It's a funny thing, but I used to think it was important to live on after death. Can you relate?
There seem to be three main ways of attempting this: One is the idea that if you're good enough (however that's defined), you'll go to heaven after your death.
That one never appealed to me. I just couldn't get myself to believe in a heaven after death. To me, it always just seemed like some magical place that humans had invented as a wish-fulfillment device.
The idea that God would judge us just didn't seem like God to me. If Jesus said, "Judge not," why wouldn't that apply to God too? Moreover, the idea that God would judge us—after making us as we are—just seemed too absurd. I just couldn't get myself to believe in it.
And then, if we didn't cut the mustard, we'd be sent to a tortuous hell that lasted for eternity? Nah—even the worst human beings weren't that cruel. It sounded more like something devised by ourselves to try to make us all be careful to be "good" and "moral."
Later on, as I became familiar with Buddhist, Zen and Taoist teachings, I became aware that this very earth, indeed, this very moment, was heaven itself if only we could tune in to its divine nature.
Heaven and hell were already right here, depending on where our consciousness was at. That made a lot more sense to me, and, as time went on, I was able to verify both sides of that for myself.
The second main way to live on after death is to reincarnate. If we've "done it right," we come back as a higher-level, wealthier, more successful, etc. human. On the other hand, if we haven't "done it right," we come back as a lower-class, poorer, less successful human, or even as an animal or an insect.
Something bothered me about that. First, I noticed the self-importance of it. We humans couldn't just "die" when we died, like an ant; no, we were too important. We had to be reborn as something else.
But I noticed that all our other "self-important" ideas had gradually been demolished. We used to think that the earth was the center of the universe. That idea had to be abandoned when we found out we were next to a mediocre star in the outer fringes of a mediocre billion-star galaxy which itself was only one among billions of other galaxies. Oh well.
Then Darwin came along and showed that we and the apes were descended from a common ape-like ancestor. Many people found this rather humiliating. Moreover, go back far enough and the ancestor of all of us is a kind of pond scum. Hmmm, not too much specialness there.
Lately, our vaunted intelligence has been under assault too. The best chess player in the world is now a machine, and we're about to discover in a few years that computers can not only be smarter than we are in a general sense, but a lot smarter, orders of magnitude smarter.
The other thing I noticed about reincarnation was that whenever somebody remembered a previous life they were usually the Queen of Sheeba or Alexander the Great or one of the few people who heard Jesus directly or a princess or leading a revolt or at the very least a lady-in-waiting to the queen.
That is, somebody important, or at least somebody connected to somebody important. This wasn't always the case, but often enough that it was suspect. Hmm, could this be an idea that was serving the ego? I didn't know the answer, but personally, I found it too wish-fulfilling to believe in.
The history of the human race could almost be described in terms of finding out that one wish-fulfilling idea after another was found to be just that—a wish-fulfillment. Something to console us.
The third way of living after death is to become so famous that you go down in history and are remembered in the consciousnesses of other human beings. And boy, did I latch on to that one.
I used to dream about going down in history. As a boy I'd imagine myself being a famous conqueror like Napoleon or Caesar. Later, when that didn't seem to be working out too well, I imagined myself going down in history as some great religious figure like Jesus or Buddha or somebody. Or at the very least, going down in history as some great artistic figure like Shakespeare or Leonardo.
In fact, it was so important that I spent a lot of time trying to figure out what name I should have. God knows I couldn't go down in history as "Jim Sloman"—way too pedestrian. So I toyed with names like "Michael Grace" or "Jamie Grace"—"Grace" was my Mom's family name. Or should I be "Jimmy" or "James" or what?
I spent a lot of time on this, because going down in history—and thus living forever—was very, very important to me. I even became Jamie Grace for a couple of years at one time; even changed my name legally. God knows, I had to have the "right" name, one that was "romantic" and "special" and "cool," especially since I was planning to go down in history and all.
For me it was my name. For you it might be something else. Look carefully inside and you'll probably discover this desire inside to be special, important, to stand out, and so on. It can take different forms, but it's almost always there.
Anyway, something derailed my plan to be special and go down in history and all that great stuff. And what that was, was discovering that i didn't even exist in the first place! See, to go down in history or be somebody "special"—or care about it—you first have to be very convinced that you exist separately; it's really a prerequisite.
And what I discovered was that I didn't exist separately and nobody else does either. No me, no them. No separate anything anywhere. The appearance of separateness everywhere, yes—but that that wasn't actually reality.
What was reality? The absolute, the infinite, the One. Or we could just as well say the void, the mystery, the ungraspable. And that there was nothing but that, nothing at all. Nothing was outside of it, and moreover, there weren't any "parts" to it. It was always just the One, in a million billion different "appearances."
Want to see the One? Just go look in the mirror. No, you don't even have to go that far. Just look in front of you. No, you don't even have to go that far. Just look inside. It's everyplace, it's everything, it's everybody, it's all there is. Just that, greeting itself.
And really, do you think "Shakespeare" cares now that he's famous? No, that body is dead and buried a long time ago. If "Shakespeare" didn't enjoy the blue skies and the flowers then, he can't do it now.
Even that isn't true. Because a million new forms are "born" every day, the infinite constantly reforming itself, another million chances to appreciate what's here, right now, in this little moment.
And that's where "you" come in and "I" come in. Can we appreciate this existence as it shows itself to us right now in its majesty and tragedy and beauty and ordinariness? A look in the eye; light reflecting off of water; the smell of coffee; a feeling of pain; a gesture of love.
It's all here, right here—eternity itself, saying hello in every moment.
—jim sloman, for 12/19/01
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