Does Death Scare Me?

Some philosophers consider death to be the most important problem that humanity faces. Miguel de Unamuno, a Spanish existentialist, believed that the supreme tragedy of human life was death, and that therefore it was the root of our suffering. I have already shared my views on why complexity, not death, is the fundamental problem of the human condition. However, death can also be viewed as the ultimate complexity; the unknown.

What lies behind that tarnished gray veil? Into whose hands, if any, are we to be carried from this stage to the next? How do we even know that we, as humans, exist on a plane of reality which requires a "stage" beyond death? What if that one religious text we ignored was right all along, and we are eternally sealing our doom for ignoring it?

Those questions have been beleaguering me lately. For a time, I was certain of the Hindu concept of Samsara, in which souls are reincarnated into new vessels after death. I grew up hearing of the relation between karma and rebirth, and that escape from the cycle (Moksha) means eternal unity with Brahman. However, it's been so long since I believed those facts in my heart that I had to Google them to ensure I was saying the right things. In truth, I had left that aspect of Hindu metaphysics behind before entering middle school, even if I didn't comprehend it in my conscious mind.

Of course, those concepts are not invalid on the whole; they are simply unprovable from my current vantage point. I hope to read some books in the near future which may shed some light on the true Hindu ascetic, hopefully apart from the tainted ideal I have held in my head.

I spent most of middle school and high school in the throes of Atheism. Not radical, as such, and in fact I was more apathetic than anything else. To me, the existence of God(s) and/or an afterlife did not surmount the other turmoil in my mind. I may have thought of it occasionally, but in those moments it was easier to be more blasé about death than I had any right being. Additionally, I was just not equipped to handle the deeper layers of the true cosmic horror.To be clear, I haven't reached some sort of mental or spiritual enlightenment which has made me supremely aware of how to handle death. If I had, there would be no point to this essay. However, reading some books does lend to a slightly more "complex", to use that old demon, train of thought.

Now you'll notice I said that I spent "most" of high school as an Atheist. There was one fleeting summer in which I was pulled into the white marble passion of Christianity. To those who didn't know me in the summer of 2017, I was fully embracing the love of Jesus Christ, and I mean that quite seriously. I had read the Old Testament with fervor, and had begun on the New Testament while attending summer classes at UMass Amherst. In fact, I'd taken to reading the Bible while in said classes.

The slightly embarrassing beginning of my short yet fiery stint with Christianity was in a James Rollins book about vampires. Rollins' work seems to be mostly relegated to the pantheon of airport bookstores, but The Blood Gospel was something I picked up at my local library. Having read a few of his other books, I thought this one would be similar in tone to the formulaic loudness of those. The influence of co-author Rebecca Cantrell apparently pushed this book out of "guilty pleasure" territory. Without going too far into detail about it, the book follows a soldier, an archeologist, and a priest as they fight vampires and seek to find the last gospel of the Bible, written in Christ's own blood.

I know, it sounds silly, but it holds its ground. The concept is more refreshing than it may appear on the surface, and the characters are better fleshed out than in solo works by Rollins. In fact, one particular character intrigued me. Rhun Korza, the Vatican priest, was by far the most interesting individual. His character was afforded other-worldly strength solely through the power of his faith, and he maintained that throughout this novel and the series.

Part of me was enamored with the secrecy and mystique of the Catholic Church as presented in the novel, but a larger part of me latched onto the idea of faith through Korza. Of course, faith does not give you the power to slay vampires in this world, but what if it could provide surety where uncertainty had taken hold? What if faith could bridge the gap between the scared animal within me and the unknowable future man? It was Kierkegaardian in nature. I saw myself in spiritual despair, at least defined by my lack thereof, and faith rushed to fill the void.

So how did this all end? Well, the slow twist away happened as I became disillusioned with the fundamentalist view of the Bible. What good was the text to me as a form of salvation if it didn't hold up to the most basic scientific scrutiny? I may have read The Blood Gospel many times that summer, but prior to that I was a science-driven kid. I could not turn a blind eye to the parts of the Bible which spoke of the Earth being 10,000 years old or younger and still view it as an eternal truth.

