knife and slit your throat?”

“Oh, sure, I’d be scared if something like that happened,” they’ll say. “Then why did you say you’re not afraid to die?” I’ll reply. Methinks those who claim they’re up with death are speaking from their detached intellect, not their gut-honest heart.

Over on the Radha Soami Studies discussion group, David Lane (a.k.a. the Neural Surfer) said something interesting about my post: Brian Hines is happy. Most profound, Professor Lane, who wrote:

I really liked this post because it reveals (at least for me) that Brian Hines is relatively happy.

You see, long ago I had this abiding realization: When we deeply fear death, non-existence, etc., the corollary is that we are HAPPY... RELATIVELY so, but happy all the same.

In other words, fear of non-existence IS the natural shadow of a happy man or woman IN THIS existence.

Now where I worry a bit is when that fear of death or non-existence goes away (now I am not talking about theology or poses we may assume).... when one absolutely doesn't care if they are annihilated.

Why?

Because it indicates that they are relatively DONE with this world, or unhappy, or sad, etc..... In other words, no fear indicates something amiss..... something about a certain sadness, a certain it's over with.

I say all of this because we oftentimes think that our biggest fears say something about the universe in general, when in point of fact they say everything about our current state of being.

Which is another way of saying, a happy man HAS fears.

I think David is correct. I know he’s right about me being happy. I am. And that’s a big part of the reason why I am so afraid of not-existing for ever and ever after I die. What a cosmic joke it would be to live happily for eighty years, or whatever, and then fade into absolute nothingness for eternity.

Not that I’m complaining about getting a chance to live at all, Mr. or Ms. Cosmic Joker. Thanks for my life span, as miniscule as it is in comparison to the age of the cosmos. I just would like to feel that there is more congruity between what I’m happily experiencing now and what awaits me after my last breath.

One commenter described Bernadette Roberts’ struggle to integrate her experience of “no-self” with the emptiness and nothingness of existence. I’ve read a couple of her books and picked up “The Experience of No-Self” this morning to see how her existential terror compares with mine. Much of what she says rings true to me:

I decided that having no-self was as bad, if not worse, than having a self; because once beyond the self, man was just as likely to come across an unlivable nothingness as he was a marvelous, unnameable “something”—as I first seemed to do.

…That was the real question: if there is no self and no God, what then? I had just seen “what then” and couldn’t live with that either. There’s nothing blissful about sheer nothingness—even Sartre declared it nauseous…

…In a moment of bravado I decided it was time to have it out with whatever it was. I could not keep running from this thing all my life, I had to get it out in the open, face it head-on and deal with it, because I could no longer stand its continual lurking around every corner of my day.

…This thing I had to stare down was simply a composite of every connotation we have of “terror,” “dread,” “fear,” “insanity,” and things of this order. In a word, it was a mental, psychological killer.

…If there is any aspect of this journey I would stress or emphasize, it is the necessity of finally coming to terms with the void and nothingness of existence which, for me, seemed to be the equivalent of living out my life without God or any such substitute.

…At one point, the mind came upon the hideous void of life, the insidious nothingness of death and decay strangling life from every object of sight. Only self can escape such a vision because only self knows fear, and only fear can generate the weapons of defense. Without a self the only escape is no escape; the void must be faced, come what may.

Yes. It must. For me, the beginning (and perhaps also the end) of genuine spirituality is confronting the fear of non-existence head on. I’m getting tired of being afraid. It seems that I’m approaching the point where I’m more afraid of being afraid than of the original fear itself.

It’s hard to talk about this stuff. I appreciate the commenters who were willing to try. The best cinematic depiction of the primal fear I wrote about is the European version of “The Vanishing” (another review here). Skip the Americanized version.

Watch it. But be warned: the ending will stay with you forever. Just like, perhaps, your non-existence.

