WE DIE TO REMEMBER WHAT WE LIVE TO FORGET
Alex Grey
The Greatest Weight

"What if, one day or night, a demon were to slide up after you in your loneliest loneliness and say to you: 'This life, as you
now live and have lived it, you will have to live again and innumerable times over; and there will be nothing new in it, but
every pain and every pleasure and every thought and sigh and all the unspeakably small and large things in your life must
come back to you, and all in the same order and sequence - and likewise this spider and this moonlight between the
trees, and likewise this moment and I myself. The eternal hourglass of existence will be turned over again and again - and
you with it, you tiny speck of dust' - Would you not throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse the demon who
talked this way? Or have you once experienced a tremendous moment in which you would answer him: 'You are a God
and never have I heard anything more divine!' If this thought were to gain power over you, it would transform you as you
are, and perhaps crush you. The question in each and every thing, 'Do you want this once more and innumerable times
more?' would lie upon your actions as the greatest weight! Or how well disposed to yourself and to life would you be, to
long for nothing more than this ultimate eternal confirmation and seal?" Friedrich Nietzsche, 'The Gay Science'


      Every person whom has had the distinct privilege of being alive has also, by default, had to confront
the absolute eventuality of death. However conscious or unconscious we are of the world at large, we are
all destined to die and whether or not we are prepared for it seems to be a matter of grace. As a stern
reminder of this fact of mortality we are perpetually subjected to inconspicuous metaphorical occurrences
which point to the inherent duality of our being. From the cyclical nature of the seasons, to the
juxtaposition of day and night, we are surrounded by the adumbrations of this beckoning finality. Our very
lives, it cannot be argued, are imbued with the archetypes of death and rebirth.

In addition to this universal reciprocity of creation and destruction, is the brute fact that as human beings
we are all subjected to emotionally dissolving events which call into question our perceived meaning of
our conscious experience. The accumulated subjection of mankind to such events of great emotional
conflict gave rise to our myriad of ideological institutions which, as a direct result, unequivocally
determined the process of our evolution. Mystics of all religions have come to the conclusion, time and
again, that these events of dissolution are in fact precursory nodes for the final integration of the psyche
at death and whether or not they are properly interpreted determines how this final integration will take
place (both for man as an individual and as a species).

How we as human beings choose to live with life's trying times is determined by what we believe, however,
what we believe is determined largely by these tragic events in question. The pursuit of their meaning
and the attempt at limiting such occurrences has been the direct aim of our greatest religions. These
institutions have fixated themselves on understanding unconsciousness and death in hope of liberating
ourselves of them so that we may experience enlightenment. The understanding which begot these
systems of thought stemmed from a state of consciousness granted only to a precious few individuals
who met certain criteria in terms of their psycho-physical makeup. By an obligation of will, these spiritual
leaders devoted their lives to spreading enlightenment due to their understanding of morality which
bestowed great responsibility upon them. The understanding that was imparted to these seemingly rare
individuals is as timelessly recurrent as the universe itself; it is the archetype of the eternal recurrence,
the revelation of eternity.

In the words of Alan Watts, "If I sometimes make statements in an authoritative and dogmatic manner, it is
for the sake of clarity rather than from the desire to pose as an oracle."


The Revelation of Eternity: Enlightenment

     Our religions are driven by a primary underlying philosophical principle - a metaphysic - which certain
individuals who have been granted the insight have come to know as eternity. Many of our greatest
religious thinkers have understood the implications of eternity and they attempted, though with differing
interpretations, to pass it down through teachings. These teachings were based upon the meaning of life
as understood in light of being physically mortal, yet psychically eternal. The great problem in the
effectiveness of these teachings is that the state of consciousness which is necessary to have an
understanding of such concepts is exceedingly rare in individuals and on top of this, it is nearly
impossible for one who has had the insight to properly convey it to anyone whom has not had the
experience themselves. It is so intense and profound that it renders language entirely irrelevant. All we
have is the means of parable, yet no metaphor could prepare one for the painful beauty which is the
revelation of eternity. However, it is felt as a moral obligation of will by those who are thus transformed by
the insight to propagate the information in hope of helping others achieve the same understanding for
themselves. It is thus you have religion (by religion I mean all thought devoted to the understanding ones
own self and the world at large).