Now, I don't have a problem with Christian belief systems. In fact, I've done a whole essay on John 8:7 and the importance of that passage to me. I only assert that in my mind, if I am to believe something to be my salvation, and therefore give myself over to it completely, it needs to hold up to basic scrutiny in all regards. I can still take lessons from the Bible, but I cannot put myself in the position of defending metaphysics from a text so incoherent with my other views.

It's also worth noting that I stopped reading The Blood Gospel and its sequels shortly after that summer. Seemed to me like the first book caught lightning in a bottle, while the others fell into that old airport bookstore formula, just with better characters.

So where does that leave me now? At times, nonbeing frightens me. I've heard people say, "Do you remember what it was like before you were born? Well, that's what death will be like." But how can we willingly return to nonbeing once we have felt life? On the spectrum of humanity, it has been found that people can maintain their happiness quite well even after suffering a great tragedy. However, "alive-ness" is a fundamental prerequisite for a return to that baseline happiness following a tragedy.

The Buddhist proverb of the wave returning to the ocean also comes to mind. To paraphrase, it says that waves are not apart from the ocean; they are simply a different way for the water to be for some time. As such, humans are not apart from the universe, but are instead just a different manifestation of the infinite energy. This also troubles me, and for a similar reason that the Hindu concept of direct rebirth troubles me; I am not optimistic about the future of our planet, and so I want no part in returning to the earth at some random future date. I know the Buddhist idea becomes more holistic, but is my "self" not lost to death either way? If I return through Samsara, I become life once more, but I adopt a new, unique self, which may or may not be a human self. If I return to the infinite flow of energy, then my "self", all that I can know, crumbles into nothing. I understand that one of the main points of Buddhism helps us move beyond the illusion of the self, but given my limited reading on the matter, it does not yet help me.

I also find Andy Weir's short story "The Egg" to be compelling. Weir, author of The Martian, says that upon death, we interface with a greater being - God, who he describes as an entire enlightened universe in and of itself. After a brief time, we are returned to a life on earth, but not in a linear continuation of the future, but to any time period and any life possible. In each iteration of death and rebirth, we grow a little ourselves, until we have lived out all possible lives and ascend to becoming the same being as that enlightened universe.

Initially, this enchanted me, but when I thought of it more a couple problems arose. I first saw parallels between The Egg and Moksha. Is Weir not simply reframing the Hindu concept of Samsara and Moksha while at the same time superimposing God into the picture? Hinduism gets its acknowledgement in the story, but given that I have not yet read anything to bring me into full belief of the Hindu spiritual path, I can't help but avert my gaze from The Egg in the same breath as I did with my Hindu history. Plus, if I were to read a book which provoked me into believing in Hindu metaphysics, I would stay there; I would not then return to The Egg and proclaim it to be the ultimate truth.

To be fair to Weir, he does not claim The Egg to be the ultimate truth as he divined from the Will of God, or something of that ilk. He posits it as a thought experiment, more than anything else.

So to end a long essay with a short answer: yes, death scares me. Not often, not enough to be plaguing my every waking moment, but in those short spurts that can seize the heart. As a 22 year old, I can't help but admonish myself at times for even being so caught up in the subject. However, I also can't help but think about death and ponder the ultimate complexity. My brain tries to simplify it, but no answer fits the bill. I find only coping mechanisms and graspings at great truth in my reading and interactions with others. Of course, no judgement on my behalf; I have even less than graspings at truth or coping mechanisms. Even Nietzsche's eternal recurrence, which I have used in the past to battle an addiction to Youtube and content consumption, does not seem to be an adequate response to death, perhaps because I have not yet extricated it from a deterministic attitude.

I should finish with something inspiring like, "In the face of nonbeing, we should seek to live each moment to the fullest degree possible," but that rings hollow to me. Appreciation of the present moment does not help me deal with the idea that one day in the undetermined future, I will simply not be. As in my "What Are We?" essay, I know I'll live on through some reflections in my family and close friends, and that I will be eternal in that regard, but… I will no longer be.