Death and the primal fear of non-existence

I’ve come face to face with not-existing. It’s scary. Really scary. I’ve never experienced anything scarier. I can call it “fear,” but it’s more than that. Worse than that. Regular fear arises when something bad is happening or could happen.

But primal fear is looking into the maw of nothing happening to you, because there will be no you around for anything to happen to. Do you get the difference? I hope so. I don’t know if I can describe it any more clearly.

This experience has come to me about a dozen times. Mostly while I’m going to sleep. Occasionally in meditation. It isn’t something that I can bring about on my own. It isn’t a thought; it isn’t an emotion; it isn’t a perception. It’s as if a curtain covering non-existence opens for a moment, giving me a peek into a nothingness that is absolute.

Because I’m not there. I mean, I’m obviously there at the moment, looking into the depths of not-existing for eternity. Yet what I feel all the way down to the marrow of my being is what it means to live for a time and then to not live for all the rest of time.

That feeling grabs my attention, for sure. I feel like I’m staring at the Most Real Thing in existence. Which is, paradoxically, non-existence. More accurately, my non-existence.

I’ve told quite a few people about this experience of mine. Nobody seems to understand what I’m talking about. I’m sure there must be others who have had similar experiences. A commenter on my “Near-death experiences and nothingness” post seems to have felt a similar fear (which is still with her).

I’d be interested in hearing from anyone else who has similarly had a close encounter with non-existence.

Assisted suicide is moral, Scalia isn’t

Most of us here in Oregon were thrilled when the Supreme Court upheld our state’s assisted suicide law. Tuesday’s decision was a victory both for state’s rights and common sense.

Twice, Oregon voters have affirmed their belief that terminally ill people with six months or less to live have the right to end their life if they come to feel that it isn’t worth living. I can’t understand how anybody could argue with this.

Who else should be in control of the life of an adult who is capable of making his or her own decisions but that person? No answer comes to mind. People should be left free to live, and people should be left free to die—if that is their choice. Government shouldn’t butt into moral choices that affect no one but the individual making the choice.

Justices Roberts, Scalia, and Thomas disagreed, however. Scalia wrote what a Portland Oregonian editorial called a “peevish dissent.” Wanting to cast my eyes directly upon its peevishness, for the first time in my life I ventured into the legalistic wilds of the Supreme Court web site, where I found both the opinion and the dissents.

Boring. Reading further, still boring. It wasn’t until I got to the very end of Scalia’s dissent, pages 24-25, that I could sense peevishness under all the legalese. Scalia admits that assisted suicide falls within “the realm of public morality” which is traditionally addressed by the states.

Yet somehow he reaches the tortured conclusion that the Attorney General of the United States is better able to decide what is moral for the people of Oregon than the people themselves. Scalia supposedly has a great legal mind, but he is reduced to leaning on his utterly personal opinion when he writes:

If the term “legitimate medical purpose” has any meaning, it surely excludes the prescription of drugs to produce death.

Surely not, Mr. Scalia. Have you read the New England Journal of Medicine article, “Physician-Assisted Suicide—Oregon and Beyond”? Probably not. If you had, I don’t see how you could claim that aiding terminally ill people to make their own carefully-chosen end of life decision isn’t a legitimate medical purpose. Susan Okie, M.D. says:

Oregon’s seven years of experience with this law have been, for the most part, reassuring: medical and legal safeguards established during implementation appear to have prevented abuse, and most patients have had the expected outcome…The law has not had the dire social consequences that some opponents predicted. There is no evidence that it has been used to coerce elderly, poor, or depressed patients to end their lives, nor has it caused any significant migration of terminally ill people to Oregon.

Compassion in Dying of Oregon deserves a lot of credit for helping make Oregon’s Death with Dignity Act such a success. Back in my health planning/policy days I was deeply involved with bioethics issues in this state. It warms my heart to see that Oregon is still leading the fight to keep end-of-life decisions in the hands of the person whose life is ending—not the government.

