9 Ultimate Questions; 5

The following program was originally released in 1969. Nine intimate questions a series of explorative talks adding contemporary perspective to the vast legacy of World the loss of bees with Dr. John. The above this is the fifth of nine ultimate questions. What is death. When I was a boy I was taken to visit a monastery of COTH Usie and monks in the south of England and I was enormously impressed as you can imagine a boy who might be by the disciplinary office which consisted in the monk digging a spadeful of earth every day for his own grave. I remember being rather scared by the fleeting glimpses I caught of those monks faces and although I was too young to know much about the morbidity I felt I was something put it dismal about this digging business. And yet here I am suggesting that we use our brief silence this time to ponder quite grimly what we would think and do about it if it was certain that we were to say in in two

months. You look at the people you pass on the street and I think it is seldom suggested just crossed their minds that they are going to die at all and yet anything is certain it is that to this rule they'll be no exceptions made in their favor. Now I can see nothing the matter with digging those daily spadefuls if this is feasible if you want to be buried and not crim ated. If you have the time to spare. And if it doesn't make you feel to the grave and it's simple in the interests of realism is alright I guess including a shovel that is to say for us to proceed on day as if that we're here for keeps is either shallow all frightened or both. When it comes to the little matter of actually having to die. We certainly ought to have some idea of what it is we're doing and if we never really thought it over it's quite possible that we shall not be equal to the

occasion when death takes place because. Death has been made quite difficult in the first place for good reasons no doubt if only because life too is difficult. And requires considerable tenacity just to see it through. So that if the normal death to swear to be weakened. The life force would weigh about every time we got at all seriously discouraged. But as a rule death is tough I'm sure we have to expect that dying is apt to be more or less of a struggle like being born to which it bears a strong resemblance and a pain and weakness which belong to this change of death this recharging of the battery are considerably compounded by the richer disturbances well-meant enough no doubt that we generally inflict upon the dying to those of grief prompted in large part by self pity. Almost all the warning is way out of line anyway. How hard it is for us not to cry. Desperately inquirers concerning inheritance and all the rest of the

business described as putting our affairs in order not to speak of the solemn Mr Godrich rituals designed to exact forgiveness of sins. It is dignified a way as possible brought up before it becomes too late. And the deceased has to meet what is known as the final reckoning all the great in size all the Last Judgment. All of them expressions which are very feeble distortions of what takes place there is no last judgment in this eternal judging no reckoning is final. Who could be laying for us with any such totally bogus terminal ordeal. There's nothing to judge us but our own soul which is part of God. And there's nothing believe me that's FINAL about that judgement which goes on all the time in this life between lives and in the life of a lasting until our eyes see the illusory character of the succession of lives. And the even more illusory CAPTA of this life. When considered as something beginning and ending in what it apparently is the the apparent is we spend as a tale

that is towed. That is judgement yes. Nobody gets away with anything I'm sure but that judgement is the swing of the pendulum or the pole of gravity it isn't either black or white old judge of God getting his own back on us. Time itself has no finality has perhaps now is the occasion to consider the fourth of those seven principles which underlie this series you remember and which reads. Space time is subject to illusion. All that was all will be is now. Eternity is now. If time were as real as we take it to be it should be clear that even in such a case that there could be no finality is a spirit conditioned by time since something would have to come after death for such a spirit. And what might that be batting around in heaven or hell. One of the way Dante's the Great is the poets but does he take himself seriously as the topography of the after

state. The same question goes for the Book of Revelations which has much to reveal if we take the trouble to read its piercing symbols a little more thoughtfully. Than they were in total and in your neighborhood church or from an aged by the self hypnotized evangelists. Don't you think that without the ability to divine a symbol it's really better to leave religion alone anyway at least in public. I wonder sometimes if these believers have ever allowed themselves to come to grips. With things as they are even within the deceptive scope of time which can be shown to be a merely provisional arrangement. Look at the second hand on your watch. How long is the present moment. Is it a quarter of a second. No because that are much shorter measurable periods than that a millionth of a second. Same objection. Even if a millionth of a second. Were an interval which could be experienced by the mind it is like the point in space

nothing but an imaginary station. Is it not conceived in regard to the tick tock of a clock as separating the moment to come from the moment just gone. But according to the accepted picture of time the future moment does not exist until it ceases to be future and becomes present. And according to the same picture the past moment no longer existed since the point when it ceased to be a hypothetical present affected by the same nonexistence as has just been shown. So time is a non existent point of division between two nonexistent things which is to say the time itself is nonexistent. However concurs that this may be and I must say I find it rather conclusive as logic goes. You will still smile and say well that's an amusing little word game which does not in the least alter the fact that the world has existed as exist and will continue to do so unless you have a

