What is Death? Part II

If there is no death, on this level, at the very least, there is something quite like it: and because this level is a reflection of universal law, both physical and metaphysical, what looks like death to us must have its metaphysical counterpart. Put in these terms, the question at once becomes a much larger question than simple questions of the ego and its construction or dissolution.

Of course, those “simple” questions are difficult to dispense with. We can talk about how interested we are in the philosophical or religious implications and meanings of death; but we never actually mean we’re interested in death itself. What we’re interested in, rather, is our death. Because of what’s at stake, removing the subjective element from any discussion of death is impossible.

What seems incomprehensible to us is that there is an end to ourselves. That there’s an end to everything else? Well, sure. But us?

Me?

The fact that we willingly and even eagerly submit to a terminus at the end of every day by going to sleep, which provides a lifelong education in the question of death—at least in terms of the immediate—is forgotten. We locate ourselves in the center of a world that exists, and that's the end of it. To that extent, each of us is the autocrat of our own little cosmos. To conceive of the end of that world or ourselves—an absolute cessation of existence—is almost impossible. The only reason we accept the act of going to sleep is because we accept its relativity. 

Yet because this idea of death is possible, and because its existence itself verifies it as a thought in the mind of God, we can be relatively sure that the idea concerns even God himself. Although it remains unspoken in any outright sense, Gurdjieff's Beelzebub directly ponders the question of time in the context of death; time erodes God’s place of existence, and without it, we must presume, He will not just become a homeless waif. He will die. This, by the way, places Beelzebubs Tale’s at the center of the classic writer’s dialogue: the book is, in the end, about love and death. The passage quoted in part one underscores this fact: for Gurdjieff, time merely serves as a stand-in for death, who – as is traditional—arrives in disguise, hidden and unexpected. Death is a bone buried deep in the book.

The word dharma is used in Hinduism to denote dozens of different concepts, all of them related to a path of right living – a proper order. Roughly speaking, then, it implies a conformity to universal law, which is presumed to be constant (not impermanent, at least as measured against human affairs.) Death, being in conformity with that same law, is an inexorable part of the dharma. 

In Buddhism – whose doctrine of impermanence might appear to be utterly discredited by the very idea of eternity, but perhaps not, and maybe we’ll get back to that question—the word dharma has been expanded to indicate “all-encompassing truth.” In its literalized sense, taken within the narrow terms of the practice itself (and not its aims, which are commensurately vast) it retains its sense of a higher authority, as generally applied to mean the teachings of the Buddha, which are presumed to encompass all of cosmic law and order and, indeed, all truth.

Either way, we cannot escape the comparison to the alternate title of Gurdjieff’s Beelzebub’s Tales, that is, All and Everything—or, if you will, the dharma.

All this discussion about dharma brings us to a central point about the question of death. Death is not a phenomenon; it is an authority: the one authority that it is impossible to excuse the ego from submission to. The ego can excuse itself even from the authority of God and the devil: but death has the final say on authority. Perhaps that is why it's feared. You can argue with God; you can argue with the devil. But you can't argue with death. 

There are some few peculiar legends that speak of arguments with death, but few of them end well. Even the ones that do only put the matter off. Contrasted against this are the innumerable teachings on immortality of one kind or another; to a fault, one might say, the vast majority of human beings over the course of humanity's existence have believed that the soul—an essence of being – persists after death. Whether the soul is a will-o'-the-wisp like the shades of Hades or an absolute reincarnation in heaven or hell of the former being, as Swedenborg maintains, matters little.

From the perspective of metaphysical humanism, the persistence of the soul is inevitable. That isn't because the soul itself is persistent, but because of several aspects of created reality and the metaphysics that rule it. 

First of all, every soul is a re-concentration of the originally dispersed particles of Divine Love that formed the universe. By something rather less than a coincidence, this conforms entirely to Gurdjieff’s description of the universe and Divine Love itself. Not, as followers might have it, because "Gurdjieff was right," but, rather, because it is true. Divine love is a permanent and indestructible quality that lies outside time – and Gurdjieff correctly and precisely differentiated between the two in the aforementioned passage. While Gurdjieff’s book is highly original, the understanding is not — it permeates all of Emmanuel Swedenborg's work and creates the very foundation of his premises about our existence. Gnosticism, mysticism, and schools of initiation going back to pre-classical times have all taught the same thing on this subject. There are many flavors of this mustard, but it's all ground from the same seed.

Since Divine Love originally dispersed itself throughout the cosmos in the act of creation, it has been engaged, on the level of creation, in a cyclical and time-based contraction and dilation of its levels of concentration. The action of physical law alone illustrates this as a material principle without the need for further discussion. Yet physical law alone cannot explain the reasons for this action, which is ultimately metaphysical in nature. We need to turn to laws governing intelligence and feeling in order to understand the threefold action which leads to contraction and dilation of Divine Love. 

Keep in mind, as we do so, that this contraction and dilation is actually the action of the lungs of heaven breathing existence and creation in and out. This action of breathing, which feeds the divine intelligence, is exactly like the breathing of lungs in human beings. (Those interested in the analogy between the human body and the body of God should read Emmanuel Swedenborg's extensive and interesting commentaries on the correspondence.)

Like air, the collected impressions of perception, when concentrated in Being, contain fine particles of intelligence brought into new types of relationship. These particles, when drawn inward into Being, create increased concentrations of awareness and experience, which then attract more like materials. (See The Quantum State of Being.) Collected together in an organism, these concentrations of awareness represent what we call “life,” along with its corollaries, "consciousness" and "intelligence." All of these are just re-concentrations of God’s own original being. (See The Reconstruction of the Soul.) The inward breath of any single life re-concentrates that being for the length of that lifetime; it’s the inward breath of the soul that draws God back together in an individual and responsible, yet microcosmic, act of Love. 

I say it’s an act of love, because the action originates in love and its re-collection is loving simply because its origin is loving. Even if it expresses aspects that appear to be unloving, these are a matter of perception and not truth. (That is an important matter that requires a discussion much too long for this essay; but those interested in pursuing the question might start with Sri Anirvan’s Inner Yoga, specifically the chapter Buddhi and Buddhiyoga.)

In the next section, we’ll discuss the outward breath of Divine Love, which is, on this level, death.

May your heart be close to God, 

and God close to your heart.

Lee

Lee van Laer is a Senior Editor at Parabola Magazine.