Jacob Sneed
09-10-2013, 10:01 AM
...the Jade Curtain
"Have I ever told you about my death?"
"Hmm I can't recall having ever heard the tale. Would you hand me a cigg." click, drag
"I've been told it can be misconstrued as a somewhat morbid tale, although from my presence here it was obviously a rather unsuccessful death."
"Oliver you at the moment, reeking of both alcohol and tobacco are the very model of life and good health."*
"I appreciate that my good friend, having found death not altogether unpleasant but in my case unlike most rather people’s deaths it was impermanent. I find myself still in possession of some semblance of this tragedy called living. You know if there was no whiskey here on this miserable rock I think I might have preferred the land of the dead."
"Well you must know by now you've piqued my curiosity, by all means feel free to divulge your tale.""Yes but give us a sneaky pour from the flask first my good friend. Odes to the triumphs of man such as this necessitate a small amount of lubrication." Twist, pour.*
“Good man.”"You are deserved fine sir, however this isn't going to turn into another one of your drunken tirades is it? I can only stand ....."
“...shh my dear friend you'll ruin the beginning. Have you ever been afraid of death?""I think most of us are afraid of the unknown to a certain extent."
"Give pause and consider the triumphs of man, such as flight or the automobile. For ages we have gazed upon the birds as they soared above head jealous that we were confined to a life spent wandering the earth. We have stood transfixed marveling at the fleetness of the cheetah coveting their swiftness. Our believe in our own perceived limitations is the only thing that stops us from achieving whatever it is we might desire. At the root of that, lives fear, it preys on that pesky, resurfacing trait of ours. Indeed, trepidation is the true enemy of man. In order for our rather young, and fragile species to gain the strength of self to challenge our limitations fear had to be conquered."
"I do often find myself deathly afraid we'll run dry of whisky"*
"You certainly do, and a valid fear that is. In order to bypass such a fear it requires somewhat of a spirit of adventure, a steely reserve of one’s mind, body, and especially our volatile emotions, imperatives to avoid such a tragedy. To properly enjoy ones death a similar fortitude of self is imperative."
" ...and you being the noblest of beasts never felt such a fear?"
"I do not question my stature as the pinnacle of human existence, but in my death I did feel the all too familiar twinge of doubt one comes across at many important intervals of life. However determined as I was to die, this had to be overcome."
"So you lingered on the brink for a while considering whether to turn back?"
"That I did, and when I came to that crux in the decision, my heart still beat, not quite as strong as it always has, almost faintly as it slowly descended into the world of the dead. I stood at the door, not quite ready to knock and make my grand entrance into Hades. The Lord of the Underworld waiting patiently for my inclusion in the legions of inhabitants of his vast and shadowy kingdom, but yet so far gone from the world of the living that I would never again be fully accepted as alive. To the living I would have appeared some strange apparition, the dead would have lusted for my blood, if only to for a moment taste something so close to being truly alive."
"It was here you must have been ultimately concerned with your lack of my good company in the afterlife, as we both know Oliver you are helpless without me."
"....indeed my truest of friends, I considered much of this earth where I have made my home this last, wait are those the fall Black Scale x ASAP collection trainers you did know I fully intended to purchase those?"
"I did, however it was a slight I knew you would be capable of forgiving."
"Indeed forgivable but still rather bad form ....so there upon the brink of death I was faced with something so curious as to make me question entirely my whereabouts. Was I not in the land between the living and the dead? My sense of time no longer existed; my outer extremities were still connected but felt nothing, indeed my limbs seemed to operate completely above and outside of my conscious thought. All of my actions felt fated, directed by powers above me, but yet I knew I was heading in a direction I wanted to go. I was no mere puppet on a string, but I certainly was propelled by some powerful force not natural to this world. It was upon the realization of all of these things that I came across what could only be described as simply a curtain,
“Ordinary blinds, you mean to cover a window or a door…”
“Exactly, a curtain with which one would cover a door made entirely of Jade. These millions of tiny green beads strung together on ropes of silk, impenetrable by my gaze but holding the promise of everything and anything conceivable to my mind at their parting.”
"It was here you were most crippled by fear.""It was here Napoleon decided to conquer the world, it was here Beethoven decided to write the Requiem and Hannibal conquered the Roman Empire."
"....did that"
"Don't interrupt, the most curious thing about the curtain were the details reflected in the beads. In it I saw everything of my past, every detail of my life in the land of the living was inscribed upon every bead. I saw my triumphs, my failures, and everything else that would give one pause to consider the life they had led."