US in connection to take sides against sanity. And you will be right. As existence goes just as the dream is right to believe his dream as dreams go. And I must say that the believe however easy it may be to patronize his assumptions is more intelligent in these matters than the skeptic who looks at you with the same smile as I have just mentioned and says. Why must you persist in deluding yourself that when you are dead you are not just going to be pushing up daisies because at least tremble before the last judgment does not make the prodigious metaphysical assumption that the ineluctable modality of the press and plate visible is the only possible modelling. Like the caterpillar who said what makes you think anything goes on outside this chrysalis. Voltaire of whom How could one not be fond allows

himself much scope for amusement at the expense of survival superstitions. Can a man smell without a nose he asks. How then can you live without a body. Or it may be that there is some other sort of ghost man resembling a living man and only with four sped noses in some parallel order of creation but kind of allowed me to reserve judgement about him until I see this interesting phenomenon it's at at such Ovaltine as a wonderful time with us. But take away the number of impishness of Baal tat prompted in part by his a cross a lamb fam rampage against the Catholics and you're left with the same hold up on death as that of the ordinary skeptic to whom death is the end of everything. Terminations of all human relations. Cessation of all physical activity and death all drop out into the unknown. Such as has been compared to leaving a lighted well warmed room friend then Familia where loved ones are assembled to go out into the code dark night hoping for the best and short of nothing.

Or if you sit at a less skeptical. The best that can be hoped for is nothing but more of the same as what is known in this life. It's as though one which a picture in life. As a progress by an end to cross a sheet of paper towards the edge which is death. At which point if the end is a pessimist he expects to drop off into the void and its optimist to continue his progress as before. But on the other side of the paper only now he has bisected so to speak out earthly condition contriving to confine its unpleasantness to hell and its nice elements to have him. This horizontal cessation or problem get ition of the ants progress accounts for about 90 percent of Western humanities ideas about that like must have been preserved by posterity in Famous last words of the die the misanthropic Haslett turning over on his side with. Well I've had a happy life. The implication being

that it couldn't. And was that man just whose Parthian shot was interesting. But I regret that we must postpone the rest of this discussion to some other time and place. I mean you get of course more of the same on the other side of the paper. And yet all this time does a forgotten consideration namely the dimension that is vertical to that piece of paper on which the ant is crawling. Dimension which is always that completeness surrounding the paper whether we are alive or what we call dead dimension completely unaffected by belief or unbeliever or by whichever side of the paper the entries call it. This dimension the vertical the now the timeless The eternal. That to which what happens tomorrow is of no concern whatsoever. As Confucius said having found the truth in the morning what matter if a man come to die at night actually he won't come to die because once he has found the truth which never

dies. All that's really worth saving often is part of that truth. But the particular individual found it which in any case of lost his concern to preserve his ego. He has found safety with all things on dying. The winds and morning tears of men and the deep night and birds singing and clouds flying and sleep and freedom and the autumnal the very things that seem to be passing away but that belong to the realm of essence that never dies. He is secretly against all deaths and data safe where all safe is lost safe where men fall. And if these poor limbs die safest of all but Ovaltine says he counts now without a nose and can't live without a body. What a reversal of the actual situation is almost too pat to have happened because as was explained when we asked What is the self you are not in the body the body is in you. The

music is not in the violin the violin is used by the music. What could be enclosed in that narrow brow of yours which could possibly add up to the decision to lay down its life for a cause for a friend for a stranger. It doesn't even make the sort of sense on which of all Ted likes to insist. Why is it considered so clearheaded to proceed as if the mind and the brain are the same as if our physical body is to die is the same as the people to die. Atoms are arranged by chance of the human brain in such a way as to perceive themselves the feeblest conception surely with or without the sanction of quote science unquote. I just wonder why so many of the most admirable people especially among the learned are inhibited from off for reflection on the true nature of life and death by this. This paralytic commitment to their own skepticism and by their fear to be associated with any position which their friends might consider in the least

mystical what's mystical about the transcendence of the body which occurs after all every time an unspoken thought passes unobscured between us or every time belief dispels disease. I think this is the time to bring up again the friend whose death came up to fall once in my earliest stages of talks. Who died with such a smiling feeling like Socrates. Another friend was that the time to bring back the story. Sessile as they had called him in England was stationed as a chaplain on a British navy transport in World War 2. This debonair person must have been a most unusual chaplain. He was extremely popular with girls and. Always obviously enjoyed disadvantaged to the full. I happen to be in the same crew with him at Oxford and he was a final offer. Well that transport was top heated and he was in the last lifeboat that blow it away as they were pulling away one of the seamen said how do you like that about those three guys trapped behind a ball kid. What's at its arsenal.

