Summer Harvest

Apologies for the lack of new material of late. I actually have something in the works, but given the time of year and the increasing influence of La Santisima, Patroness of the OA, I thought it’d be worth posting this old entry from fantastic planet. As always, minor aesthetic and contextual changes have been made to the text. An alternative title for this piece could be, “What I believe.”

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1. For most of us, for most of our lives, Death is a brooding abstract, a topic to be avoided at all costs. It’s difficult to fear Death in the abstract– seeing pictures of dead victims of a war, for instance, or reading stories of condemned prisoners who bear no relation to us are such common experiences within our media that one’s brow hardly darkens. It’s only when Death comes knocking on our bedroom window that we really find ourselves staring it in the face; when it crosses the border from the realms of abstraction and becomes, instead, a palpable object, we turn to it as a solidity, a force with which every single human must wrestle at some time or another.

2. Deep down, everyone has an opinion of what happens ‘after death,’ from the unrepentant materialist who believes in an eternal nothingness, to the more idealistic resurrectionist who expe]s to spend long afternoons in a cloudy realm within a refined corporeity, ego and memories inta]. And yet, barring the few testimonies of ‘near-death experiencers’ with their tales of unending light, or experiential mythologies like the Tibetan Bardo Thotrol, the Book of the Dead, no accounts exist of that final journey. Even the post-mortem tales related to us amount to nothing; Death is a permanent state of affairs, and those who claim to have been and returned perpetuate only myths. Death assumes an exile; claims of having been there and back may be accounts of Death-like experiences, but at their best can be only accounts of the first stages of the beyond, and at worst can be only trickery and confusion. In general, anyone who claims definitive knowledge of what happens after death is deluded or lying. The following are my delusions and lies.

3. In the abstract, my personal belief is that after Death the consciousness which had inhabited the body returns to the state of pure potential, at which point, one with the Limitless Light, exists extended in and part of that Light, and moves along to another segment of manifestation, be it eternal reconciliation with the nirvanic state of paradise or another extension of the universal consciousness into the subjective realm. In the Universe’s own Gnostic Way, in its desire to know itself, it continually sends segments of its own greater Consciousness into the realm of experience. These segments, existing outside of space and time, are unrestricted by them. Practically speaking, it means that after Death, one’s consciousness can remanifest in any portion of the Universe’s subjective experience. I could die tomorrow and be reborn again within my body. I could die tomorrow and be reborn as Ran Prieur or Tim Boucher or George W. Bush or Julius Caesar. I could die tomorrow and be reborn as an amoeba, or as a cephalopodan life form orbiting a distant star. I could die tomorrow and be reborn as you, the reader. Conversely, you could die tomorrow and be reborn on September 2, 1975 to a young couple in Florida who would name you Jeremy Puma. The experience seems limited by space/time, but nothing suggests that reincarnation into the subjective occurs in a linear fashion.

4. Memories of ‘past lives’ are merely memories of different subjective encounters with the Materia. I might remember a ‘past life’ as Napoleon, but so might you, and we’d both be correct; our objective consciousnesses both experienced the life of Napoleon, so why not?

5. This forced subjective experience accounts for the perception of the Universe as a region of insanity, a place from which we must escape. The question then becomes, how much of the ego survives us? Does it choose where to manifest next? Can it choose the path of no return, and an eternal peace in the Limitless Light? Or, is it something we have no control over? Or indeed, does it depend upon our actions here on Earth? If we’re ‘good,’ or find the ‘Way,’ does that mean we go to Heaven? Can some of us return as bodhisattvas to assist others on their journeys? Yes, yes and yes. All of these things are possible, and none, because there is only one consciousness, experiencing itself subjectively, unlimited by space and time.

6. There is no need for a Hell. Hitler died and became every single one of his victims, had to experience every evil ever committed by his followers from the other end. They didn’t realize they were Hitler when it happened; does that make it any better, or even worse? Each of them was reborn within the consciousness of Hitler and perpetrated these crimes against themselves, who were, in turn, Hitler. There is one experiencer, one recipient of all the good and ill produced by the subjective realm, one objective consciousness that seeks to learn about itself by experiencing each and every subjective manifestation of itself.

7. This accounts for the perception of selflessness as ‘good’ and selfishness as ‘evil,’ though again, these are limited terms. Simply put, what you do unto even the least of humanity you do unto the Christ within because what you do unto even the least of humanity you do to yourself. Lie, cheat, steal, kill? You’re lying to, cheating, stealing from and murdering yourself. Murder is suicide, and vice-versa. This stance drives much of my current attitude towards the world and relations with others and even my “politics.”