“I was no doubt featured in some of your finer moments, if only in a supporting role, still, I am sure I put on quite the show.”
“Undoubtedly comrade, I have been lifted to heights unimaginable upon the strength of your wings. What stood out most though, were the days of my childhood. Throughout the entirety of my life my adolescent years remained somewhat of a mystery, only vague memories that I could occasionally recall make up my knowledge of that time period in my life. Seeing them there though, on those beads, I remembered them exactly as they happened. It was as if every single moment of my entire life, what I was feeling, the when, where, how and why was known to me upon studying those beads. I was absolutely transfixed."
"I suppose there was much time to consider the word "embarrassment."
"To hell with you ...although I suppose there was, I had no time to hide my face in shame at the follies of my youth, for even as I stood observing all of this, taking it in, I began to hear an unearthly wail swelling in the bosom of what sounded like a thousand dying doves. I shuddered, it was a terrifying sound, but yet, at the same time so alluringly beautiful all thought of my past life left me quickly. I became obsessed instantly; I had to find the cause of the sound. It consumed the little of my mind that was left intact and propelled me forward through the curtain. It was within a split second that I realized with an absolution that I was no longer connected to the land of the living anymore. The life that I had lead was still known to me, but not in an earthly sense. I knew that form, that body and shape as one who could objectively stand outside oneself and judge without bias all my deeds. I held the scales that judged my fate.
"Terrifying indeed."
"You would think ...but just the opposite. Imagine the first time a baby opens his eyes. The light, life, his first breaths of air are all foreign experiences to him. He has been thrust violently from a place of warmth comfort, and most importantly a place he recognizes in all of its intimate details into a disturbingly new and different place."
"Exactly ...terrifying"
"Admittedly, perhaps a bit, but think also of the excitement the young lad must feel at knowing he is on the cusp of an all new adventure. The beginning of something unlike anyone has ever experience. For both our births, and our deaths are the singular experiences we will as humans ever know. Every moment in between is so muddled by the energies, thoughts, actions and wants of others that indeed we are only truly ourselves the exact moment in which we are born, and the exact moment in which we die. It is in truth just a moment, but it stretches throughout the breadth of time. This entire experience, existed within the moment of my death, but I can say now that it felt as if it were a million years, and not a single second wore on spirit in the slightest."
"Yes, I see...and you felt as if you were beginning something new? Not the conclusion of one story but yet the beginning of one other, perhaps even more glorious then the first."
"Pour me a swallow my good friend, for here is where it get interesting" Twist, pour, sip.*
"Excellent, excellent, well you see, when I mentioned that I was carrying the scale that judged my actions I meant that in a very literal sense. Still I heard this incredible wailing, it began to surround me on all sides yet was invisible. I was incapable of ignoring it, silencing it, or even fighting it and as I looked upon the scale that I held in my hand, the louder the wailing became the more uneven the scales became.”
“And when measured, you must have fallen short?”
“I began running, in an effort to escape the unbearable wailing, dropping the scale I ran with a fervency of a man chased by the devil himself, but I was quite alone. I ran without tiring for what in human time must have been years, until I came to a wall. It must have been thousands of feet high, and millions of miles in either direction. I stopped, could run no more, the wailing had ceased an unknowable amount of time before but even the memory of it was haunting enough to drive me forward for so long. As I got closer to the wall, there read a sign, scrawled rather carelessly upon the wall it said, and I quote, ‘you are ****ed’. Naturally I was absolutely beside myself.”
“My friend, pause to consider this, at the onset of the wailing you were frightened but found it beautiful. There, just past the Jade Curtain, holding the weight of your deeds both good and bad upon a scale in your hand, I believe what happened afterwards, was a manifestation of the expectations you brought to the situation. Of course we all know man has pondered on the existence of the hereafter for centuries, but our ideas of what exists there are completely of our own creation. Indeed no higher power has ever told us explicitly what exists there, what we might expect. That being the case it is my idea that this hereafter you experienced in your death was some semblance of perhaps what your subconscious expected. You heard the wail of your misdeeds, ran from them, only to discover that in reality, even after death you will not be capable of escaping in totality your actions on this earth, hence you ran into your wall.”
“I see what you mean, and it is an entirely plausible theory indeed.”