What worries me, though, is that the religious right will continue to try to push their brand of Christian fundamentalism onto to everybody. This happened in the Terri Schiavo case, it is happening in the debates over abortion and the teaching of intelligent design, and I have little doubt that it will happen in the halls of Congress as attempts are made to overturn Oregon’s assisted suicide law legislatively.

Betty Rollin, author of a LA Times opinion piece, “In the end, peace of mind,” says:

An April Harris Poll showed 70% of respondents answered "yes" when asked if terminally ill people should be allowed to die with a physician's help. If Oregon loses the battle to preserve its law, the comfort Oregonians now have will be lost to them — and most likely to all of us.

The title of a USA Today story about Oregon’s Death with Dignity Act sums it up: “The dying, not the feds, deserve final say on life.”

That surely sounds moral to me, Mr. Scalia.

The gift of a classmate’s death

Death has a way of grabbing my attention. I can be drifting through life, mindlessly engaged in the mostly meaningless activities of my daily existence, and then…the clear and present reality of the big D—death—jerks me back to where I should always be: living. Real living, not just pretend living.

A few days ago I got a phone call from an elementary and high school classmate, Pam. I’ve talked with Pam just a few times since we graduated from good old Woodlake Union High School, class of 1966.

But as soon as I heard her voice I felt like we were best friends. Like we always had been. Like we always would be. People who are intensely and authentically engaged with life, as Pam is, can make you feel that way.

She started off by telling me about plans that she had heard about for a high school class reunion. I told her that I was interested in the news, yet was more interested in what she was doing now.

“Where do you live?” I asked. “I don’t have a home,” she said. “I’m a contemporary sadhu. For five and a half years I’ve been traveling around the world, Mexico, Central American, India.”

Pam said that her husband died, then their home was destroyed by a hurricane. “I got the message: let go of possessions. I’m into a new phase now. I know that I absolutely know nothing.”

Music to my ears. So refreshing. It was wonderful to be talking to someone who didn’t have life all figured out, who was searching for meaning in the most open fashion, unencumbered either by material things or mental beliefs.

Recently her wanderings returned her to central California, near where she and I spent our youth (Three Rivers). A friend who lives in Visalia had asked her to house sit for two weeks while the family went on vacation in Hawaii. It turned out that the house was right across the street from the home of Brian, a namesake of mine who also was a classmate of ours.

Brian’s wife came over to talk with Pam. She said that Brian was coming home that day from the hospital. He had been treated for a brain tumor. Previously Brian reportedly had been in great health. Happy, productive, a family man.

And then, while backing a horse trailer out of their driveway, he hit a tree. Brian’s wife asked, “What happened?” He said, “I don’t know. Something blanked out in my mind.”

Just a few months later Brian was spending his last day on Earth at home, talking to Pam. He died the day he got out of the hospital. Pam told me, “Everything is a gift.” Amen to that. Her being there in Visalia at that moment was an amazing coincidence.

That word, “coincidence,” doesn’t do justice to this story. As I was listening to Pam talk about Brian’s final hours, I had the strongest feeling that life offers us up these glimpses of what I can only call something more not for a reason, but simply as a gift. Briefly a crack appears in the cosmic egg and we get a peek into what lies beneath the shell of appearances.

I don’t know what it is. Neither does Pam. Maybe Brian does now. I hope so.

All I know is that life is meant to be lived. I’ve always known that, but I often forget it. I forget that each of us—me, you, Pam, Brian—lives on the edge of Mystery. That edge is encountered in many fashions, many ways, many guises.

Death is Mystery’s most dramatic appearance. Death scares us. Death fascinates us. Death attracts us. Death repels us. The faces of death are as various as our understandings of life. For me, death is a mystery, just as life is a mystery.

The day I talked with Pam I worked in our yard, mowing, fertilizing, edging. Usually I do all this robotically, looking forward to being done with these unwelcome chores so I can move on to doing something else, at which point I’ll be thinking about how nice it will be to… And so on.

