This story got me thinking about life after death

[frau kaleun]

Originally Posted by Skybird

Couldn't have said it any better. And Campbell, he was a really great mind, really.

Oh, agreed, ten times over. Discovering Campbell changed everything for me. I was always reading mythology growing up, always fascinated and moved by it in ways I couldn't quite understand. But it seemed like there was more to it than just old stories in a book from the library. When I first saw "The Power Of Myth" - then I understood.

"Denn dieses vermögen wir Menschen gerade im Angesicht des Todes: uns auszuspannen bis zum Horizont, weit zu werden bis an die Enden der Welt, und also den Tod zu besiegen indem wir begreifen wer wir selber eigentlich sind." - "Because this we humans are able to achieve right in the face of death: to expand ourselves up to the horizon, to become wide until the edge of the world, and so to defeat death by realising who we really are." - E. Drewermann: "Mut zu Leben. in: Seelsorge im 20 Jahrhundert"

the other is from one of my absolute most favourite movise of all times, Terence Malick's "A thin red line". There, the narration voice from the off says this:

"One man looks at a dying bird, and thinks there is nothing but unanswered pain. But death's got the final word. It's laughing at him. Another man sees the same bird, feels the glory. Feels something smiling through him."

One of my very favorite Campbell quotes:

But the goal of your quest for knowledge of yourself is to be found at that burning point in yourself, that becoming thing in yourself, which is innocent of the goods and evils of the world as already become, and therefore desireless and fearless. That is the condition of a warrior going into battle with perfect courage. That is life in movement. That is the essence of the mysticism of war as well as of a plant growing. I think of grass — you know, every two weeks a chap comes out with a lawnmower and cuts it down. Suppose the grass were to say, “Well, for Pete’s sake, what’s the use if you keep getting cut down this way?” Instead, it keeps on growing. That’s the sense of the energy of the center. That’s the meaning of the image of the Grail, of the inexhaustible fountain, of the source. The source doesn’t care what happens once it gives into being. It’s the giving and coming into being that counts, and that’s the becoming life point in you.

And in the same movie, the final scene at the end of the film ends like this, after all the horror and all the beauty that just had been seen:

"Oh my soul, let me be in you now. Look out through my eyes! Look out at all the things you made! All things shining!"

A fantastic, brutal, fragile, horryfying, beautiful, humane, spiritual movie. If you don't know it, go watching it. Stuff like this you see in the movies only every ten or twenty years or so.

I have not seen this one, I'll add it to the queue. Thanks for reminding me of it!

[Sailor Steve]

"It just is". That's the possibility that seems most likely to me whenever the question of the universe is asked. Are people with this philosopy less moral than those who put their faith in God? I don't think believers are more moral, they simply attribute that morality to a higher source. It occurs to me that people who truly believe that death is indeed the end have more cause to make the most out of life. The ones who are the least moral are the ones who don't care about it at all. Other people aren't real to them, so why should they?

My biggest regret is that I didn't discover these concepts forty years ago. I might have achieved much more if I had actually considered these things. Or not; it's impossible to know and useless to worry about, but always entertaining to consider.

A quote from a much more modern philosopher:
"Oh, when you were young, did you question all the answers?
Did you envy all the dancers who had all the nerve?
Look around you now. You must go for what you wanted.
Look at all my friends who did and got what they deserve."
-Graham Nash, Wasted On The Way

[frau kaleun]

Originally Posted by Sailor Steve

"It just is". That's the possibility that seems most likely to me whenever the question of the universe is asked. Are people with this philosopy less moral than those who put their faith in God? I don't think believers are more moral, they simply attribute that morality to a higher source.

There is great freedom but, for me at least, also great responsibility in having no "holy scripture" or writ in stone, handed-down set of rules to refer to for a final authority in making whatever moral/ethical choices I make.

Yes, there is no one threatening me with eternal punishment for ignoring their "thou shalts" and "thou shalt nots," but there is also no scapegoat to point to if I'm called to account for any questionable or hurtful behavior I engage in. The "I was just following orders" defense is impossible... there were no orders, just the dictates of my own conscience and the workings of my own heart and mind. And for those, I am fully responsible.