“My dear Oliver this is merely conjecture, but think for a moment, another cigg please fine sir,” click, drag.*
“We are in this life, partly a product of our surroundings, upbringing, and so on and so forth we are all aware of those ideas, but as we age, gradually we become more and more a person of our own making. At some point most of us stumble upon some realization of who we truly are, so why then in the afterlife would our existence be completely out of our control as well? Does it not seem likely that if we are capable of creating ourselves here on Earth to a certain extent, that in some ways we would be capable of recreating ourselves after death. Then of course the cycle continues, of finding our bearing for some time in the world of spirits or in the physical world, and then spending some time within our true nature, getting closer and closer to our ultimate being with each cycle of life. Indeed in death we are still intricately tied to the world of the living.”
“So then you obviously believe in some form of reincarnation?”
“Well, and here I draw solely upon my own life experiences, and upbringing, having come up decidedly Jain, I have always entertained the distinct possibility. It seems almost impossible that we have all only lead one singular life, a mere flash of an existence within the almost infinite millennia our universe has thrived.”
“I agree, I had the privilege of spending an afternoon over coffee and hashish with a man I considered infinitely wise. We were speaking on the topic of reincarnation in depth, but he posed the idea simply for the sake of conversation that the world began with a very set number of persons. They had existed in the spirit world before hand, but that 12 of those spirits were chosen to inhabit the earth and have since, divided and combined portions of their spirits to create new persons, bound forever to those original 12, and ultimately he said we all exist as the offspring of those 12. Of course this sounds incredibly similar to natural human reproduction.”
“What an interesting idea, so based upon that school of thought, we could ourselves be the same person. Sitting here, basically talking to ourselves, same spirit, not necessarily divided but manifested in two different physical forms.”
“Yes quite possibly, wonder why I loathe you so my dear friend, allow me to continue with the tale, I believe I was at the wall?”
“Yes of course.”
“So, frightened as I was considering the possibility of spending an eternity facing this wall, knowing somehow I could not go around it, nor climb it, again I was forced to conquer my fear once again. It struck me, that as with all of the obstacle I have been met with in my time, occasionally I had no other option besides going straight at the problem, attacking it head on, full steam, throwing precaution to the wind heedless to the dangers I might place myself in. Sometimes a man is given two choices, conquer his inner fear, or submit to them, groveling before them at their mercy. These were the options presented me.”
“I can say this you are not the groveling type.”
“Simply not in my character, so I walked away from the wall several paces, bound my nerves in a steely reserve and ran as one possessed towards the wall, thinking, I am stronger then this obstacle it will not impede my path. Now, it was quite possible that I could have been dashed to pieces, the remnants of my spirit scattered about the cosmos, but a most curious thing happened. I got closer, and closer to the wall rushing with all the speed I found myself capable of, not knowing what might happen next, but not fearing it in the least, and at the moment in which I should have crashed into the wall, the very second, I might have been completely dissolved, the exact opposite happened. The wall itself, simply vanished, turned to mist. There was no crash, no fiery explosion, demons did not open the very floor I stood on to swallow me into the depths of some imaginary hell, it simply disappeared.”
“Here I must applaud you sir, well done indeed.”
“I appreciate that fully, I will have you know that was perhaps one of the most difficult hindrances in my existence that I have surmounted, and I was rewarded. As soon as the wall disappeared, I found myself in the midst of a place I believe few have ever laid eyes upon.”
“You had ascended to the heavens?”
“Not quite so lofty heights my friend, here is where I disagree with your idea that our afterlives are*
somewhat a creation, or mirror of what we expect them to be. If you sit at a table full of food, but have arrived to the table having just eaten then you have no desire for that food. I admit throughout the course of my years on earth, based on all I had ‘learned’ and been taught I had arrived to my afterlife, quite full, knowing all too well how it was supposed to happen. With the angels, and the saints, or perhaps the demons and their god, of course my strict Catholic upbringing, differing greatly from yours being Jain had taught me all of this, and this is what I expected.”
“You make an excellent point, we have constructed with such detail an idea of something based completely on our own speculation”
“Exactly, and what I found on the other side of that wall was nothing, not in the slightest what I expected. As soon as the wall had disappeared, I found myself at an incredible peace, but yet at the same time in awe of my surroundings, nervous slightly, but still at peace.”
“And what were you surrounded by?”