Pam’s story about Brian had an effect on me. Maybe this was because he shared my name; he was the same age as me; he was healthy before the brain tumor made its appearance, just as I am. I don’t know the reason why I worked differently that afternoon. I’ll just accept it as a gift.

I realized that the moments of the mowing, the fertilizing, the edging—they were never going to come again. Who knows, maybe no earthly moment was going to come again. I could fall dead from a heart attack, or whatever, in an instant.

There are no guarantees that come attached to this garment of life that I’m temporarily wearing. My body can fall apart at any moment and I’ve got no recourse. Complaints to the warranty department will go unheard: “I thought this vehicle of the spirit was good to go for at least eighty years! What gives?!”

Well, what gives is my conceptions about life. What stays is reality, plain and simple. And that’s the place I should be staying in all the time: reality, here and now.

That place is where I am and who I am. Yet much of the time—no, most of the time—I allow myself to be dragged away into a facsimile of reality, an imitation of life that is fabricated from images: thoughts, imaginings, conceptions, anticipations, desires, what-ifs.

Too often I borrow my life from others because I’m too lazy or too fearful to live a life that is truly my own. Just before Pam called I had been reading a book about the Taoist sage, Lieh-Tzu. It advises, “In our short time here, we should listen to our own voices and follow our own hearts. Why not be free and live your own life?”

I’ll share the entire short chapter from which that excerpt was taken as a continuation to this post. It’s a gift: from Lieh-Tzu, from the book’s author (Eva Wong), from me, from the cosmos.

Pam is right. Everything is a gift. Life doesn’t need to be unwrapped, figured out, deciphered, analyzed to death. The gifts are right at hand. We just need to recognize them for what they are.

Maui musings on the Pope's passing

Fairly brief Maui musings, for Laurel and I leave tomorrow to return home after our vacation here on the shores of Napili Bay. We haven’t experienced any grand spiritual visions while lying on the beach, boogie boarding, snorkeling, and shopping. However, it has been interesting to reflect upon the Pope’s passing from our more detached perspective here on Maui.

More detached, that is, in comparison to our habitual immersion in cable news, two daily newspapers, and talk radio. We have followed the Pope’s death and mourning period only via quick reads of the local newspaper’s front page and glances at CNN prior to heading to the beach.

What is jarring to us, immersed as we have been in the natural rhythms of sun, wind, waves, tides, is the strange spectacle of more than a million people lining up to gaze upon a dead body. And buying Pope mementos—trinkets. It’s like Woodstock without the music. Or the fun.

It’s all so unnatural. A man died. Yes, he was the Pope. But he was just a man, not God. God doesn’t die. Only men and women die. As Trey Smith noted on his The Rambling Taoist weblog, Christians supposedly believe in the immortality of the soul, and in the superiority of spirit over matter.

So what is the big deal with viewing the Pope’s body? Life and death are part of the natural order of things. Every day we have seen fishermen catching some of the sea life that we enjoy looking at through our snorkel masks. Bodies live, then they die. Pope bodies, fish bodies, all bodies.

There is something deeply disturbing about all the attention being given to the Pope’s death. Indeed, any death. I felt the same way when President Reagan died. Way too much is being made of the passing of a single person.

What this indicates, I believe, is how deeply unspiritual most people’s spirituality actually is. Few of us have come to terms with death, no matter how religiously devoted we claim to be. Further, few of us have come to terms with our own ego, no matter how humble we may claim to be.

So a fear of death and attachment to ego combine to create a perfect storm of overwrought mourning when someone special to us dies. For we too want to be special, and we don’t want death to interfere with our specialness. Thus we have these spectacles of countless mourners projecting onto the Pope their own hope for glory after death.

Does anyone really think that the Pope would have wanted all this fuss made over his dead body? If he did, then his own spirituality was a sham. If he didn’t, and was as humble as he seemed to be, than the Catholic faithful who streamed to Rome are being disrespectful of his wishes.

