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I often hear how wonderful it would be if we could all live to be 150 or 800 years-old, or better yet, just never die, but what I never hear is why. What would be so wonderful about it? What would you do with all those extra decades or centuries? Play more video games? Spend more time on social media? Finally take that fifty-year cruise you’ve been putting off? Watch more celebrity dance shows? Take your skincare to the next level? Learn Spanish or fly-fishing or clarinet? Have thousands of grandspawn?
In such a world, Change-of-Heart Suicide Kits would be sold in every pharmacy between pregnancy tests and adult undergarments, with special offers like on socks; Buy three get one free! Fun for the whole family! By the time you pass the age of a hundred, you might want to hang around, but no one else wants you to, just as you wouldn’t want an undying class of super-elders you have to call on birthdays and holidays. Your online ancestry database would become your new contact list. What’s an appropriate gift for a 500 year-old twentieth-generation great grandmother? Whatever it was, I’d be sure to cough on it before sending it.
Fear of death makes us crave longevity and immortality, but seventeen seconds of semi-serious reflection would show us how seriously nuts that is. This human dreamstate scenario we seem to find ourselves in is of very limited potential, and there’s really nothing you can do to improve it. Sixty to eighty years, more or less, is all this form-factor is good for. You don’t want to be burdened by old people and you don’t want to be a burden on the young, so nature has provided a very tidy solution, death, and that’s really the best you can hope for. There was never a better offer on the table.
Heaven and reincarnation are part of the same swindle. All we want in our prison cells is the illusion of freedom. As long as the walls look like meadows or pasture or life everlasting instead of cinderblock or wireframe, we’re adequately not-discontent. It doesn’t have to be true, it just has to blur the lines. The nice thing about heaven and reincarnation is that they both double as herd-control mechanisms. If you want a happy future, you have to be good in the present. What does good mean? It means stay in your lane. Keep your head down. Don’t make waves. Don’t jostle your surrounding herdmates.
Another dull-witted fantasy we fall for in the sleeping dreamstate is that we can get off-planet and discover new worlds; Moon, Mars, Romulus, etc. This is really the same as the longevity/immortality daydream. The simple fact is that you’re in a scary situation and while you can’t make it better, you can trick yourself into thinking it’s other than it is. The hope that death, or even change, can be avoided by planet-hopping or escaping to a space station or by living forever in life or after death is closer to some people’s real religion than wherever they spend their Sunday mornings. These edge-softening, border-erasing delusions allow us to remain in a snuggly sleepstate, which is fine; all the thoughts of sheep are sheep. These delusions are also the enemy of awakening, which may not be fine, depending how you feel about your sheephood. The obvious reality of our situation is that life is meaningless, nothing you do matters and you’re going to die. You can’t change those terms but you can pretend you found a magic loophole. Space, heaven, altered states, reincarnation, consciousness evolution, seventy-two virgins – what’s in your afterlife dreamstate?
Actually, we are immortal, but it’s more of a technicality than a better deal. The truth of you exists outside of time, so actual non-existence is out of the question. I’m guessing the immortality dreamed of by the drop of water is not ocean-reunification, but it is what it is. You may not like it, but you’ll not like it a lot less after you’re dead, so that’s something to look forward to – I guess every cloud really does have a silver lining.
Outer space is like that green wireframe in The 13th Floor after we crash through the barrier and reach the end of the world. That green wireframe is the edge of the stage where you get bounced back as if by the transparent walls of a bouncy-castle, but just because the stage is finite doesn’t mean the dramatic potential is. What can’t be portrayed in a theater that can contain Star Wars and Middle Earth and the Barbie-verse? What can’t be dreamt? What can’t be depicted on stage or screen? We can’t travel to space or the future or the past, but the fantasy is easily within reach. It’s not a matter of time or technology or processing power, it’s a matter of dramatic dreamstate production.
The natural lifespan of the human body might be seventy-four years, but what about a brain in a vat? Who knows, maybe thousands of years, maybe unlimited or until the sun goes supernova, whichever comes first. Or maybe there is no sun, no vat and no brain, just the drama. Once we wire your brain into the mainframe, how many lives could you live at once, and/or at what speed? Maybe you could live one life an hour, or a hundred seventy-four year lifetimes at once, or maybe both. Maybe that’s what you’re doing right now, unless you can prove you aren’t, which you can’t. Does this scenario satisfy your fear of mortality or lust for immortality, or does the lack of conscious awareness of your unboundedness weaken the broth?
The best thing we can do in our awakening process is turn on the house lights and see that we’re sitting in a theater with very specific dimensions that don’t really exist in terms of time and space, but in terms of dramatic potential. The illusion is that the dreamstate universe extends forever in all directions, the reality is that it ends where your sightlines end. The quest for unlimited time or space is a reminder that, just because it can be imagined and depicted, doesn’t mean it can be done, or should. Fantasy serves a purpose even when never fulfilled.
People are too smart as it is, but the magic of the fine-tuned 24-to-1 heart-mind imbalance seems sufficient to prevent accidental awakenings. Being super-smart sounds good like heaven or being king or an all-you-can-eat buffet sounds good, but after a few minutes we’d be calling Mr. Wizard to get us out of there. (Drizzle, Drazzle, Druzzle, Drome – Time for this one to come home!) It’s among the greatest wonders of the sleeping dreamstate that people can be so smart and yet so dumb. The truth of not-two is just sitting out in the open where anyone bust their toe on it; can smart people not figure it out, or do they not want to figure it out, or are they configured not to figure it out? I don’t know how they do it, I just find it a remarkable tribute to Maya, the intelligence of fear, that they do.
The art of misdirection is subtle. The key is only to misdirect to the least possible degree. The best lies are the most true.
"Don't try to add more years to your life.
Better add more life to your years."