“Actually, I was just in a very normal, incredibly common looking lavatory. Albeit it was not dirty, but nor was it encrusted with jewels, or ornately decorated with golden lion heads and fountains and such, it was simply a bathroom. On either sides of the lavatory were again Jade Curtains, in front of both stood ordinary lavatory attendants, ordinary except they appeared exactly the same in every minute detail. An elderly gentlemen, in a maroon suit, curly white hair, of indiscernible race, but with youthfulness in his eyes that belied his elderly appearance.”
“Incredible, and they both appeared to be entirely human?”
“What is strange is that, the entire time I had been dead I assumed that I still looked as I remembered myself. I began walking towards the gentlemen, obviously slightly confused by my surroundings and by chance glanced briefly in the mirror. I was astonished that I appeared several years older, also with a crown of completely white hair, I found myself looking as I appear in the years of my soul, quite well advanced in years. As I approached the man he smiled, shook his head slightly and extended his hand, he spoke clearly and plainly saying, ‘no no, this is not the exit that you want.’ I attempted to glance past his shoulder through the Jade Curtain but to no avail it was too thick. In this curtain again appeared all different and various depictions of myself, but none that I recognized. It was me, living a life I had yet to live, but in a world I remembered quite well. I was confused and asked him, does this not lead to my life? He gave me a slightly wry but understanding smile, pointed to the other Curtain and said, ‘no, no absolutely not, it is the other that you want.’
“He sounds like a trickster indeed, not to be trusted.”
“Not at all, if you had of been there I believe you might have placed your life in his hands solely based on the look of him, in my opinion he appeared as the guiding hand towards everything good. I took his advice, approached the other Jade Curtain but as I got closer, the other him, again exactly the same in appearance to the detail put his hand out and said, ‘no, this is not the door that you want, it is the other’. I peered at the Curtain, seeing again myself displayed in millions of scenes of a life, I had not lead. On this side of the room however, I felt a pull, an urge to go through that curtain despite the advice of the man. In every scene, are you going to drink that?”
“Well I was, but you seem a bit thirsty.”
“You’re holding the drink like you’ll never let it go, for God’s sakes man, drink thing, anyway, in every scene I was depicted as existing in the world of spirits. Indeed it was a place completely foreign to the earth we know so well, the only recognizable constant I found amongst the beads being myself. I was eager to go through the door and enjoy my death, here it was the opportunity of, well a lifetime, but as I went to pass the man again he says, ‘no, I am sure, are you sure? This is not the door you want’. I can’t stay here, I told him, looking at my surroundings. He nodded his head, ‘you can’t stay in either place you know. Sooner or later you will have to leave. Nothing in the world of the living, nor the world of the dead is permanent’. I paused and thought about it realizing how right he truly was.”*
“I find myself surprised at the choice you obviously ultimately made. You seem like at first intuition you would have chose the afterlife.”
“It was only after the man spoke on the impermanence of both worlds that I again glanced into the Curtain that guarded the spirit world. Slowly, the more I looked at the different scenes, the more of them I recognized. I realized that I had been there before too, that I was staring into a world that I also know all too well. Not in the sense that I knew it and did not want to return, but simply that I did know some aspects of it. My soul had traveled that plane, perhaps before I began living this life in the physical realm. The choice became exceedingly more difficult, now I had to choose between two homes. It was no longer choosing between the known, and the unknown, it was a choice between two places I knew I would be loved, and accepted in, each with its own unique challenges.
“You just couldn’t leave me so soon could you Oliver, admit it, we’ll probably both actually die within hours of each other.”
“That is just it me friend, we will never die.”
It is inescapable isn’t it? As much as one might pretend to live entirely in the present, both our pasts and our future have a sneaky way of creeping into our conscious all too often.
Both are completely out of our control it might often seem, the past being a trail of memories inalterable, and the future, just beyond our grasp. That being the case, I find it strange how many people feel entirely comfortable selecting how their afterlives will be lead from the myriad of choices seemingly presented to us in this world.*
I will take a few dozen virgins, a home close to where the angels play, oh, and I will be back on earth soon right? These are false promises that comfort those who search for answers in the dark. For some of us though, there isn’t much of this world that feels outside of our grasp.
I personally wake up every day, open my eyes, and create the world the world I exist in, frame, by frame. What I will look like, who I will be, where I will be, or if I will even be after this life, I admit I do not know. I take comfort in that though, because, well, I will leave you with the words of a boy you might have heard of named Peter Pan, “To die, would be an awfully great adventure.”
