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  • Death...

  • [...]

  • ...this tremendously important to think about.

  • We put it off. Death is swept under the carpet in our culture.

  • In the hospital they try to keep you alive as long as possible, in utter desperation

  • They won't tell you that you are going to die.

  • They...when relatives have to be informed that it is a "hopeless" case, they are say

  • don't tell this to the patient. And all the relatives come around with hollow

  • grins and say "Well, you'll be all right in about a month, and then we'll go and have

  • a holiday somewhere by the sea and listen to the birds." And the dying person knows this is a mockery.

  • Well of course We have made death howl with all kinds of ghouls.

  • We have invented dreadful afterlives.I mean, the Christian version of heaven is as abominable

  • as the Christian version of hells [audience's laughs].

  • I mean,nobody wants [claps from the audience] to be in church forever!

  • Children are absolutely horrified when they hear these hymns which say

  • "Prostrate before Thy throne to lie and gaze and gaze on Thee."

  • They can't imagine what this imaginary dreams mean.

  • So the idea of what what might happen after death

  • where you going to be faced with yourjudge,

  • the one who knows all about you,this is Big Papa

  • who knows you were a naughty boy or a very naughty girl, specially girl [laugh from audience]

  • from the beginning of things. He is going to look right through to the core

  • of your inauthentic existence

  • - and what kind of heebie-jeebies may come up! [audience's laughs]

  • Or you may believe in reincarnation and you think that your next life will be the rewards

  • and the punishments for what you have done in this life.

  • and you know you got away with murder in this life [audience's laughs], and the most awful

  • things are going to happen next time around. You look upon death as a catastrophe [audience's

  • laughs].

  • Then there are other people who say "Well, when you're dead, you're dead."[laugh's audience]

  • Just as though nothing is going to happen at all.

  • So what do you have to worry about?

  • Well, we don't quite like that idea, because it spooks us.

  • You know what it would be like... to die?.

  • To go to sleep and never, never, never wake up?.

  • There are a lot of things it is not going to be like.

  • [Alan & audience's laughs]

  • It is not going to be like being buried alive. It is not going to be like being in the darkness

  • forever. I tell you what, it is going to be like...

  • as if you never had existed at all. Not only you, but everything else as well.

  • There just never was anything, and there is no one to regret it.

  • And there is no problem.

  • But think about that after a while.

  • It is kind of a weird feeling you get, when you really think about that.

  • Really imagine it.

  • Just to stop altogether, and you cannot even call it stop, because you cannot have stop

  • without start.

  • And there was any start,

  • there was just...

  • no-thing.

  • Well, I mean, you can just to think that is the way it was before you were born.

  • I mean,if you go back in memories as far as you can go, you get to the same place.

  • As you go forward in your anticipation of the future, is to what it is going to be like

  • to be dead. then you get this funny ideas...

  • That this blankness is the necessary counterpart of what we call being.

  • Now we all think we are alive, don't we? I mean, we are really here? That there is

  • something we call "existence"? You know the existencialist, the "Science...

  • [ something inaudible ] Aghh.. you know !! Here we are !!

  • But, how could you, would you experiencing that as a reality unless you had once been

  • dead? How,what gives us any ghost of a notion that

  • we are here, except by contrast with the fact that we once were not?

  • And later on, won't be?...

  • BUT THIS THING IS A CYCLE ...!!!

Death...

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