This morning's early walk produced fellow walkers for brief philosophical interlude, and this quote from Robert Webb:
"Life is a struggle between Love and Death ... Death always wins, but because of Love it is a hollow victory ..."
One to ponder on and timely after Monday's conversation on Death, specifically Richard's ... still seems strange that we will not meet again in this life ...
Another local person and sometime visitor to APtB in its brief manifestation at number 7 was in mind recently ... a beautiful and suffering soul with a background in the military and as an adherent of the Osho cult and its orgiastic practices ... though whether either or both of these led to the psychosis is unclear ... anyway, after much ideation and many rehearsals, she succeeded in exiting this incarnation a few weeks ago ... who knows whether to be happy or sad for her? A friend who has seriously considered the final option reported that she was told that suicide would not relieve the suffering ... that she would reincarnate with the very issues she had not addressed ... whether that's true or not, who knows? She is still alive and still suffering it seems ... as for personal experience, suffering is not recalled as so intense as to prompt such radical action ... a half-hearted attempt many years ago after the premature end of a love affair ... a brief moment, in a stressful period, driving along a motorway, seeing the approaching bridge as a possible ending of the problem ...
The topic entails a little research and leads to some interesting results ... a general preponderance of males as expected, due to emotional repression (as examined by Robert Webb in his recent book), but also a high rate in supposedly happy nations, such as Sri Lanka and Bhutan ... poverty and war play a part of course and existentially maybe the increasing atomisation of society ... statistics skewed by cultural and legal influences too ... and the thought that there are slower ways to kill oneself which are not defined as suicide yet might as well be ... excessive eating, smoking, drinking of alcohol, drug taking ... less obviously, life denying existences, negative thinking and so on ...
In the context of eternity, which is infinity of time, or a dimension beyond time, life and death take on another perspective altogether ... our mechanistic world view producing an illusion of beginning and ending ... our wonderful National Health Service (having morphed into a National Illness Service) blurring the edges of living and dying ... increasing longevity as if prolonging the dying period was a good thing ... ongoing consciousness a topic hard to comprehend, but worth exploring nevertheless ...
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