-El Principe Mendigo
"Have I ever told you about my death?"
"Hmm I can't recall having ever heard the tale. Would you hand me a cigg." click, drag
"I've been told it can be misconstrued as a somewhat morbid tale, although from my presence here it was obviously a rather unsuccessful death."
"Oliver you at the moment, reeking of both alcohol and tobacco are the very model of life and good health."*
"I appreciate that my good friend, having found death not altogether unpleasant but in my case unlike most rather people’s deaths it was impermanent. I find myself still in possession of some semblance of this tragedy called living. You know if there was no whiskey here on this miserable rock I think I might have preferred the land of the dead."
"Well you must know by now you've piqued my curiosity, by all means feel free to divulge your tale.""Yes but give us a sneaky pour from the flask first my good friend. Odes to the triumphs of man such as this necessitate a small amount of lubrication." Twist, pour.*
“Good man.”"You are deserved fine sir, however this isn't going to turn into another one of your drunken tirades is it? I can only stand ....."
“...shh my dear friend you'll ruin the beginning. Have you ever been afraid of death?""I think most of us are afraid of the unknown to a certain extent."
"Give pause and consider the triumphs of man, such as flight or the automobile. For ages we have gazed upon the birds as they soared above head jealous that we were confined to a life spent wandering the earth. We have stood transfixed marveling at the fleetness of the cheetah coveting their swiftness. Our believe in our own perceived limitations is the only thing that stops us from achieving whatever it is we might desire. At the root of that, lives fear, it preys on that pesky, resurfacing trait of ours. Indeed, trepidation is the true enemy of man. In order for our rather young, and fragile species to gain the strength of self to challenge our limitations fear had to be conquered."
"I do often find myself deathly afraid we'll run dry of whisky"*
"You certainly do, and a valid fear that is. In order to bypass such a fear it requires somewhat of a spirit of adventure, a steely reserve of one’s mind, body, and especially our volatile emotions, imperatives to avoid such a tragedy. To properly enjoy ones death a similar fortitude of self is imperative."
" ...and you being the noblest of beasts never felt such a fear?"
"I do not question my stature as the pinnacle of human existence, but in my death I did feel the all too familiar twinge of doubt one comes across at many important intervals of life. However determined as I was to die, this had to be overcome."
"So you lingered on the brink for a while considering whether to turn back?"
"That I did, and when I came to that crux in the decision, my heart still beat, not quite as strong as it always has, almost faintly as it slowly descended into the world of the dead. I stood at the door, not quite ready to knock and make my grand entrance into Hades. The Lord of the Underworld waiting patiently for my inclusion in the legions of inhabitants of his vast and shadowy kingdom, but yet so far gone from the world of the living that I would never again be fully accepted as alive. To the living I would have appeared some strange apparition, the dead would have lusted for my blood, if only to for a moment taste something so close to being truly alive."
"It was here you must have been ultimately concerned with your lack of my good company in the afterlife, as we both know Oliver you are helpless without me."
"....indeed my truest of friends, I considered much of this earth where I have made my home this last, wait are those the fall Black Scale x ASAP collection trainers you did know I fully intended to purchase those?"
"I did, however it was a slight I knew you would be capable of forgiving."
"Indeed forgivable but still rather bad form ....so there upon the brink of death I was faced with something so curious as to make me question entirely my whereabouts. Was I not in the land between the living and the dead? My sense of time no longer existed; my outer extremities were still connected but felt nothing, indeed my limbs seemed to operate completely above and outside of my conscious thought. All of my actions felt fated, directed by powers above me, but yet I knew I was heading in a direction I wanted to go. I was no mere puppet on a string, but I certainly was propelled by some powerful force not natural to this world. It was upon the realization of all of these things that I came across what could only be described as simply a curtain,
“Ordinary blinds, you mean to cover a window or a door…”
“Exactly, a curtain with which one would cover a door made entirely of Jade. These millions of tiny green beads strung together on ropes of silk, impenetrable by my gaze but holding the promise of everything and anything conceivable to my mind at their parting.”
"It was here you were most crippled by fear.""It was here Napoleon decided to conquer the world, it was here Beethoven decided to write the Requiem and Hannibal conquered the Roman Empire."
"....did that"
"Don't interrupt, the most curious thing about the curtain were the details reflected in the beads. In it I saw everything of my past, every detail of my life in the land of the living was inscribed upon every bead. I saw my triumphs, my failures, and everything else that would give one pause to consider the life they had led."