To say there is no higher source involved - well, that depends on what you mean by "higher source." A sense of one-ness with everything, of the interdependence of everything that is, the realization of "Tat tvam asi" - meaning, Thou Art That: that "other" who is affected by your deeds and choices is not really "other" but is you. The one you are doing good or evil to is you, no matter how far you would like to distance yourself from them. This is the basis of the Golden Rule which is at the heart of every worthwhile moral system; not because "doing unto others" the way you'd prefer to be done unto gets you points on some divine scoreboard, but because when you do unto others you ARE doing unto yourself.

It is a different kind of consciousness, and one that can be sought and gained within an established religious tradition (altho many make the going difficult). Sadly when this happens, the person who has the metaphysical breakthrough is often driven out of the fold because they now have a "truth" that is based on personal experience of something greater than a set of rules and rituals. When the entire religious establishment is set on the idea that only the handed-down report of someone else's experience in some distant past has any validity, someone claiming to have experience of their own that threatens to supercede it becomes a dire threat. Such has been the fate of many mystics within the big three monotheoistic traditions.

It occurs to me that people who truly believe that death is indeed the end have more cause to make the most out of life.

Well, like any pair of opposites, life and death go hand in hand. The only reason you die is because you were born. Birth = death. Get born, and death is inevitable. Your parents willed your death by bringing you into the world. Psychologically speaking those that dread death as something unnatural and unthinkable and somehow unfair will, IMO, have the same attitude towards life (albeit usually unconsciously) because the primary and most basic cause of death is life. There is just no getting around that.

A quote from a much more modern philosopher:
"Oh, when you were young, did you question all the answers?
Did you envy all the dancers who had all the nerve?
Look around you now. You must go for what you wanted.
Look at all my friends who did and got what they deserve."
-Graham Nash, Wasted On The Way

You can walk on the water, drown in the sand
You can fly off a mountaintop if anybody can
Run away, run away--it's the restless age
Look away, look away--you can turn the page
Hey, buddy, would you like to buy a watch real cheap
Here on the street
I got six on each arm and two more round my feet
Life is a carnival--believe it or not
Life is a carnival--two bits a shot

Saw a man with the jinx in the third degree
From trying to deal with people--people you can't see
Take away, take away, this house of mirrors
Give away, give away, all the souvenirs
We're all in the same boat
Ready to float off the edge of the world
The flat old world
The street is a sideshow from the peddler to the corner girl
Life is a carnival--it's in the book
Life is a carnival--take another look

--The Band

Perhaps we're all given a heaven or hell of our own making? Would be kinda cool to be able to enter your own world as a living being that
nobody else in that world knew was their divine God. Imagine all the fun you could have with them - especially the ones that didn't believe in you!

I mean, you could be like Chuck Norris to them!

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by Sailor Steve

My biggest regret is that I didn't discover these concepts forty years ago. I might have achieved much more if I had actually considered these things.

Or not.

By feeling that regret, you show that maybe you have acchieved more than many others who try to collect acchievments and merits - but never felt any doubt.

The way you see it now is what counts. What could have been, ist just dust and shadows, as substantial as are fantasy pictures you see in those clouds travelling in the sky.

Quite many heroes boast with how much sacrifice they are willing to make if only the others witness how great their heroism, their sacrificing, their fall will be. Question is if they still would make sacrifices and earn for example a heroic death if nobody would take note of it, and nobody would remember.

[TarJak]

Originally Posted by frau kaleun

Joseph Campbell used to say that people often talk about searching for "the meaning of life" when what they are really looking for is the experience of being fully alive.

Only humans (as far as we know) seem inclined to ascribe a pre-ordained meaning to their existence, as if there needed to be some grand eternal supernatural point to it all. Life just is: there is no point, beyond being alive, other than the aims and purposes that we adopt or create for ourselves. Which ideally should arise from and add to that experience of being alive as the unique individual that each one of us is.

In one of the gospels that didn't make it into the church-approved canon - the gospel of Thomas - when Jesus is asked about when the Kingdom of Heaven will come, he is reported to have given a much different answer than the one the Powers That Be allowed into the official version.

He said, "It will not come by watching for it. It will not be said, 'Look, here!' or 'Look, there!' Rather, the Father's kingdom is spread out upon the earth, and people don't see it."

When is eternity? Where is "heaven"? It's here, it's now, if you can see it already immanent in the world as well as transcendent of it. So is hell - if that's what you see, if that's the world that you make for yourself.

