A scary word to the uninitiated person is death. But why? Why the very thought of death causes chilling horror and leads us into a state of stupor. After all, we absolutely know that it is inevitable. We also know that everyone, absolutely everyone, everyone without exception, who lived before us, and who lives with us, and who will live after us, will surely die. They will. There are no options. There is no way out. This is an immutable law of nature.

Is immortality so wonderful? Most people dream of immortality, dream of going to paradise and living there forever. They consider life on earth as a kind of punishment. But is it really so?

To begin with, let’s just imagine that you have become immortal. Even if ideally you will always be at a certain physical age and you are invulnerable to any accidents, your body is not subject to wear and tear and mechanical damage. I.e. you are always healthy and full of vigour. Everything is perfect. Question — what will you do two hundred years from now? And five hundred? And a thousand?

It’s the same thing every day. You wake up, your first thought is why, why did I wake up, what am I going to do today? You don’t need to deal with questions about getting food, you are immortal, why do you need to eat? You do not need to hurry to do something, time does not exist for you, what difference does it make now or in 1000 years? Even let all your relatives live the same way. You don’t have to worry about them, everything is perfect. What will you do? What will you do?

Well, you’ll walk the whole earth, you’ll explore every corner of it. You’ll find a place of paradise, you’ll bask in the sun and swim. A day, two days, a year, two years, a hundred years, two hundred. Actually, I think you’ll get bored a lot sooner than that. Even the most beautiful sunrise or sunset will sooner or later become boring, eventually everything will become routine, everything will become boring.

Take a notebook and try to write down all your «wants», how many pages did it take you? Was the notebook enough for you? Or should I put the question like this — did you have enough imagination to fill a notebook with it?

Now add omnipotence to your invulnerability. All you have to do is snap your fingers and whatever you wish for will instantly come true. I wonder how long you can snap your fingers? How much imagination do you have?

Is immortality so wonderful? Is death so bad when you consider that our struggle with it brings so much emotion and change in our lifetime?

Death is that, that facet that gives life meaning and fights our laziness. It is not necessary to strive for death, but to avoid it.

Of course, there are moments «to put it mildly» not very pleasant — disability, for example, but even in this case death plays a positive role, but rather in the opposite direction.

So immortality is more of a curse. I don’t know for sure if we are «immortal creatures» or not. But one thing is for sure, immortality doesn’t make sense. And if we are «eternal creatures», then perhaps artificially created life on earth would be a paradise (holiday) for us. Because, only in the presence of death there is an opportunity to feel desires and aspirations, to show feelings and experience emotions. Nothing material in life is the common denominator, only feelings and emotions are common to all of us. Only this component remains common to all living. Without it, there is nothing. If there are no desires, nothing will be created. If there is no emotion, there is no action. Fear of death drives us to action. Love for something makes us strive for it.

The constant variable of life is always feelings and emotions. The driving force behind the emergence of this is the «non-ideality» of the world. When «ideality» is achieved, feelings and aspirations eventually disappear.

So it turns out that death is a very important component of life. Without death there would be nothing. Death, as the most non-ideal part of the world, which I hope is impossible to get rid of, creates in us the force of resistance, and in fact, creates life itself.

Non-ideality as a source of diversity

and the source of the urge.

In fact, everything is hidden in ourselves. It’s been said for millennia. It is written everywhere — know thyself, and it is true.

Try to answer this question — what this very «I» serves for in us, what it does. The heart, for example, serves for pumping blood, lungs — for oxygen intake into the organism and for excretion of carbon dioxide. But what is Our «I» for? Now we do not need to divide it into subconsciousness, consciousness and super-consciousness or any other gradations. We just need to understand in general what this «I» does?

Well, first of all, it monitors the safety of the body, makes sure that it is well-fed, and accordingly solves the tasks of food extraction. I will not describe that it completely monitors the state of our organs, breathing processes, heart work, etc. These are, by the way, the very first steps in the fight against death.

Further — this «I» studies the world, which is mainly to «bypass» death, he uses something to make his life easier, to make it more pleasant, i.e. to fight with smaller inconveniences. Also «I» tries his forces in art, creates pictures, learns to make them pleasant for the eye or tries to transmit some hidden information so that another «I» could understand what information was encrypted in the picture. Some try their hand at music, trying to find a sequence of notes that is pleasant to hear. Some people try their hand at maths, spending their whole life trying to find solutions to mathematical problems.

That is to say, to summarise it all together, we can conclude that the «I» in a general sense serves to solve «problems». That is its primary task. Now imagine what happens to the heart if it is deprived of blood? If there is no ability to fulfil its purpose, there is no need for existence. That is, if this «I» is deprived of problems, it will disappear. The solution of all problems leads to the death of the «I». The «I» seeks that which will destroy it. But as in the case of the heart, one thing is happy — the blood moves in a circle, and it is very important for the «I» that any event is always both good and bad. Life is like a wave — any event is always both positive and negative at the same time. It is not possible to create a wave with only the upper «crest», a trough is bound to be formed. The desire to do something good always generates the opposite side. One does not exist without the other. Like a magnet, every situation has its south and necessarily its north pole. Or let us say that when an electron (negative charge) is born from nothing, a positron (positive charge) is also born, and although they exist separately, the birth process is always connected.

Everything in this life is a wave, be it elementary particles — fluctuations of the electromagnetic field, or be it life situations — fluctuations of a certain field, let’s call it good/bad, feelings give us forces to create these fluctuations, and it is love that acts as a force, not as a feeling, but as a force, it can create and destroy. Man acts as a generator of this field, he creates waves of the good/bad field. The notions of good and bad are purely conditional notions. Just like the notions of top and bottom, everything depends on what to consider, that’s why they are not absolute values. If you change the point of view, the top becomes the bottom and the bottom becomes the top. If you remove the point of reference, they become completely equivalent. The same is the case with the concepts of good and bad.