“I was no doubt featured in some of your finer moments, if only in a supporting role, still, I am sure I put on quite the show.”
“Undoubtedly comrade, I have been lifted to heights unimaginable upon the strength of your wings. What stood out most though, were the days of my childhood. Throughout the entirety of my life my adolescent years remained somewhat of a mystery, only vague memories that I could occasionally recall make up my knowledge of that time period in my life. Seeing them there though, on those beads, I remembered them exactly as they happened. It was as if every single moment of my entire life, what I was feeling, the when, where, how and why was known to me upon studying those beads. I was absolutely transfixed."
"I suppose there was much time to consider the word "embarrassment."
"To hell with you ...although I suppose there was, I had no time to hide my face in shame at the follies of my youth, for even as I stood observing all of this, taking it in, I began to hear an unearthly wail swelling in the bosom of what sounded like a thousand dying doves. I shuddered, it was a terrifying sound, but yet, at the same time so alluringly beautiful all thought of my past life left me quickly. I became obsessed instantly; I had to find the cause of the sound. It consumed the little of my mind that was left intact and propelled me forward through the curtain. It was within a split second that I realized with an absolution that I was no longer connected to the land of the living anymore. The life that I had lead was still known to me, but not in an earthly sense. I knew that form, that body and shape as one who could objectively stand outside oneself and judge without bias all my deeds. I held the scales that judged my fate.
"Terrifying indeed."
"You would think ...but just the opposite. Imagine the first time a baby opens his eyes. The light, life, his first breaths of air are all foreign experiences to him. He has been thrust violently from a place of warmth comfort, and most importantly a place he recognizes in all of its intimate details into a disturbingly new and different place."
"Exactly ...terrifying"
"Admittedly, perhaps a bit, but think also of the excitement the young lad must feel at knowing he is on the cusp of an all new adventure. The beginning of something unlike anyone has ever experience. For both our births, and our deaths are the singular experiences we will as humans ever know. Every moment in between is so muddled by the energies, thoughts, actions and wants of others that indeed we are only truly ourselves the exact moment in which we are born, and the exact moment in which we die. It is in truth just a moment, but it stretches throughout the breadth of time. This entire experience, existed within the moment of my death, but I can say now that it felt as if it were a million years, and not a single second wore on spirit in the slightest."
"Yes, I see...and you felt as if you were beginning something new? Not the conclusion of one story but yet the beginning of one other, perhaps even more glorious then the first."
"Pour me a swallow my good friend, for here is where it get interesting" Twist, pour, sip.*
"Excellent, excellent, well you see, when I mentioned that I was carrying the scale that judged my actions I meant that in a very literal sense. Still I heard this incredible wailing, it began to surround me on all sides yet was invisible. I was incapable of ignoring it, silencing it, or even fighting it and as I looked upon the scale that I held in my hand, the louder the wailing became the more uneven the scales became.”
“And when measured, you must have fallen short?”
“I began running, in an effort to escape the unbearable wailing, dropping the scale I ran with a fervency of a man chased by the devil himself, but I was quite alone. I ran without tiring for what in human time must have been years, until I came to a wall. It must have been thousands of feet high, and millions of miles in either direction. I stopped, could run no more, the wailing had ceased an unknowable amount of time before but even the memory of it was haunting enough to drive me forward for so long. As I got closer to the wall, there read a sign, scrawled rather carelessly upon the wall it said, and I quote, ‘you are ****ed’. Naturally I was absolutely beside myself.”
“My friend, pause to consider this, at the onset of the wailing you were frightened but found it beautiful. There, just past the Jade Curtain, holding the weight of your deeds both good and bad upon a scale in your hand, I believe what happened afterwards, was a manifestation of the expectations you brought to the situation. Of course we all know man has pondered on the existence of the hereafter for centuries, but our ideas of what exists there are completely of our own creation. Indeed no higher power has ever told us explicitly what exists there, what we might expect. That being the case it is my idea that this hereafter you experienced in your death was some semblance of perhaps what your subconscious expected. You heard the wail of your misdeeds, ran from them, only to discover that in reality, even after death you will not be capable of escaping in totality your actions on this earth, hence you ran into your wall.”
“I see what you mean, and it is an entirely plausible theory indeed.”
