Lemmy: "Death is an inevitability, isn't it? You become more aware of that when you get to my age. I don't worry about it. I'm ready for it. When I go, I want to go doing what I do best. If I died tomorrow, I couldn't complain. It's been good"
I have found that quote poignant in these times of uncertainty. Most people are religious, specially old people. Yet they are so afraid to die and meet their maker. I never understood that. If by 70 you didn't live a full life I guess you have missed out on something...
Change is what makes man. When man changes slowly it is called "life". When man changes rapidly and radically it's called "death".
Speaking of changes...Another man with a full life: https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/ozzy-osbourne-not-afraid-death-945449/ “Do I ever think about when my time’s gonna come? I think about it [but] I don’t worry about it,” he said in a recent Kerrang! interview. “I won’t be here in another 15 years or whatever, not that much longer, but I don’t dwell on it. It’s gonna happen to us all.” 2 years ago he was different, and quite the prophet: Just two years ago, though, he told Rolling Stone he thinks about death all the time: “If I’m alone in my head, it’s a bad area,” he said. “It’s always, ‘Dead. You’re gonna die. There’s gonna be a war. Donald Trump’s gonna send us all to hell.’ … He probably will.” I think the final message is this: " I just try to enjoy things as much as possible, even though that’s so fucking hard sometimes.”"
Well, I am just reading in the news, Irrfan Khan has passed away at 54 of colon cancer. He was my age. https://www.hindustantimes.com/bollywood/irrfan-khan-dies-at-54/story-Hd8s2xZ6uNeqDjgV0sl7zI.html "After having been struck by lightning in 2018 with the news of a rare cancer, he took life soon after as it came and he fought the many battles that came with it. Surrounded by his love, his family for whom he most cared about, he left for heaven abode, leaving behind truly a legacy of his own. We all pray and hope that he is at peace. And to resonate and part with his words he had said, ‘As if I was tasting life for the first time, the magical side of it’.”
I believe there are two kinds of death: a change that perpetuates change (reincarnation), and, a change that brings change to an end ( return to an original existence as spirit). It's the latter that really bothers man, which is dependant upon change for its existence. The latter yeilds changelessness which is a completely different kind of being. Till then there is something called learning, which is a change of mind about prior information, or about no information to some infromation. In some circles minds have imagined a God that learns, for example, through the experience of man...as if it were the aggregate of all man's learning. That "God" changes, like man, and so, faces its own death when changelessness brings all change to an end. Many people would prefer to reincarnated than return to an original condition as spirit. This is assuming it is a choice. I think it is.
If you can't remember the eons before you existed (pre-life), why do you think you will remember the eons after you will exist (afterlife)? The thing is, you do not have a spirit or soul. And even if you did, since you cannot remember what your soul was like before, you would not know what your soul is like if you DID get reincarnated. Because if you are now a reincarnation of some soul in the past, you do not know who or what that is now. Your identity dies when you die. When you die, there is no more you. With no memory of the old you, there can be no new you. The only reason you will know you are alive after you fall asleep tonight is because when you wake up in the morning you will remember that you are still you. That is the PAST. The point of power is the PRESENT. The PRESENT is all that exists. Everything else is illusion and man-made constructs.
Well you can when you are on a journey back to the original state of being. You can recall all your various incarnations. Not that it matters because once upon arriving at the original state of being the phenomenon of incarnation is forgotten having never had actual existence or consequence. The original state of being is Spirit and/or Mind, neither of which have form/shape. Without speculating on the difference between mind and spirit I would call the combination the "soul", or the entire original state of being. A state of being where a body "has" a "soul" is misleading if not erroneous. Such a state is the phenomenon of a Mind abusing its power to experience a temporary abnormality as it explores the concept of other identities. You can and must "remember" the original state of being. On that journey you can remember various incarnations but it is not necessary or important . There is only one soul involved with the phenomenon of many bodies, many incarnations, or even many sub-souls and/or sub-minds. Many souls or minds is as much a false experience as many bodies and many incarnations. The original state of being, the one soul, is as if it were "dead" insofar as any body can remember who does not try to remember. Neither the original state, nor the descending chain of births (this incarnation begets that incarnation, etc.) are easily remembered. This is the "dead" "Christ". As the original state is remembered it is like awakening almost as from the dead. This is the proverbial "resurrection "...basically a remembering . I am not what dies. Besides that, what can die never existed. What dies is an abnormal spin off of one original soul. It pretends to be an identity but it is entirely erroneous. Such erroneous identities are subject to change. As they change it is as though they are dying all the time, never to be again what they once were. The original state of being is not subject to change and still exists as it was, even while it is ignored by the egoic spin offs that derive a derivative kind of existence from the concept of change. All "new you" identities are erroneous compared to the original state of being, the one soul I call "Christ". Christ is never new nor old since Christ never changes. Identities that change are products of a kind of sleeping Christ, the original state of being, the one soul. That Christ does not know it is alive or whether it even exists. All it senses is the experience of many serial and simultaneous identities, none of which can easily remember the original state of awakeness/awareness that Christ knows about Christ's Self. They can only sense separated selves with no real connection to the sublime glory of the original state of being. As such, the aggregate of the separated identities are the proverbial "dead" Christ . In this view there is no or not much difference between sleeping and death. Both are changes subject to change. As such man is an oxymoron that is neither dead nor alive and seemingly both at the same time. As such man is a product of what is MORE than Christ, by way of combining opposites into one "fruit". Other than Christ there is no "present". The sun is not present nor is the moon. The earth is not the present nor are the seas the bees or the trees. Man is not present. At best these are already the past as time is not what you think it is. There is no current ("present") experience wedged between man's past and future. All time, and anything that seems to be happening in time, is at best past. Man's apparent existence as well experience is best explained as an illusion. While man is complicit in the illusion, man is not the author of the illusion. The author is a pseoudo-mind, a kind of artificial intelligence, that is manufactured by an abuse of power within the Mind of Christ to change Christ's nature in the exploration of MORE (the concept of what is more than Christ). Man is a symptom of this problem and can't offer any solutions. On the other hand Christ can offer solutions as Christ endeavors to wake up from a deep sleep.
Death is the basis of all fear. If you were not mortal, there would be no fear in you because even if you were cut into pieces, you would still not die. But what is there to be afraid of? Death is a wonderful thing. It puts many things to an end. Right now, because of the way you are, you may think it is a terrible thing, but if you were to live for a thousand years, you would see death as a relief.