Death

Death is already with us. Just as wakefulness happens inside sleep, life happens inside death. We already know what death is like. Death is a natural phenomena that was there even before the gods, whereas life was invented by them at some point. Life comes from death. This is also proven by evolution.

Death is cool and smooth. When falling asleep, I sometimes notice that things seem to become smoother than normal. If I imagine a person, I see them as a mannequin. Tables no longer have surfaces, beds are neither soft nor hard, pillows and rocks are indistinguishable. What I am seeing then is a glimpse of the real natures of all these things shining through even the hard shells that make up their representations in the world.

Death penetrates deep into life. If it didn’t, there would be no consciousness. It is because of death that we can know things, those who see. It’s also why we animals die. Between every atom, there is a large gap—a void—and in this void, there is what we call “nothing”. This nothing is the real substance which makes up the things that exist outside of our experience of them. What we call life is an illusion that separates death into manageable chunks. Perhaps the gods have designed it this way because they know that death is both necessary and terrifying and so they needed some way of breaking it up without destroying it outright. Life is an anesthetic.

Life is a fruit that grows on a tree which doesn’t need water. Its leaves are dry. Where Lispector is boldest (in The Passion According to G. H.), is in admitting that seeing through the illusion and into reality reveals it—at least at first—to be dry and lifeless underneath. We humans, whose ancestors have eaten the fruit, mistakenly call life “death” and death “life”. Therefore we say that they have eaten from the tree of life; life is to be apart from the god and to have knowledge of dualities like “good” and “evil” and not of the whole thing that is everything.

I don’t want to live an ordinary life. People talk about life as though you’re supposed to find something to do and then just keep doing it forever. That’s not how it works. Everything we do moves us closer to death, which is the cause of life. I love death, and I don’t understand life.

Some people think that death is totally foreign. It’s just the opposite. The fear of death stems from a failure to see that the finest part of our souls is the dead part, from which dreams emerge.¹ Anything that we call “evil” comes from life. Anything that we call “divine” comes from dreams, which come from sleep, which come from death.

Sometimes I forget about death, and then I feel lost; when I remind myself that part of me is already dead, I am reassured. Death is freedom. It guarantees us our safety. It protects us from life, just as life protects us from death. Life and death are mirror images, and each can be found in the other.

1. The Passion According to G. H.: "… the inhuman part is the best part of us, it’s the thing, the thing-part of us.” ↩