Either way, from our perch here in Maui, it seemingly would have been much more fitting to have a simple burial or cremation, marked by an equally simple headstone.

Religious people are far too attached to men just like them and much too little attached to god, who mystics of all creeds say is utterly unlike all that we know now. The Pope’s death has strengthened my conviction that most modern religion has become nothing more than outward show, lacking inward realization.

Religious zealots run amok in Terri Schiavo case

Anyone following the Terri Schiavo situation with an open, rational, compassionate mind can see that religious zealots are some of the most immoral people on earth. Who else but Congressional religious zealots would subpoena a woman in a persistent vegetative state to come “testify” (as if she could) on Capitol Hill? And now it appears that the same zealots are rushing through half-baked emergency legislation that would overturn longstanding principles about how end-of-life medical care decisions are made.

This is happening while other religious zealots are trying to break into the hospice where Schiavo is being cared for, trying to bring her bread and water—even though they know that she can’t eat on her own. I feel like puking.

But I won’t. For I’ve just eaten a large, tasty, healthy pancake, topped with strawberries and whipped cream, in honor of Terri Schiavo and her brave husband, Michael. I did this to counter the ridiculous call for a “Fast for Terri.” This is more hypocrisy from those who think that they alone know what is moral.

Michael has it right when he said, after Terri’s feeding tube was removed, “It felt like some peace was happening for Terri. And I felt like she was finally going to get what she wants, and be at peace and be with the Lord.” Amen.

My wife and I can’t understand why those who claim to believe in Christian everlasting life are so afraid of letting death happen naturally. Methinks their lack of faith betrays itself in their reluctance to let Terri pass to the other side, where Michael, her legal guardian, is convinced she wants to be.

Note what often gets forgotten by the zealots: Terri’s husband is her legal guardian. As Arthur Caplan, one of the nation’s leading bioethicists, wrote last October:

“No court has ever been persuaded that Michael Schiavo should be disqualified from making medical decisions on behalf of his wife. And no court has ever been persuaded that Terri has any hope of recovering from her severely brain-damaged state. So the courts have sided with Michael Schiavo using a well-established rule of law, which states that when a patient cannot communicate and has left no written instructions about their wishes, spouses have discretion about continuing or stopping medical care.”

A Fox News poll found that 59% of Americans agree that Terri’s feeding tube should be removed and say that if they were in the same situation, they wouldn’t want to be kept alive artificially. So what the hell is Congress doing trying to interfere with what should be a private decision between Terri’s caregivers and her legal guardian?

The only bright spot in this depressing display of neoconservative/religious intrusion on individual rights is that it should spur more people to sign living wills and health care powers of attorney. In the late 1980s I was one of the founders of Oregon Health Decisions and its first executive director. (Here's a history of OHD) With Ralph Crawshaw, Michael Garland, Carolyn Lobitz, and others dedicated to helping Oregonians make wiser personal and political health decisions, we did a lot to make people realize that these “advance directives” need to be signed before you become seriously ill. If Terri had done this, the legal battles surrounding her wouldn’t be happening.

If you live in Oregon, you can order advance directive forms from the Oregon Health Decisions web site. A FAQ page has some useful information about advance directives. Before filling one out, you need to think carefully about what you want when the end of life nears. Laurel (my wife) and I have different opinions, but we each have advance directives.

Laurel is certain that she doesn’t want extraordinary measures like a feeding tube used to keep her alive if she is terminally ill or in a persistent vegetative state, as Terri Schiavo is. So her advance directive makes this clear. I’d rather have Laurel making the decisions on the spot for me, so I’ve signed a health care power of attorney that authorizes her to do just that.

Laurel’s approach assures that she won’t be given extraordinary measures even if I get cold feet and want to keep her alive against her stated wishes. My approach is more flexible because I find it difficult to envision what I would want in a situation that I’ve never experienced.