“My dear Oliver this is merely conjecture, but think for a moment, another cigg please fine sir,” click, drag.*
“We are in this life, partly a product of our surroundings, upbringing, and so on and so forth we are all aware of those ideas, but as we age, gradually we become more and more a person of our own making. At some point most of us stumble upon some realization of who we truly are, so why then in the afterlife would our existence be completely out of our control as well? Does it not seem likely that if we are capable of creating ourselves here on Earth to a certain extent, that in some ways we would be capable of recreating ourselves after death. Then of course the cycle continues, of finding our bearing for some time in the world of spirits or in the physical world, and then spending some time within our true nature, getting closer and closer to our ultimate being with each cycle of life. Indeed in death we are still intricately tied to the world of the living.”
“So then you obviously believe in some form of reincarnation?”
“Well, and here I draw solely upon my own life experiences, and upbringing, having come up decidedly Jain, I have always entertained the distinct possibility. It seems almost impossible that we have all only lead one singular life, a mere flash of an existence within the almost infinite millennia our universe has thrived.”
“I agree, I had the privilege of spending an afternoon over coffee and hashish with a man I considered infinitely wise. We were speaking on the topic of reincarnation in depth, but he posed the idea simply for the sake of conversation that the world began with a very set number of persons. They had existed in the spirit world before hand, but that 12 of those spirits were chosen to inhabit the earth and have since, divided and combined portions of their spirits to create new persons, bound forever to those original 12, and ultimately he said we all exist as the offspring of those 12. Of course this sounds incredibly similar to natural human reproduction.”
“What an interesting idea, so based upon that school of thought, we could ourselves be the same person. Sitting here, basically talking to ourselves, same spirit, not necessarily divided but manifested in two different physical forms.”
“Yes quite possibly, wonder why I loathe you so my dear friend, allow me to continue with the tale, I believe I was at the wall?”
“Yes of course.”
“So, frightened as I was considering the possibility of spending an eternity facing this wall, knowing somehow I could not go around it, nor climb it, again I was forced to conquer my fear once again. It struck me, that as with all of the obstacle I have been met with in my time, occasionally I had no other option besides going straight at the problem, attacking it head on, full steam, throwing precaution to the wind heedless to the dangers I might place myself in. Sometimes a man is given two choices, conquer his inner fear, or submit to them, groveling before them at their mercy. These were the options presented me.”
“I can say this you are not the groveling type.”
“Simply not in my character, so I walked away from the wall several paces, bound my nerves in a steely reserve and ran as one possessed towards the wall, thinking, I am stronger then this obstacle it will not impede my path. Now, it was quite possible that I could have been dashed to pieces, the remnants of my spirit scattered about the cosmos, but a most curious thing happened. I got closer, and closer to the wall rushing with all the speed I found myself capable of, not knowing what might happen next, but not fearing it in the least, and at the moment in which I should have crashed into the wall, the very second, I might have been completely dissolved, the exact opposite happened. The wall itself, simply vanished, turned to mist. There was no crash, no fiery explosion, demons did not open the very floor I stood on to swallow me into the depths of some imaginary hell, it simply disappeared.”
“Here I must applaud you sir, well done indeed.”
“I appreciate that fully, I will have you know that was perhaps one of the most difficult hindrances in my existence that I have surmounted, and I was rewarded. As soon as the wall disappeared, I found myself in the midst of a place I believe few have ever laid eyes upon.”
“You had ascended to the heavens?”
“Not quite so lofty heights my friend, here is where I disagree with your idea that our afterlives are*
somewhat a creation, or mirror of what we expect them to be. If you sit at a table full of food, but have arrived to the table having just eaten then you have no desire for that food. I admit throughout the course of my years on earth, based on all I had ‘learned’ and been taught I had arrived to my afterlife, quite full, knowing all too well how it was supposed to happen. With the angels, and the saints, or perhaps the demons and their god, of course my strict Catholic upbringing, differing greatly from yours being Jain had taught me all of this, and this is what I expected.”
“You make an excellent point, we have constructed with such detail an idea of something based completely on our own speculation”
“Exactly, and what I found on the other side of that wall was nothing, not in the slightest what I expected. As soon as the wall had disappeared, I found myself at an incredible peace, but yet at the same time in awe of my surroundings, nervous slightly, but still at peace.”
“And what were you surrounded by?”
