Chapter 2. Life and Death

“Wherever life can exist it will.”~Mattrick
LIFE is a constant introduction to death, changing reality instantly; all forms of life are fractal holographic simulations of the eternal one. Deathless beyond this form, we are the chosen ones to live within form so that we may be mortal and experience death—but never truly “die,” because there is really only one underlying (life force) spirit. What this author believes is the truth, is that life is composed of one cosmic consciousness, animating all avatars, from atom to Adam; in other words, god created the universe with the intent of playing it through the lives of its own creation: Therefore, we (and Life itself) are the universe experiencing itself. Being none of them, yet all of them, one consciousness, one higher self, acting as the player of all characters rests as the central mover of all existence, itself unmoved.
As bodies, as humans, we are all in a state of flux in a sea of change, so to suggest that the world is the way it is and there is nothing you can do about it is pure hogwash—all things have their end and all things have their new beginning. However, what has always been and will always be, the essence of identity, the source of self, the I-Amness, transcends the form of forms, unifying all life as a central, underlying force—the unchanging Self of selves.
Immortality is beyond our three dimensional senses to perceive, but rest assured, beyond this ego we are all connected by an immortal soul; beyond this body-life, the universe is born and dies but is always reborn through the no-one and is, therefore, immortal. There is only one spirit animating all of reality in different ways according to their attributes and in different forms according to their place and time, but nonetheless there is only one of us. The point of this singular consciousness differentiating and integrating itself would be that it is more effective to evolve in a fractal diversity of many individuated units of consciousness than through an unchanging, eternal existence.
Thus death, without life, would be a cosmic tragedy: peaceful, but not beautiful; life without death would be a cosmic tragedy: beautiful, but not good—not in balance. The truth is that life and death complement each other like twin flames; where one ends the other begins, and there is as much death in life as there is life in death.
Because there is only one spirit, we are only ever partly in this realm or that; for when we, like waves in an ocean, wax and wane, come in and out of that higher and universal consciousness, there can be only unfiltered awareness of all reality; being so integral, the one is both here and now, and everywhere and nowhere. Yes, this world is an illusion, beautiful and convincing, but you make it real—through and through—for who are you if not the universe itself? The untouched, eternal treasure: the face of death is the mask of eternal life.
Those who experience death and have basked in the light of the eternal sun, have felt its warmth, and know the depth of and need for surrender. Life is the mask that death wears. Death is not to be feared any more than waking from a dream. Life is a dream, a simulation, what follows is actually more real, but what happens here is felt there (after life) as dreams or nightmares; life here and now can be either a heaven or a hell, as we have said. Therefore, beyond our limited senses and perceptions, reality is stranger than theology or fiction could come up with, for we exist in both places at once and go between them in perfect balance, whether we want to or not. Only when that balance is disrupted do we witness insanity—in other words we go crazy without sleep, without separating from this mortal coil. Death is the final deep sleep, wherein we become fully awake, and like how we greet this waking life with a sense of “of course, this!” so too shall we awaken in death to an old and forgotten reality, quickly resumed with the same continuity of “of course, this!”
From the moment we are born we are dying, one foot in the eternal void and one foot in the fire, i.e., the physical world of change. The eternal void is as vast as cosmic consciousness, as open as love’s embrace, un-judging and without boundary; it is the condition both before and after life. Life is matter, ignited by the spark of consciousness, the flame that brings light to the eye of the void. In other words, life is matter imbued with consciousness, and consciousness, just like gravity and electromagnetism, is a force of nature. Without consciousness the body is just a shell, and the person a mere automaton; when unconscious, one returns to the primitive state of the void—a plant-like condition we call a vegetative state (some come back to us from that state, remembering what it was like, but as the eye of empiricism overrides the eye of reason and contemplation, modern science dismisses their claims as abnormal or unsubstantiated).
Life is not consciousness, consciousness is not life, but life without consciousness, from the cell to an organism, from micro to macro, could not function, because it is all resting on a foundation of consciousness; therefore, consciousness through and through, is fundamental to all stages of being and knowing. This makes sense if we consider evolution from the standpoint of fracticality, that the big picture can be found in every one of its parts like a shattered mirror. How could we have consciousness, therefore, if it were not present from the very beginning as a contingency for evolution?
As natural as birth, death should not be feared, because where there is fear, there can be no love. Without love truth is obscured, and balance becomes unstable; so too beauty and grace are abandoned and forgotten—for when we lose sight of the underlying unity of all things, a solipsism takes over us, and our ability to transcend apparent boundaries, organize, and evolve properly dissolves. To be free from fear means to be free to love, to embrace life; it is in such moments, when we embrace life, that we are more capable and willing to seek balance, and achieve harmony. Rather than fighting and fearing the unknown, we must discover what is true, and be willing to toss into the fire whatsoever fake notions that have been instilled into our world.
By living out of balance, in a constant state of fear, humanity has created a world which has become completely destructive: even our creations are a means to destruction and further punishment of an innocent planet. To live motivated by love, completely, would be better, because of an inherent openness that love fosters; where husbandry of the earth takes the place of industry as our primary focus, or ecology takes precedent over economy as the dominant human activity (because one is real and the other a mere fiction), where collaboration takes the place of competition. However, to envision a balance or synthesis to this contrast of fear and love, we must first reflect and come to a realization of the balance inside and out, be enlightened by the truth of the greatest teacher, which is nature, and know ourselves, and the universe as one.