Well first when I was it you know when they gave the order to close off that flight deck off. These three guys were caught in there and he named them. Which I chap and made the following strain on POS on a quote mark. Then what the bloody hell am I doing here. And instantly flinging himself into the water started to swim back to the oil slick to the sinking ship. The others in the lifeboat did their best restrain him pointing out with all emphasis that this was crazy that Absolute had nothing to be done about it. But a sessile climbed the back aboard that transport by a rope ladder. He waved a laugh said See you later. And disappeared into the flooded interior of the ship. Now part of the beauty of this act lies in its folly and uselessness so why ruin it now by putting the story to a model use. I would almost rather leave it sounding silly and pointless. Still it's hard not to feel some amazement and curiosity about that. See you later thing.

Perhaps you're wishing to bring up what was said about the flat paper and the two dimensional ant and to argue a bit. See you later imply the same thing as the remark about continuing the conversation at another time and place that is to say a mere postponement of existing conditions that the something else here settles or mock signifies a special sort of serenity which seems to arise. From a certain non attachment to the forms of this life which after all he did take leave all by choice. This or it is really the opposite of the postponement arising just from a disinclination to quit all from a from a craving for more of the same need of which is free from fear clinging to life and the fear of death. Two sides of the same coin and the disguises which both of them undergo can be pretty sophisticated and devious as well as frantic. One of the most complex and resourceful of such disguises I've always thought is that of old Emanuel

Cantor this critique of practical reason where he argues that the perfectly ethical life requires that man's will shall follow the model of all in advance which never ends. And that such an advance is only possible if life is endless. Death all immortality is inseparable from the model law and since the model law is the key to human existence why immortality must be effect. Here he did his needs but there's something funny that you know actually it's a begged question. Even if it is Kant. I mean by what law model or otherwise is endless progress necessary for perfection. Consider that it is of the field how they grow. They toil not neither do this. Progress is relative perfection is absolute and the two just don't necessarily mix. Besides I doubt if Kant is any clearer than the rest of us about what time is let alone endless time

which considered as something related to human activity has very little meaning anyway. Less far out very widely shared and at least somewhat responsive to some of the evidence is the doctrine of rebirth. We note without underscoring the age prestige and worldwide distribution of this doctrine. So if you incline to a belief in this you don't have to feel eccentric although eccentricity of beliefs also has some distinguished precedence and some very authoritative studies have a cumulative impact which could be evaded only by those individuals who have always found it's reprehensible to get out on a limb like the 19th century scientist who announced with rolls of laughter the absurdity of Meech is descending upon us from outer space.

Or the twentieth century scientists who laugh just as loud at the idea of stars being galaxies or a little later still quite as odd as not being galaxies. With reincarnation. It is the predisposition to skepticism that causes some surprise. I mean when a three year old boy such as Mozart climbs with difficulty onto a piano stool and plays with the utmost ease anything you get him to play one would suppose that any skepticism will be directed at attributing the feat itself to an unpracticed solo rather than at the natural assumption that somewhere sometime there had been preparations which we do not know but of which we are now made witness to the result. Surely there is less obscurity attending this ancient doctrine of metempsychosis involving a continued chain of births than the opposite. Blind assumption is in series with Costus beginnings or of or of some of those which are not so the tall but just intricate robots. Still it would be a little smug on

my part to pretend that rebirth too is not a bit of a puzzle. I find it helpful you know to contemplate the equally puzzling problem of personal continuity through the lapses of consciousness that separate each conscious moment of our present waking existence. A hard look at this waking continuity. Helps us I think to understand continuity from life to life which may very well be a just different in degree rather than in kind from that near a continuity that we experience all the time. What is it that is really continuous. Isn't this the whole question Orthodox Christians appear to experience no difficulty whatever in believing in the continued existence here are our souls with UN continued beginnings the belief in rebirth which is clearly present in the words of Jesus by the way was first ruled heretical at the second Council of Constantinople 85 53 although one does

not observe that it was then ruled heretical to believe that a so having a beginning in this life has no end at its death. Can you remember how soon the child came to feel his distant origins. The child is likely to be about four years old only when he first asks his mother how did I come from nothing. And I will remember my own mother's thoughtful look when this question was first put. It is certainly contrary to a child's natural instinct to let him slip into the delusion that there can be any such thing as nothing. No one has known this nothing. It is a totally baseless conjecture. Then she teaching a child that death means going to nothing when there's nothing in human experience to support such a thing as nothing honestly. All that we know is change and changelessness changelessness and change. Which do you want. And be careful how you answer because you'll probably get it all the sooner for the wanting. What you have been accustomed to calling yourself