Our religions, at their core, are honest attempts by predisposed individuals to address the problem of
unconsciousness by bringing understanding to the world. However, unconsciousness - the lack of
understanding which goes hand in hand with materialism - has managed to thrive under the guise of
inevitable progress, thus thwarting any major movement of true morality. Nevertheless, this seemingly
repugnant state of affairs we call history is entirely necessary for the calculated enfoldment of the human
drama, as understood by those who have experienced the revelation of eternity.

"The divine Ground of all existence is a spiritual Absolute, ineffable in terms of discursive thought, but (in certain
circumstances) susceptible of being directly experienced and realized by the human beings. This Absolute is the
God-without-form of Hindu and Christian mystical phraseology. The last end of man, the ultimate reason for human
existence, is unitive knowledge of the divine Ground - the knowledge that can come only to those who are prepared to "die
to self" and so make room, as it were for God. Out of any given generation of man and women very few will achieve the
final end of human existence; but the opportunity for coming to unitive knowledge will, in one way or another, continually be
offered until all sentient beings realize Who in fact they are."  Aldous Huxley, 'The Perennial Philosophy'

"The oneness of the universe, and the oneness of each element of the universe, repeat themselves to the crack of doom
in the creative advance from creature to creature, each creature including in itself the whole of history and exemplifying the
self-identity of things and their mutual diversities."  Alfred North Whitehead

The revelation of eternity imparts the experience of being enlightened. Enlightenment is thus to be
understood as the affirmative understanding of the inevitable will of God which is Eternity. Man, as
subject, realizes himself as object; God, the eternal universe. As the formally mortal self is equated with
the eternal universe, the understanding that you live your same life
forever emerges, effectively
dissolving any fear of death.

Love pervades this experience as a profound sense of liberation which renders the ego irrelevant and
evil moot. Complimentary to this realized divinity, there is a distinct awareness of the utter necessity of
reciprocity; in fact, all opposites unite into an eternal wholeness that is beyond good and evil; it is the
ineffable All of which you
are.

The world is found to be a perfectly crafted illusion; you are merely inside your own mind, living a life that
you ultimately created. It is a totality of seemingly paradoxical revelations entwined into a timeless
moment of synchronistic perfection.

These experiences are most often the inverse result of extreme stress upon the human psyche and they
change their subjects forever, often obliging them to devote the rest of their lives to the dissemination of
their newfound knowledge.

Although I am acutely aware that I am merely playing with words here, there are some metaphors that are
helpful in conveying this idea.

I believe Alan Watts may have put it best,

"To the individual thus enlightened it appears as a vivid and overwhelming certainty that the universe, precisely as it is at
this moment, as a whole and in every one of its parts, is so completely right as to need no explanation or justification
beyond what it simply is. Existence not only ceases to be a problem; the mind is so wonder-struck at the self-evident and
self-sufficient fitness of things as they are, including what would ordinarily be thought the very worst, that it cannot find any
word strong enough to express the perfection and beauty of the experience. Its clarity sometimes gives the sensation that
the world has become transparent or luminous, and its simplicity the sensation that it is pervaded and ordered by a
supreme intelligence. At the same time it is usual for the individual to feel that the whole world has become his own body,
and that what-ever he is has not only become, but always has been, what everything else is. It is not that he loses his
identity to the point of feeling that he actually looks out through all other eyes, becoming literally omniscient, but rather that
his individual consciousness and existence is a point of view temporarily adopted by something immeasurably greater
than himself." 'This is It'

Rick Strassman also does the experience great justice with his words in DMT, The Spirit Molecule:

"The three pillars of self, time, and space all undergo profound transfiguration in a mystical experience. There no longer is
any separation between the self and what is not the self. Personal identity and all of existence become one and the same.
In fact, there is no "personal" identity because we understand at the most basic level the underlying unity and
interdependence of all existence. Past, present, and future merge together into a timeless moment, the now of eternity.
Time stops, inasmuch as it no longer "passes." There is existence, but it is not dependent upon time. Now and then,
before and after, all combine into this exact point. On the relative level, short periods of time encompass enormous
amounts of experience...

There is a searing sense of the sacred and the holy. We contact an unchanging, unborn, undying, and uncreated reality. It
is a personal encounter with the "Big Bang," God, Cosmic Consciousness, the source of all being. Whatever we call it, we
know we have met the fundamental bedrock and fountainhead of existence, one that emanates love, wisdom, and power
on an unimaginable scale."

