"Nothing ever becomes real till it is experienced." Keats

I was in the kitchen last night when I was suddenly so overcome by the fear of death that I couldn't have felt much worse had I been on the threshold of being violently murdered. I forgot that I ever felt any differently, and I wondered why I hadn't long since killed myself simply to escape my terror of dying. I recalled that before Hemingway blew his head off with a shotgun, he had tried to throw himself into an airplane propeller, and I imagined that I was experiencing a taste of that same desperation. 

A few minutes later, I put on a Czechoslovakian film called The Cremator, which turned out to be the darkest, scariest movie I had ever seen, and the fact that it was also brilliantly funny only made the horror worse. Indeed, I had to steel myself to remain in my chair. Then, I remembered that I had eaten some marijuana an hour before the fear started, and I realized that my emotion had been drug-inspired and wasn't really the totality of my life. Marijuana exacts a price for its insights, and if I use it when I'm already upset, as I did last night, the result can be such that I wouldn't hesitate to call it insanity. I survive such times simply by riding them out. I was afterwards exhausted but couldn't sleep so I took an Ambien. It is now the next afternoon, and I've been weak, dizzy, and anxious, all day. I just took a large dose of marijuana because I want to see where it will take me when I am already in such a state. 

You probably read that last sentence in horror and with the question Why?! in your mind. My answer is that I am on a quest in the realm of ultimate reality, and marijuana untethers my consciousness so that I can free associate a hundred times more effectively than usual, and the result of this free association is oftentimes new insights. As you might imagine, given that I'm an atheist, I hesitate to use the word quest because many are sure to assume that such adventured are spiritually inspired and, if successful, will lead to God. My conclusion has been just the opposite. 

Why is this, do you think?

People usually undertake spiritual quests with a pretty good idea of what they're going to experience, and this determines what they do experience. I came at my quest from the opposite direction, that is I started with faith and lost it. That's the thing about spiritual quests, once you give up your preconceptions regarding the nature of ultimate reality, you don't know where you're going to exit the rabbit hole. I know where I exited, and it is here that I will make my stand unless something unexpected happens. What I mean by this is that I try to be open to what many of you call spiritual realities, but the only reason I see to think they exist is that so many people believe in them. 

Why doesn't the firm belief of millions of people over thousands of years lead you too to believe? 

I suspect that people believe for two reasons, neither of which has anything to do with external reality. The first is that they are raised to believe as they do, and the second is that they are probably, to some extent, evolutionarily programmed to believe in a spiritual realm.

But, if your conclusion is that the spiritual realm is imaginary, why are you still on a quest? 

The fact that spirits don't exist doesn't make reality less profound or the search for the best ways to live and think less meaningful. In fact, I think the opposite could be true, and here is why. For those who believe in a wise, powerful, and benevolent spiritual realm, the goal is to live in consistency with the desires of that realm just as a child lives in consistency with the desires of its parents. This usually results in a high degree of conformity among those who put their trust in a particular book or teacher. By contrast, I am alone in the darkness with no one to guide me. I say that I am alone because it truly is my road to travel, and the fact that others have traveled it hasn't proven to be of much benefit to me. I can only have confidence in that which I experience because it is only experience that seems real, although I can never be sure that it is real. I just know that it's the only light that I have to go by. As I live it, atheism is stark and bleak, but it is hardly shallow. However dismal the lessons, the quest itself is its own reward.

To be a brother to the insensible rock...the sluggish clod…*

I meditate on death and little but death. In every face, I see the eyes of a corpse, but it’s also my own corpse that I see. My body becomes cold and rigid, my skin bloodless and waxy. My eyes glaze and liquefy. My back mottles with coagulated blood. I stink and bloat until I burst. Nowhere in the universe does there exist the being that was me. After a few years, it’s as if I never lived.

I tell myself: “Death is the way of things, and is only fearful for thinking it so. Besides, death has its advantages. No more wiping my ass, going to the dentist, catching colds, cleaning dog vomit out of carpets, or a thousand other chores and maladies. And then there are the big things that death transcends, things like war, crime, cancer, accidents.”

At sixteen, death seemed mysterious and exotic, a merging of God, sex, Satan, angels, heroism, white marble, moldy crypts, dying kisses, and last words. When I was even younger, my inability to imagine my own death led me to believe I would never die. When I asked myself why others and not me, I concluded that I was the sine qua non of reality. In essence, I was God. At 63, I no longer see my death as one link in an endless chain of experiences but as a dissolution of the chain into insensate matter and insensate energy.

We are all made according to the same shabby design. Likewise, we all came from the same cold ground, and it is to this ground that we all return. That which is euphemistically called faith when the word is applied to religion is but a person’s terror of death subtracted from the ignorance and pretense needed to assuage that terror. The maintenance of this ignorance and pretense is why the suppression of dissent is characteristic of religion.

Hell would be to lie on my deathbed and look back at a life that was mean, petty, or mercenary. How odd that, given the brevity of life, our species places so much importance upon wealth, fame, power, and sensuous experiences, all things that are ultimately meaningless. What, then, can give us the strength to face death with equanimity? I believe that the best way—if not the only way other than delusion—is to practice equanimity in every situation, that and to live a life devoted to honesty, kindness, courage, wisdom, and rationality. I fail continually in all of these things, yet they remain my only salvation.

I tried to push thoughts of death away, but resistance made the nightmare stronger. Now, I say to death, “I can’t fight you. I can’t even make my body stop hurting. The ugly brown spots on my upper body continue to multiply, as do the white spots on my legs. My teeth, my vision, my hearing, my memory, my strength, my attractiveness, my ability to sleep, and a hundred other things are dying by inches even while my physical pain increases. Truly, you reign supreme.”

*from “Thanatopsis” by William Cullen Bryant.

Night thoughts that sometimes intrude upon the day

As I lie awake in the wee hours, I think of death, not so much mine as Peggy’s. I don’t believe I could live without her. I don’t believe I would want to live without her. I think of my own death too. I’m 62, and we’ve lived in this house 21 years. Those years flew by. In another 21 years, I’ll be 83, which is statistically longer than I can expect to live. This means that death is practically at the door, and when I look at my life, I wonder what it was all about. What did I accomplish? Not much. What was I thinking? Not much. Why am I not trying to atone for those years while I still have time? Because I feel defeated by how little time I have left. Yet, there’s another part of me that thinks there will always be another tomorrow. After all, I don’t remember a day so dark that this wasn’t true. Try as I might, I can’t conceptualize non-existence.

I’ve lost many people to death. Some were old, and their deaths were expected. Others died tragically (I’ve always been attracted to tragic souls), and few people remember them. Yet, I carry them in my heart everyday. I thought all too little of our time together when they were alive. Then they died, and I realized how much they meant to me. Every moment I was with them now seems like a rare jewel. I try to take this awareness into my relationships with the living, but a reticency stops me. It’s easier to be intimate with the dead because the dead cannot reject me. The dead can be whatever I want them to be.

I’ve lost many dogs to death too, and I miss them even more than I miss the people. This is because dogs are like children—they’re dependent, ever present, and their lives are built around me. If I’m kind to them, they have a good life, but if I’m unkind, their life sucks. They die all too soon, and then I wish I had been even more kind. I never feel that I make the grade whether with humans or with dogs. I’m simply not good enough. I always want more than they can give, yet I can never give as much as I think I should. I want to work through these problems before I die. I want to feel that I did at least one relationship right.

As I was writing this, I learned that my friend, Carl Haga, died this morning. He and I and two other men played pool once a week for years, and only two of us are left. Now I have another jewel to carry within my heart.