accustomed to saying me about is the fluctuating experience of a very narrow mode of the reality that never changes hoping and praying for the survival of that limited mode or of something as much resembling it as possible may have something to do with the idea of immortality. It has nothing to do with the idea of eternity. This anxiety to survive death preferably in a rarefied physical form is essentially the same anxiety whether the survival we hope for is in heaven or in another preferably rich and lucky incarnation. All of the things added together with the grief at funerals the of the attic comes the supreme unction is however a holiday the Padang of the departed have a point and so forth. All these things belong essentially to what dies not to what lives eternity. The timeless now contains all time. Anyway we've seen this just as we saw that the mind contains the body. So when you have grasped the eternal It's pointless to seek immortality what is it that

seeks it. What is it that finds death hard to take. As Lucretia keeps saying it is magnificent. Some look upon him day without a match at all. If whatever it is that harbors this grudge against death will soon be among living beings no longer. Then we don't need to worry about it any more than about a rock. And if after death the partnership between life and the cell is renewed Why then again Death is nothing to worry about. Since then so it will be that much more unfettered than it was him. So in either case we're all right here we see the same sweet impartiality as in the closing words of Socrates in the apology of Plato. The art of departure has arrived and we go our ways to die and you to live which is better God only knows. SOCRATES You know I had this divine faculty as he called it derived from his interior Oracle which said No whenever he was about to make a mistake and yet innocent as he was his article kept quiet throughout his trial.

What do I take to be the explanation of the silence he says. I will tell you it is an intimation that what has happened to me is good and that those of us who think that death is an evil for the customer to sign would surely have opposed the. Had I been going to evil and not to good. This breeds a much deeper simpler Setna than anything found in canned. In fact the same quiet good manners as we see in children when they die or passengers on the Titanic or on those planes when all the passengers know that the plane cannot survive. I wonder if it's only good manners I wonder if it isn't knowledge. The peace of the past and possible understanding. But of course we love and envy these examples of effortless radiance on the brink of death doesn't mean that most of us can't use a little the system we come to die. As we said the dissolution of the partnership with this life is apt to be rough.

The most precious scripture to deal in detail with how to die is the bottom dollar. The Tibetan Book of the dead first brought to the west only 40 years ago by my friend the late Dr. Evans wince. And now known all over the world. This Scripture lays out the successive crises confronted by the so its passage to what the Buddha called the other shore. Back again if it is washed back. First there was shine. What the Bardo calls the primary clear light which enables a clean break from the delusive Carl of time. But if we do not recognize this light or if recognizing it we are not equal to the liberating breakthrough at this supreme moment. Then there follows the second Rykiel light seen immediately after death. At this point with the help of the guru a wise teacher. There may still be a meeting of what the Bardo calls the mother reality and the offspring reality. The mother being that from which all life arises and the offspring

that which is realized in this world especially if we practice a little meditation. Once more this second opportunity can give liberation from what follows which is the unset of the karmic illusions all that phantom world of desire and frustration which we have accumulated in the process of living. Since most of us are intent on more life rather than more light it was good to cried for in dying. Weak and hurting as wed like to to be in those last moments or I should say in the next to the last moments since pain takes off at the very end. This is the time when we can use some help in facing down the phantoms which made the status the supreme object being to reach the best understanding of the life that we have lived as it rushes before us and to set our hearts unwaveringly upon the good which alone is real and beyond the reach of change. Yes death gives a larger life to the sons of God. But like power and beauty

and love in this life death use his empire to no rituals however holy death is the is the strenuous climactic testing of a lifetime. Considering all its drawbacks. Life is a pretty magnificent adventure which no one would be likely to refuse unless his so had becomes the incomparably greater beauty of that from which all life has proceeded this beauty is the vision of the primary clear light. It's not something that all men must wait for death to find. Nor is it something that a Eucharist can confer. It is nothing if not presently available to the eternal now which impartially embraces the life on both sides of the grave. Well death and time have Qatar script I see Challis called death that contemplation of it was all still melancholy. Yet in his greatest times he belied his own description especially in the soaring and a nice way referring to the death of Keats he says. He

wakes he lives to his death is dead not he. Poetry I suppose you could say that all the poetry that he was writing all about is one way or another about death. The next time we shall ask what is poetry What is beauty. Perhaps if we understood too well the beauty of death might not seem so beautiful from the side where we seldom see face to face but in a glass darkly where all we know is that except a grain of wheat fall into the earth and die by that alone. But if it die. It bears much fruit. You've been listening to Dr. John Theobald on what is death. The fifth of his nine ultimate questions the next time the subject will be beauty originally released in 1969. The program you have just heard is from the program library of National Public Radio.