There is a Zen saying that when one person becomes enlightened, the entirety of existence becomes enlightened. What has changed about the entirety of existence? Nothing, except that the entirety of existence for that individual is what s/he perceives it to be, nothing more and nothing less. When that perception is enlightened, so is the world - for that individual. The kingdom of heaven is spread out upon the earth - and s/he can see it.

Well said.

Originally Posted by Skybird

Couldn't have said it any better. And Campbell, he was a really great mind, really.

Here are two more quotes that I like very much. the first is by Eugen Drewermann, a former theologican and psychotherapeut who came into massive conflicts with the church and was kind of banned therefore. In one book he wrotes this sentence that I never forgot again since I stumbled over it:

"Denn dieses vermögen wir Menschen gerade im Angesicht des Todes: uns auszuspannen bis zum Horizont, weit zu werden bis an die Enden der Welt, und also den Tod zu besiegen indem wir begreifen wer wir selber eigentlich sind." - "Because this we humans are able to achieve right in the face of death: to expand ourselves up to the horizon, to become wide until the edge of the world, and so to defeat death by realising who we really are." - E. Drewermann: "Mut zu Leben. in: Seelsorge im 20 Jahrhundert"

the other is from one of my absolute most favourite movise of all times, Terence Malick's "A thin red line". There, the narration voice from the off says this:

"One man looks at a dying bird, and thinks there is nothing but unanswered pain. But death's got the final word. It's laughing at him. Another man sees the same bird, feels the glory. Feels something smiling through him."

And in the same movie, the final scene at the end of the film ends like this, after all the horror and all the beauty that just had been seen:

"Oh my soul, let me be in you now. Look out through my eyes! Look out at all the things you made! All things shining!"

A fantastic, brutal, fragile, horryfying, beautiful, humane, spiritual movie. If you don't know it, go watching it. Stuff like this you see in the movies only every ten or twenty years or so.

Campbell; Respect! I loved the Thin Red Line for the humanity it portrayed. Another; All Quiet on the Western Front for mine., one of the greatest stories of human suffering and transendence over that suffering.

Originally Posted by Skybird

Or not.

By feeling that regret, you show that maybe you have acchieved more than many others who try to collect acchievments and merits - but never felt any doubt.

The way you see it now is what counts. What could have been, ist just dust and shadows, as substantial as are fantasy pictures you see in those clouds travelling in the sky.

Quite many heroes boast with how much sacrifice they are willing to make if only the others witness how great their heroism, their sacrificing, their fall will be. Question is if they still would make sacrifices and earn for example a heroic death if nobody would take note of it, and nobody would remember.

You life, heaven, hell or purgatory, here now within your own existence is of your own making. Realising this and taking responsibility for how you percieve the world and yourself within it, is the moment when you can let go of the burden of history and create a future of your own creation.

[onelifecrisis]

Originally Posted by Sailor Steve

"It just is". That's the possibility that seems most likely to me whenever the question of the universe is asked. Are people with this philosopy less moral than those who put their faith in God? I don't think believers are more moral, they simply attribute that morality to a higher source. It occurs to me that people who truly believe that death is indeed the end have more cause to make the most out of life. The ones who are the least moral are the ones who don't care about it at all. Other people aren't real to them, so why should they?

Reminds me of a discussion I had with a Canadian man. In a nutshell: who is truly the "moral" person - the man who does good because he fears God's wrath, or the man who does good because he desires God's love, or the atheist who does good simply because it is good?

(he was saying that without fear of God one has no reason to behave morally... which I found rather disturbing)

Originally Posted by Sailor Steve

My biggest regret is that I didn't discover these concepts forty years ago. I might have achieved much more if I had actually considered these things. Or not; it's impossible to know and useless to worry about, but always entertaining to consider.

I would say that depends on how you measure achievement, but that's just me.

[krashkart]

Originally Posted by onelifecrisis

(he was saying that without fear of God one has no reason to behave morally... which I found rather disturbing)

Yikes. As far as morals go, I live by the Golden Rule.

[Sailor Steve]

Originally Posted by krashkart

Yikes. As far as morals go, I live by the Golden Rule.

You could do worse.
http://www.teachingvalues.com/goldenrule.html

[TarJak]

Originally Posted by onelifecrisis

Reminds me of a discussion I had with a Canadian man. In a nutshell: who is truly the "moral" person - the man who does good because he fears God's wrath, or the man who does good because he desires God's love, or the atheist who does good simply because it is good?

