Science, Religion, Politics and in the pursuit of truth – HappyPsychotic

I just finished reading this book “The Immortalization Commission” by John Gray.  Overall, I thought the book was pretty boring…it seemed to wander off on tangents a few times…but I loved the conclusion.  Here’s part of the conclusion I really enjoyed.

He knew dying is rarely dignified or beautiful.  Yet he saw clearly the dangers of spending his days running away from it.  So instead he entered the death machine, faced its perils and then stepped away.  The risks he faced only kept him more keenly alive.  It is hard to know whether he thought his survival was the result of his own agility, or simply luck.

Risking an ugly death in order to quicken the sensation of life is not for most of us.  But we might live more calmly, and also more pleasantly, if we could see more clearly that the self we want to save from dying is itself dead.  Unhappily, we are too glued to the image we have made of ourselves to think of living in the present.  NOthing is more changeable than the self that is preserved in memory.

While most people may never give up dreaming of immortality, individuals here and there can loosen the hold of the dream on their lives.  If you understand that in wanting to live for ever you are trying to preserve a lifeless image you may not want to be resurrected, or to survive in a post-mortem paradise.  What could be more deadly than being unable to die?

The afterlife is like utopia, a place where no one wants to live.  Without seasons nothing ripens and drops to the ground, the leaves never change their colours or the sky its vacant blue.  Nothing dies, so nothing is born.  Everlasting existence is a perpetual calm, the peace of the grave.  There is more sunshine in the fall of a leaf.  Seekers after immortality look for a way out of chaos; but they are part of that chaos, natural or divine.  Immortality is only the dimming soul projected on to a blank screen.