--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "PaliGap" <compost1uk@...> wrote: > > > > --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, maskedzebra > <no_reply@> wrote: > > > Imagine presenting this idea to the doctors at The > > Harvard Medical Schoolor to Socratesor to Wittgenstein... > > Here you go again RC - coercing those Western big guns into > your hockey team. (Why do you try to do that?). > > Are we also permitted to try to imagine what, say, > Wittgenstein, would have made of this piece of dogma? (take > your pick of Wittgenstein 1.0 or 2.0): > > "There is no safety in meeting one's Creator. How did I first > come to exist as the person that I am? In death we meet the > author of our lifenot the author of our transcendental > consciousness; we meet the author of the person that we are" > RC, FFL 2011 > > Wittgenstein: > "Death is not an event in life: we do not live to experience > death. If we take eternity to mean not infinite temporal > duration but timelessness, then eternal life belongs to those > who live in the present. Our life has no end in just the way > in which our visual field has no limits'' - Tractatus Logico- > Philosophicus > > Socrates: > "For anything that men can tell, death may be the greatest > good that can happen to them but they fear it as if they knew > quite well that it was the greatest of evils". > > What MMY had to say about death might be thought to fit quite > well with that. Viz."...by gaining familiarity with that level > of your being that is beyond corporeal, you may be able to > free yourself to some extent from this unnecessary fear". Not > unlike the way a modern-day allergy sufferer may be invited to > very gently, and in tiny, tiny steps, expose themselves to the > allergen that discomforts them. And just as in this case, it > is not the allergen 'per se' that is the health problem, > rather it's the panic in the immune system that creates the > damage, I find it not unreasonable, and not so obviously > unscientific as you assert, that our suffering in death might > be similarly alleviated. If, that is to say, we could avoid > the panic in our biology that is probably triggered when death > approaches. > > Then again Socrates might have wished a plague on both your > houses (RC & MMY) for excessive 'knowing': > > "And what is this but that shameful ignorance of thinking that > we know what we do not know?"
I don't have the exact quote but Maharishi once said that if man knew the detail process of death and birth, he would not mind death and fear birth. A few hours of dying, having the senses removed and all that, especially if you are habituated to loosing everything during real meditations anyway is nothing compared to having to spend 9 months in a dark and damp place only to be pushed out through a slimy, bloodful channel into a place full of bright lights where the people babble in a language you don't even understand. I can die anytime. But being born, not so much.