(he was saying that without fear of God one has no reason to behave morally... which I found rather disturbing)

Other than the reason that behaving morally makes you feel good. One of lifes greatest pleasures for me is to bring pleasure to others. Taking your kids somewhere wonderous, let's say The Grand Canyon or the top of the Eifel Tower, for the first time, is a perfect example of "doing good" for no other reason than it makes you feel good to see them feeling good.

The same goes for work and I find most things in life. I do a good job because I feel proud of the achivement when I do good work and really love the feeling I get when someone compliments me on it.

The Golden Rule is really are about making you feel good as much as making the world a better place, because the better you feel the better your world becomes.

[frau kaleun]

Originally Posted by onelifecrisis

Reminds me of a discussion I had with a Canadian man. In a nutshell: who is truly the "moral" person - the man who does good because he fears God's wrath, or the man who does good because he desires God's love, or the atheist who does good simply because it is good?

In the Eastern traditions, fear of punishment and/or desire for reward would be considered "lower" forms of motivation, based in attachment to one's own individual ego. It's the "I" of the ego that desires the reward and fears the punishment, and the status accorded oneself either here or in some presumed afterlife or next life that is primarily at stake.

It's only when the next stage of awareness is achieved - the opening of the heart, and the "second birth" into a truly compassionate existence - that those motivations become secondary or nonexistent. To do what is right and just and kind without thought of reward or punishment - that is where selflessness begins.

I'm not saying those so-called "lower" motivations are necessarily bad - for instance, if a particular person is unable or unwilling to refrain from stealing, raping and killing without them, then I'm thankful they exist at all. The question is, what happens when "the rules" that must be followed in order to insure the reward or avoid the punishment actually come into conflict with what should be one's compassion for the wellbeing of others? When the rules say you'll go to heaven if you burn the heretic at the stake, stone the "fallen woman" to death, force the unbeliever to repent or else - if there is no higher motivation to act out of compassion for another instead, no sense of "there but for the grace of God go I," no identification of oneself with the supposed "other" and no empathy whatsoever for the suffering that will be caused by acting only out of attachment to one's own status in this life or the next?

Well, I think we all know what happens. The history books are full of it.

The interesting thing here is that the "selflessness" of the compassionate motivation is, in a way, no less selfish. You do right by another person because doing them wrong means you have also wronged yourself. You don't cause them to suffer, because their suffering is yours as well. You understand that to do harm to another is NOT beneficial to oneself. The difference is that the "self" at stake is no longer the "I" of the personal ego, but the bigger Self that includes the other and can identify with it.

[frau kaleun]

Originally Posted by krashkart

Yikes. As far as morals go, I live by the Golden Rule.

One interesting thing about the Golden Rule is that, in saying "do unto others what you would have done unto you," it raises the question of what, exactly, you would have done unto you.

And there's the rub. For it always seems to be the people who, deep down, do not believe they themselves are worthy of compassion or love who cannot offer it to others. We tend to believe of others exactly what we believe of ourselves. The miser thinks everyone else is a greedy SOB who wants to take his precious money. The liar and the cheat trusts no one and suspects everyone. The "true believer" who thinks himself deserving of damnation in the next life for breaking some commandment will usually have no qualms about subjecting someone else to misery in this life for doing the same. And so it goes.

[frau kaleun]

Originally Posted by TarJak

The Golden Rule is really are about making you feel good as much as making the world a better place, because the better you feel the better your world becomes.

[krashkart]

Originally Posted by frau kaleun

One interesting thing about the Golden Rule is that, in saying "do unto others what you would have done unto you," it raises the question of what, exactly, you would have done unto you.

And there's the rub. For it always seems to be the people who, deep down, do not believe they themselves are worthy of compassion or love who cannot offer it to others. We tend to believe of others exactly what we believe of ourselves. The miser thinks everyone else is a greedy SOB who wants to take his precious money. The liar and the cheat trusts no one and suspects everyone. The "true believer" who thinks himself deserving of damnation in the next life for breaking some commandment will usually have no qualms about subjecting someone else to misery in this life for doing the same. And so it goes.

I must be in it for the right reasons, then.

I think the more we stop and think about death the more life we're missing out on. And what a shame it would be if all you can do in death is beg for more life - a life you will never get the chance of ever having again! So why waste your one and only opportunity while you've currently got it wondering about what happens when you die? It's going to happen when it happens! There's no stopping it! Your only real choice in life is to get busy living or get busy dying!

This country song says it best.... I hope you dance!