Relatively recently, Friedrich Nietzsche recognized the experience as the revelation of the eternal
recurrence, which he understood to be the greatest moral primer conceivable and with good reason. If we
are to live out our same lives in repetition for eternity, then it is felt as an obligation of will to make sure
that each moment is filled with meaning and understanding; not regret and unconsciousness. Regret is
the ultimate antithesis of enlightenment. Thus, the revelation of eternity is truly 'the Greatest Weight'; its
sheer gravity upon the psyche cause a drastic revaluation of ideals, which if integrated may liberate you,
or if denied, may drag you down like a stone.

"Behold, we know what you teach: that all things recur eternally, and we ourselves too; and that we have already existed an
eternal number of times, and all things with us. You teach that there is a great year of becoming, a monster of a great year;
which must, like an hourglass, turn over again and again so that it may run down and run out again; and all these years
are alike in what is greatest as in what is smallest; and we ourselves are alike in every great year, in what is greatest as in
what is smallest."  Nietzsche, 'Thus Spoke Zarathustra'

"Zarathustra is a dancer - [which is] how he who has the hardest, most terrible insight into reality, who has thought the
'most abysmal thought', nevertheless finds in that no objection to existence, nor even to its eternal recurrence - but rather
one more reason for being himself the eternal Yes to all things. . . that is the concept of Dioynsus"  Nietzsche

"Zarathustra once defines, quite strictly, his task - its mine too - and there is no mistaking his meaning: he says Yes to the
point of justifying, of redeeming even all of the past. "I walk among men as among the fragments of the future - that future
which I envisage. And this is all my creating and striving, that I create and carry together into One what is fragment and
riddle and dreadful accident. And how could I bear to be a man if man were not also a creator and guesser of riddles and
redeemer of accidents? To redeem those who lived in the past and to turn every 'it was; into a 'thus I willed it' - that alone I
should call redemption."" Nietzsche, Ecce Homo

"Whoever has endeavored with some enigmatic longing, as I have, to think pessimism through to its depths and to
liberate it from the half-Christian, half-German narrowness and simplicity in which it has finally presented itself to our
century, namely, in the form of Schopenhauer's philosophy; whoever has really, with an Asiatic and supra=Asiatic eye,
looked into, down into the most world-denying of all possible ways of thinking-- beyond good and evil and no longer, like
the Buddha and Schopenhauer, under the spell and delusion of morality-- may just thereby, without really meaning to do
so, have opened his eyes to the opposite ideal: the ideal of the most high-spirited, alive, and world affirming human being
who has not only come to terms with whatever was and is, but who wants to have what was and is repeated into all
eternity, shouting insatiably da capo(from the beginning: a musical direction)-- not only to himself but to the whole play and
spectacle, and not only to a spectacle but at the bottom to him who needs precisely this spectacle-- and who makes it
necessary because again and again he needs himself-- and makes himself necessary-- What? And this wouldn't be--
circulus vitiosus deus?(A vicious circle made god? God is a vicious circle?)" Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil

"You superior humans, what do you think? Am I a soothsayer? A dreamer? Drunkard? A dream interpreter? A
midnight-bell? A drop of dew? A haze and fragrance of eternity? Do you not hear it? Do you not smell it? Just now my world
became perfect, midnight is also midday -- Pain is also a joy, curse is also a blessing, night is also a sun -- be gone! or
you will learn: a wise man is also a fool. Did you ever say Yes to a single joy? Oh, my friends, then you said Yes to all woe
as well. All things are chained together, entwined, in love -- if you ever wanted one time a second time, if you ever said 'You
please me, happiness! Quick! Moment!' then you wanted it all back! -- All anew, all eternally, all chained together,
entwined, in love, oh then you loved the world -- you eternal ones, love it eternally and for all time: and even to woe you say:
Be gone, but come back! For all joy wants -- Eternity!"  Nietzsche, 'Thus Spoke Zarathustra'

"We want to experience a work of art again and again! One is to form one's life in such a way that one has the same
wish with respect to its individual parts! This is the main idea! Only at the end will the
teaching of the repetition of all
that has been be presented, after the tendency has been implanted to
create something that can flourish a hundred
times more powerfully in the sunshine of this teaching"  Nietzsche


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