“Actually, I was just in a very normal, incredibly common looking lavatory. Albeit it was not dirty, but nor was it encrusted with jewels, or ornately decorated with golden lion heads and fountains and such, it was simply a bathroom. On either sides of the lavatory were again Jade Curtains, in front of both stood ordinary lavatory attendants, ordinary except they appeared exactly the same in every minute detail. An elderly gentlemen, in a maroon suit, curly white hair, of indiscernible race, but with youthfulness in his eyes that belied his elderly appearance.”
“Incredible, and they both appeared to be entirely human?”
“What is strange is that, the entire time I had been dead I assumed that I still looked as I remembered myself. I began walking towards the gentlemen, obviously slightly confused by my surroundings and by chance glanced briefly in the mirror. I was astonished that I appeared several years older, also with a crown of completely white hair, I found myself looking as I appear in the years of my soul, quite well advanced in years. As I approached the man he smiled, shook his head slightly and extended his hand, he spoke clearly and plainly saying, ‘no no, this is not the exit that you want.’ I attempted to glance past his shoulder through the Jade Curtain but to no avail it was too thick. In this curtain again appeared all different and various depictions of myself, but none that I recognized. It was me, living a life I had yet to live, but in a world I remembered quite well. I was confused and asked him, does this not lead to my life? He gave me a slightly wry but understanding smile, pointed to the other Curtain and said, ‘no, no absolutely not, it is the other that you want.’
“He sounds like a trickster indeed, not to be trusted.”
“Not at all, if you had of been there I believe you might have placed your life in his hands solely based on the look of him, in my opinion he appeared as the guiding hand towards everything good. I took his advice, approached the other Jade Curtain but as I got closer, the other him, again exactly the same in appearance to the detail put his hand out and said, ‘no, this is not the door that you want, it is the other’. I peered at the Curtain, seeing again myself displayed in millions of scenes of a life, I had not lead. On this side of the room however, I felt a pull, an urge to go through that curtain despite the advice of the man. In every scene, are you going to drink that?”
“Well I was, but you seem a bit thirsty.”
“You’re holding the drink like you’ll never let it go, for God’s sakes man, drink thing, anyway, in every scene I was depicted as existing in the world of spirits. Indeed it was a place completely foreign to the earth we know so well, the only recognizable constant I found amongst the beads being myself. I was eager to go through the door and enjoy my death, here it was the opportunity of, well a lifetime, but as I went to pass the man again he says, ‘no, I am sure, are you sure? This is not the door you want’. I can’t stay here, I told him, looking at my surroundings. He nodded his head, ‘you can’t stay in either place you know. Sooner or later you will have to leave. Nothing in the world of the living, nor the world of the dead is permanent’. I paused and thought about it realizing how right he truly was.”*
“I find myself surprised at the choice you obviously ultimately made. You seem like at first intuition you would have chose the afterlife.”
“It was only after the man spoke on the impermanence of both worlds that I again glanced into the Curtain that guarded the spirit world. Slowly, the more I looked at the different scenes, the more of them I recognized. I realized that I had been there before too, that I was staring into a world that I also know all too well. Not in the sense that I knew it and did not want to return, but simply that I did know some aspects of it. My soul had traveled that plane, perhaps before I began living this life in the physical realm. The choice became exceedingly more difficult, now I had to choose between two homes. It was no longer choosing between the known, and the unknown, it was a choice between two places I knew I would be loved, and accepted in, each with its own unique challenges.
“You just couldn’t leave me so soon could you Oliver, admit it, we’ll probably both actually die within hours of each other.”
“That is just it me friend, we will never die.”
It is inescapable isn’t it? As much as one might pretend to live entirely in the present, both our pasts and our future have a sneaky way of creeping into our conscious all too often.
Both are completely out of our control it might often seem, the past being a trail of memories inalterable, and the future, just beyond our grasp. That being the case, I find it strange how many people feel entirely comfortable selecting how their afterlives will be lead from the myriad of choices seemingly presented to us in this world.*
I will take a few dozen virgins, a home close to where the angels play, oh, and I will be back on earth soon right? These are false promises that comfort those who search for answers in the dark. For some of us though, there isn’t much of this world that feels outside of our grasp.
I personally wake up every day, open my eyes, and create the world the world I exist in, frame, by frame. What I will look like, who I will be, where I will be, or if I will even be after this life, I admit I do not know. I take comfort in that though, because, well, I will leave you with the words of a boy you might have heard of named Peter Pan, “To die, would be an awfully great adventure.”
-El Principe Mendigo