Chapter III - Life after death

First a short note on the poll I put up. 6 people answered so far which is more than I originally though. So far a nice spreading of beliefs which is great. I hope to not appeal only to one kind of person. Lets see if I can get any jews, muslims or christians to read this as well :)

Now to Chapter III on why some of my foundational beliefs clash with those of the religious men and women of the world. This time the article is based on the nation that there does not exist a afterlife.

I value life as the existence of conciousness, the existence of me. Death is non-existence of that which I call myself just as a dead flower withers and rot so will I. Once rotten I become earth and take my place as something for worms to crawl in and for plats to grow in. In this sense one can say that "that which was me" becomes somthing else. However this something else isnt something that is ultimately concious. However it can and probably will feeed a concious creature in the future.

Most religions have notions of a life after death, or maybe more correct an afterlife. In some religions like christianity there are two alternatives. One good and one bad depending on how one has acted in this earth bound life. In other religions like buddhism and hinduism one is stuck in samsara, the cycle of life, and one wants to realize how the world is "founded" to escape reincarnation. Anton LaVey to spoke about a life after death through fulfillment of the ego. There are two interpretations here. One is the literal one that he actually spoke of a life after this through hard work and strenthening of oneself. This one is easy to see since thats what he writes about in the chapter that deals with afterlife in "the satanic bible". However as Satanism became more and more atheistic and non-mystical in its approach this has often also been seen as purely symbolical. These people usually point us in the direction of a sentence at the beginning of the very same book;

Thus shall you make yourself respected in all the walks of life, and your spirit - your immortal spirit - shall live, not in an intangible paradise, but in the brains and sinews of those whose respect you have gained.

This passage is two-fold. It is usually said to be very un-spiritual since its all about gaining a afterlife not through actual survival of death yourself but through being remembered by others. At the other hand the author, originally Ragnar Redbeard and then Anton LaVey, have no problem with calling something "your immortal spirit". Im not gonna go deeper now but this is the two-foldedness of LaVeyan Satanism that makes it harder to pin down than one seems to think.

One important part though is that the LaVeyan does not wish to destry his ego or his self but sees it as of vital importance to keep living. Alot of religious traditions preach the annihilation of the ego, sometimes of the self and alot tells us that we either already are one with everything else or that the goal should be to regain a oneness (that is a loss of self) to unite with "God". Now I have touched upon this before in this blog. I see life as a web and all things are ultimately connected somehow. However this does not mean that doing individual distinctions isnt right. Its how we percieve the world and its not necisarrily wrong. I often talk about the self as a wave on the ocean. Its a part of the ocean and what constitues the wave is under constant change. What makes the wave is the energy manifesting in the material. But even being a part of the great ocean it is also distinct. We can follow a single wave all the way until it crushes into land and dies.

Now this is what I believe. We are a part of a big whole and when we die we do dissapear into this great whole and ultimately comes out as something else. The enery transforms into something else but it cant be said to be a new life in another dimension or a rebirth or reincarnation.

I find it of utmost importance to strengthen oneself in every contructive way in life. The annihilation of the ego is possible but only through death and death to me is the ultimate no-thing. There is no conciousness. When I die I wont know the difference. There wont be eternal bliss, there will be nothing for I do not exist to actually experience anything.

The strengthening of myself and my ego (the feeling of an "I") is also important in regards to living a creative life. A person who lacks this cant be living a good life either. Life starts and ends with me, the I. We are forever alone in our perception of the world. You can never know how any other conciousness experiences things. We may have an idea and can communicate experiences through language but we can never actually know. So without the self or the I we are nothing at all and cant act since action need both subject and an object. Or "something that influences something" therefore a view that things are obects. This is the great thing about this universe. The foundation is chaos, nothingness or subatomic energy (all physicists excuse me is thats not the right words for it, i believe you know what I mean). The big one-ness that gives birth or manifests in the particular. In taoism the "wuji" manifests in the yin and the yang (which are onething but two at the same time) and in science this is all represented in modern sub-atomic physics.