Much like life and death are one, yet apparently in contrast, seemingly in opposition to one another, so too we find ourselves and the universe in an apparent contrast; yet underlying the surface, We and the universe are one: we are the universe experiencing itself subjectively. Therefore, only by integrating our dying selves and the eternal universe can we find peace and abundance in a world evermore conflicting and self-destructive. To join life and death, we can only join ourselves to the universe and be conduits of the creative force called love. And while it is important for us to differentiate ourselves from the universe, we have taken this differentiation too far by denying our connection to the ALL. Our only recourse is to connect to and learn from the universe itself.
To do so requires a kind of death in life: ego death, a death of the lower self, a death of the self as we knew it before discovering truth, and as our self as we know it goes through a transformation, so too there will be a subtle transformation of the world as we know it—because the self we know is merely a product of the world we know, a representation of it, and in killing that “self” we also kill the world which produced it. However, when we remake ourselves, we are representative of the creative force that men have called God, Love, or the quintessence of the universe itself—not in absolute terms, but in terms of being a conduit for that force; receptive to the universe we become like mirrors of reality, reflecting its nature by embracing our natural humanity.
The embrace of death is the embrace of change, and the embrace of change is the embrace of life. One fears death and life out of ignorance, for they are one, and we are one in them. To be open to change, one must be always aware that they themselves are ever changing. To embrace reality, in this sense, is a kind of love that transcends all boundaries, and renders the one in harmony with the higher and most natural spirit: Agape. (John 4:7-8)
When this kind of universal, unconditional love exists—fear does not. This fearless state is the state of all animals naturally, except humankind, but this does not make humans better or worse, it simply means we have more challenges to face as imperfect incarnations of the source, which has no name. We have been taught out of ignorance or intended deception to fear death, either for survival or for control. We have been taught that the universe started in chaos and must gradually reach for perfection, but in truth, the universe started in perfection (a state of permanent unity and harmony), fell from that perfection and has been put through the task of evolving in order to attain that stage of perfection once again, this time from the bottom up rather than the top down. Further, in recognizing that perfection is an impossibility but pursuing its glory anyway, humanity fulfills one of its many potential purposes: evolution.

To improve the forms to which we are accustomed, we must first bring death into them that they may breathe with the life of change for once, rather than their intensification into bureaucratic stagnation, and administrative evil.  Without the vitality of change, stagnancy is the only true death, lifelessly carried on without purpose or meaning; our forms are perpetuated out of habit, and praised out of ignorance.  If we love ourselves, each other, and our society, we will foster and allow change in them.
In human life, when one becomes fixed in their ways, and their activity is married to habit, marred in stagnancy and thoughtlessness, that person is no better than a zombie, or a Non-Playable Character (NPC) in a video game.  To be alive is to be aware and in control of one’s self in dignity and in health, changing when necessary to fit the occasion, receptive to the world around us or ‘one’s self’.  One's actions are his and her own when they are guided by a receptive, alive, and critical mind; actions that stem from the deep roots of consciousness are real or original actions, and actions driven by the superficial, second-hand knowledge fed to them by culture or so called teachers, are not real or original actions but merely reactions to situational forces beyond their control.
A NPC may appear to be alive—behaving with vitality and expressing themselves in various fashions—but they are merely one of the herd, either as an empty zombie or as a mere incarnation of the culture; they have no substance of their own—they have not grown within themselves enough to realize the underlying unity of all things and therefore the futility of egocentrism.  Essentially that is what an NPC is, a pure ego, absent the empathic, sentimental capacity for heroism: consciousness.
Therefore, as we age we grow, or we stay the same; no matter what we are going to die, but we may as well truly live in the meantime.  To be alive and not grow in life is the equivalent of eukaryotic life staying genetically the same despite an environment conducive to dramatic change, preventing the tree of life from growing, bifurcating, and transcending its previous limitations.  In other words, progress that is inhibited, despite opportunity, is against nature and against humanity.  In any case where change is denied or restricted, the equal opposite reaction will be like a screen door on a submarine or a concrete sidewalk cracking and broken by the weeds underneath.
Anywhere you can find life, you will, because that most powerful force, once established can overcome all others.  A hydra at the very foundation of the tree of life, roots set in the very elements of the universe.  From nothing, to matter, to life, to mind, the trend of change indicates a greater potential ahead, of which we can only speculate and dream.
In any organism where change is feared, so is life feared; we may as well burn our works of art and return to the time of black and white.  Suppressing the spectrum of color by restricting their expression, either by law or by cultural norms, results invariably in a bursting of the dam—either by revolt or by popular evolution.  Rather than being creators of our own world, we have relied upon the strict security of a nostalgic fairytale of a better time—when in all reality such a time has never existed; in fact we are living in the best of times, which is saying a lot, because things are not all that great for everyone as it is to put things lightly.
When confronted with this reality people can become hostile as they live vicariously through a bygone era.  However, when the hatred for change results in inquisition or the burning of books, there is a clear indication of the underlying mentality.  Emphasizing continuity over change, such people live in a world of delusion, manufacturing an ideal that has never and will never exist—tarrying in yesterday.
As the human race fumbles itself cyclically ad infinitum, due to a love of the past, love of dead things (as a noun), a fear of the future, and fear of death (as a verb), we shall see history repeated senselessly; as long as our species is gripped by a fear of death and change, history will repeat itself, and the dark corners of man’s soul will continue to lure him and rule him without his recognition or control.  Having lived in such indignity for so long, one must wonder whether our species will ever be ready for liberation.