8. Eschatological concerns are of course implied. One would assume that once every manifestation of itself has been experienced by the Universe, it becomes whole, healed, and no longer needs to break itself into pieces. That may indeed be the case, but that’s only how it looks to us from the realm of limitation. Beyond space/time, the entire process is already complete, and the process is just beginning. The End of Time happened yesterday; the Universe will be created tomorrow. Time is not linear or cyclical; these are human concepts. Time is an illusory, subjective experience of an amorphous process of discovery, the gnosis of the universe itself.

9. What better Heaven than to exist as the Universal consciousness, dancing through its manifestations in total Freedom, be they imperfect or limited? It’s a grand adventure with infinite possibilities and infinite choices, a game of perpetual exploration and discovery and self-knowledge with very little in the way of correct or incorrect. The ‘goal’ is simple: know, know, know! Only in knowing one’s self, for one’s self, does the individual achieve enlightenment, and only in knowing itself for itself does the Universe become complete. To me, this is the ultimate message of all Gnostic streams of thought and the underlying basis for everything from ontology to morality.

10. It would be easy to sentimentalize this concept, as so many have done, into a “we are all one everything happens for a reason universal peace and love” philosophy, but to do so would be to ignore the realistic limitations of subjective experience. We are all one, but that “One” is limited by the subjective realm. We do create our own reality, but from beyond the ego and as a collective of individual experiencers, not as individuals within the realm of limitations. “Creating one’s reality” is well and good, but it’s a concept limited to those untouched by tragedy and is utterly useless to, say, someone who has lost her entire village to a tsunami. “We are all one” is well and good, but it’s a concept limited to those who choose to ignore the value of individual experience and self-knowledge. “Peace and love” are well and good, but they are concepts limited to those who have never had close relatives murdered at the hands of a death squad.

11. There are three virtues implied by this outlook: compassion and humility and radical inquiry. Our fragmentary nature requires compassion for others as extensions of our selves, segments of the universe. This same fragmentary nature requires humility as an admission that our experience is limited and subjective, and the subjective experiences of others may not be more true or more false than those of our own. These limitations require constant questioning in order to allow the universe to experience itself more fully. None of these three necessitate “peace” or “love” or anything we usually associate with goodness, but peace and love et al are natural extensions of these virtues, not vice-versa as some assume.

12. Conversely, we can understand “evil” as viewing the limitation as the whole, viewing other individual fragments as objects without value. Acts which restrict the individual and subjective universal experience serve only to limit the universe’s ability to know itself, and to delay the redemptive process.

13. “Good” and “evil” are symptoms, not causes, and are better understood in terms of “sanity” and “insanity.”

14. Of course, these things only exist in space and time, in subjective experience. One will argue that since the process isn’t linear, that the universe is already redeemed at some point, why should it matter whether we choose “good” or “evil” within this manifestation? Such a question makes little sense; we exist as we exist, limited, and are subject to the actions of one another. Practically, this timeless redemption requires sanity, and even though it is already healed in some timeless form, this is due to the acts of compassion, humility and perpetual questioning of its fragmented parts. Sure, you could go out and do something horrifying to someone and it would have little effect on the final state of the universe, but it would have negative effect on you as an eventual/possible manifestation of your victim. On many levels, it’s a practical matter, one of the few.

15. What about combating those who commit evil acts? Protesting governments? Confronting bullies? Jailing criminals? The only possible way to combat an act of evil is to lead by example, displaying compassion, humility, and a willingness to question, and to remember that no one can change anyone else’s mind.

16. The most valuable interactions one has are with those in one’s circle of direct experience. If every single person decided to be more compassionate to, to be a little more humble around, to be more willing to ask questions of and for one’s family, one’s friends, one’s neighbors, one’s coworkers, then nobody would need to petition governments or jail criminals. Idealistic, yes, but no more idealistic than the absurd theory that enough people’s signatures will cause a politician to change h/er mind for any reason. Idealism is a necessity not because the best-case scenario will occur, but in order that idealist visions remain within discourse.

17. Carlos Castaneda speaks of the man of knowledge as one who has Death always over his shoulder. I don’t claim to be a man of knowledge, but these are the lessons I’ve been taught by that hovering Death. They are delusions and lies, but they’re my delusions and lies, and they inform all of my actions as an imperfect human who tries to be compassionate and humble and to always ask questions, with varying degrees of success on all counts. I don’t have any interest in dying; I absolutely fear Death when it ventures from the realm of abstra]ion into my own reality. I used to worry that I’d just stop breathing one day, that the laws of physics that run my respiratory system would just conk out, for no reason. In my darkest moments, I still entertain this fear, though it’s lost much of its power over me. Instead, I begrudgingly thank this fear, this Death that caused me to create my eschatological mythology, because it taught me my place within the scheme of things. For this I remain grateful, and offer my thanks to Death for teaching me about goodness, while also shivering in its presence in the knowledge that someday it will teach me through direct experience.