Desires are necessary for events to happen. Non-ideality generates the desire to remove non-ideality and thus generates generation. What is not unimportant is that non-ideality creates the diversity of life, which makes life so beautiful. The error that occurs in the process of copying DNA, at the quantum level, has resulted in such a diversity of flora and fauna, and it is this diversity that brings great interest to our lives.

If there were no DNA copying error, ideality would lead to monotony, no development, no anything at all. Mistakes create the ground for the diversity of the world. There is such a Chinese wisdom — «no fish in too clear water». That is, perfection is not meant for life. It is very often said in many scriptures — do not build ideals for yourself. Yes, it is the striving for ideality that is important. But it is impossible to achieve it, just as the heart will never be able to pump all the blood.

Focus of the mind

First of all, there is one more important point to be mentioned. Let’s return to our «I» and remember that «I» is always under the burden of «problems» in the broad sense of the word. And most often this «I» is always dissatisfied with everything. It turns its attention to the bad, to what it doesn’t like (usually) and so it always remembers the bad for a long time and quickly forgets the good. This is a peculiarity of most of the self. It simply follows from its function. Based on this most (well or many) people are unhappy, this is very important to understand. People come to earth for happiness, but due to their basic function they are not able to realise their happiness. Apparently Mayan tribes meant it, apparently the translation is not quite correct — not life is an illusion, but it’s just that we perceive life wrongly, opposite, illusory. We often perceive good things as bad, and bad things as good.

I am not saying that our consciousness (so far only in the understanding of «I») should love eternal problems, but we should understand that problems for consciousness are like moisture for seeds. Without moisture a seed will not germinate, and if you fill everything with water, it will hardly lead to a positive result. There should always be some balance in everything. Without problems the consciousness will not «sprout». When the consciousness comes to understand this, then it will be able to work miracles. Then consciousness will be able to control feelings. Then consciousness will be able to stay on the crest of the wave like a surfer and enjoy life.

Of course, this is not a quick process, it is similar to when a child first stands on its feet. Initially everyone crawls, it is comparable to the work of our «Ego», i.e. what our parents, educators, mentors have laid in us as rules of behaviour. Then in the process of life there is an understanding that life in general does not obey certain rules and there is a certain rethinking of life in general, for men this moment is often called a midlife crisis, this moment is like a child for the first time rises from his knees to his feet. Of course, not everyone will be able to stand up and not immediately. Initially, of course, it is hard to walk, and the child for the first time still repeatedly returns to the kneeling position and moves quickly enough around the flat. But in such a position will not go far, only the flat, of course, you can crawl on the street, but you can spoil the knees. So sooner or later you have to get off your knees. Getting up from your knees is equivalent to connecting the work of consciousness in the sense in which it is described in psychology. I.e. it is that part of our personality which very often behaves unpredictably. There are no definite rules for consciousness. If our «Ego» is a completely predictable part of our personality and is like the algorithms of a programme, it acts quickly and with minimal energy consumption, then consciousness is «switched on» much less often because it consumes much more resources and it takes much more time to work, but the connection of consciousness can achieve more significant results in a much shorter time.

It is precisely consciousness that can work miracles. Consciousness is able to solve problems from the reverse, i.e. it is able to transform our unpleasant perception, for example fear of something, if not into something pleasant, then at least into neutral by means of ordinary thoughts. Thoughts are capable of many things. Consciousness is able to direct them. Realisation that any event is good and bad at the same time allows to change minus to plus for the accomplished events. Consciousness is also able to act not for achieving a specific goal, but for supplying several goals at once, and if at least one direction works, it is already good. Consciousness is able to manage our state.

Since there is no definite goal in life, I have decided for myself that it is better to live in a way that I enjoy life. Simply because it is more pleasant. I also decided that people around me have the same dilemma, I can’t help them much (because nothing physical gives the perception of happiness directly, you can have everything but be unhappy), but I think it would be wrong to cause physical harm. Therefore, the only rule I decided to stick to is not to cause physical harm to others, and this rule can be broken if it is necessary to protect one’s existence.

And once again I want to note that problems are important for consciousness, but not problems in the sense of something very bad — disability, abuse from others, etc. But problems in terms of some tasks, perhaps not always pleasant, but the solution of which leads to pleasant emotions. For example, to get away from the divorce of swindlers. But even if you lost in this particular «battle», do not be discouraged — this is experience, mistakes give birth to diversity, consciousness grows up on mistakes.

As an example of the workings of consciousness, I propose to consider the situation of the death of a loved one.

First of all, let me return to the very beginning of this essay, where the necessity of the phenomenon of death is considered. It is necessary to accept the fact that death as a phenomenon is simply necessary. Without it, everything around us pales. For easier perception we can assume that we (souls) come to this world to feel all colours of feelings. I.e. we can consider ourselves immortal. In this case death becomes like a kind of a dream. On the second step one should understand that the pressing feeling that a person most often experiences at the death of a close person arises because of this person’s pity towards himself, i.e. he regrets that he will no longer be able to communicate with the departed, will not be able to embrace him, will not be able to observe his actions, perhaps even will not be able to convince him of something. I.e. this feeling is actually more about the person who is still living. It’s not right to feel sorry for yourself. I think it’s better and more right to remember and be grateful for what was. To remember something pleasant or not so pleasant, but with a different context — that it was all thanks to life.