Here’s an interesting bioethics blog that has some informative and moving posts about the Schiavo case. Glancing through them confirmed my suspicion that those who know the most about bioethical decision-making almost universally are appalled at how ill-informed religious meddlers have injected themselves into the private lives of Terri and Michael.

Another weblog dispels myths and misrepresentations being put forward by Terri’s parents, their attorneys, and fanatical groups such as the Christian Defense Coalition, which is listed as a domestic terrorist group.

Ah, behold the benefits of slavish adherence to religious fundamentalism. From a normal caring human being you can become a domestic terrorist. Count me out. Way out.

“The Big If,” a kindred weblog

Laurel’s “Fearing Fundamentalism” article that was published in “Salem Monthly” caught the eye of a Salem writer. He emailed Laurel, expressing interest in our plans to organize a local Church of the Churchless discussion group.

I’ve enjoyed browsing his “The Big If” weblog, whose masthead reads: “Some people think it’s crazy to believe in anything but death after life. Other people think it’s crazy to believe that death ends life. If death doesn't truly kill us--that's the big if--it changes everything.”

Amen to that, The Muse Guy (nom de plume of the weblog’s author). It does indeed change everything. Most postings on The Big If focus on near-death experiences and the evidence (or lack of it) for life after death. But “The Universe Made Me Do It” takes a broad look at how “the Universe” has become a substitute term for “God,” as in “Your house will sell when the Universe says it’s time.”

This is an apt observation that I had never thought of before. Nonetheless, when Laurel had finished reading that post she exclaimed, “Are you sure you don’t have another weblog? This guy sounds just like you.” I not-so-humbly thought, “Ah, how wonderful that Salem has another wise and eloquent writer on metaphysical matters.”

We do indeed seem to be kindred spirits. The Muse Guy has, well, mused on what it would be like to invent the church of your fondest dreams. Most of his vision sounds wonderful to me, though as a singing- and dancing-impaired person I’m not wild about the idea of expressing my spirituality in these fashions. My dream would be to observe the singers and dancers from a stationary mute position, waiting for the “service” to revolve back to talking.

Laurel and I are visualizing the Church of the Churchless as more of a discussion group. But it certainly is true that people “discuss” in different ways. Some are cerebral, some are emotional. Some are highly verbal, others are largely non-verbal. Some are looking for support, others seek to be challenged. A truly open, inclusive church would accommodate many types of people.

Concerning near-death experiences (NDEs), I enjoyed reading Treesha Richie’s account: “Near-Death Experience Of God As Holographic Presence Of Light And Sound.” Treesha facilitates meetings of the Portland Oregon Friends of IANDS (International Association for Near-Death Studies). I’m fascinated by stories of near-death experiences, largely because I readily admit to a deep fear of death. I’ve never had a NDE, per se, but I’ve experienced being embraced by the dark—the scary flip side of being embraced by the light.

Philosophically, near-death experiences tend to support a belief in reincarnation and karma. However, the Western (or at least American) mind seems to have a different “take” on this than Eastern mystics. For Hindu and Buddhist sages, reincarnation is unwanted and karma is its cause. But often the New Age approach is to look upon desire, the root of karma, as a good thing. “We are born again so that we may experience fresh desired forms of earthly life.” This is just what the Buddha said is the cause of suffering: desire.

So I’ve always found it hard to understand why coming back for another earthly life is supposed to be so great. If I’m confused, anxious, and looking for answers to the big questions of life now, what is going to change the next time around? I really like the prospect of experiencing God as a presence of light and sound, holographic or otherwise. Give it to me now though, not just after death. And don’t take it away once I have it.

Many forms of meditative practice refer to “dying while living.” This interests me more than actually coming close to dying and seeing what I experience, a decidedly chancy proposition. Voluntarily attempting to die to physicality while sitting comfortably on my meditation cushion is more appealing to me than non-voluntarily crashing head-on into a semi truck.

To my mind, NDEs offer an advance peek at what lies near the end of the spiritual path. Meditation is the path itself.