From: wce@hogbbs.scol.pa.us (Bill Eichman)
Newsgroups: alt.pagan
Subject: Re: Witches and death
Date: 8 Oct 92 00:20:10 GMT
Organization: The Heart of Gold BBS, Lemont PA

>From: pharvey@mipos3.intel.com (Paul Harvey)

>>wce@hogbbs.scol.pa.us (Bill Eichman) writes:
>>Maybe all we need are personal and individual explanations for death?

>OK, so what is your personal and individual explanation for death?

Oh, that would take pages... Well, here's a few bit's and pieces.

From my own experience with traumatic events, near death experiences
(nothing so glamourous as those reported in the books), astral
projection, and ritual/ecstatic confrontations with death, I conclude
the following...

Personal death is a blissful flowing into the "I Am", into an absolute
conciousness without time and without distinctions. Ones energy is
reabsorbed completely into the "Mother", and returns to a state of
union, perfect knowledge, and timeless joy.

Ordinary re-incarnation may or may not occur-- I have no certain
evidence of it. There are, however, at least three possible
"immortalities", as I call them; these "immortalities" are ideas about
death that I have drawn from my meditations and visions on the subject:

Genetic immortality, in which the selfhood continues through sexual
reproduction. I celebrate this through the worship of children.

Memetic immortality, in which the selfhood continues through the
transmission of stored, abstracted ideas and knowledge and experiences.
I celebrate this through the worship of ancestors.

Selfhood immortality, very rare, in which the personal selfhood awakens,
that is, "acheives enlightenment" (Which I as a pagan call 'wisdom'),
and becomes more or less free of the body, and of time, becoming
_something_ like what we colloquially call a "God", a higher level of
intelligence, conciousness, and selfhood. I celebrate this through my
personal practice of 'spiritual' discipline.

I connect this last notion of Selfhood Immortality with Lelands story as
described by Robert M., and of course with a number of ideas taken from
buddhism, sufism, hinduism, christianity, shamanism, etc-- the idea of
the awakened or divine human.

I could go on, but these are only my personal views; why inflict them on
others?

>>yet flexible general philosophy. I imaginbe it will be one of those
>>"evolution in action" sort of things, wherein the less useful ideas get
>>left behind....
>
>Less useful ideas, to whom? If you do a "survival of the fittest" to religion,

To people, of course. Just like my thoughts on this may be useless to
you, causing you to reject them. If enough people reject them, they die,
as ideas, especially after my own biological death.

>what you get is the religion that is best marketed and has the most militant
>followers. Just look at Christianity, Paulist Christianity is the one that

Yep, that's what you get-- a religion that is fitted to it's followers
through the process of supply and demand.

I look at christianity, and I see a lowest common denominator religion
that cruelly, through a process of survival of the fittest, gutted
Yeshuah's best ideas, and imposed a slaveish mindset, by force, on it's
followers.

Of course, the imperial greek paganism wasn't _that_ much different.

I expect this thing we call modern paganism to suffer exactly the same
fate. When I compare 80's and 90's paganism with sixties and seventies
paganism, already much has been lost, and already the lowest common
denominator rears it's ugly head, imposing a ethic-default doctrine of
"Do the right thing", or the oxymoronic "An ye harm none, do what ye
will", on all of us collectively.

The more it happens, the less willing I am to call myself 'pagan'. But
that's my problem, not yours. if you are happy with your paganism, and
seek nothing more, fine.

But, refering back to this problem of a Market-created paganism-- hey,
maybe I can participate in that market by pushing a 'consumer awareness'
angle. Is the "paganism" we are creating a healthy spiritual nutrient, a
fine and vigorous product, or is it a ripoff appealing only to the
lowest common denominator of religious hunger, spiritual junk food?

I want to see it be a high quality product. So sue me.

>good right? And Unity also, correct? But, is Unity worth giving up Diversity
>to obtain? Isn't a better goal to strive for Diversity and try to achieve
>Unity of Diversity? One "general philosophy" is "Do the right thing". Is that
>not enough? What more do you seek? What more do you desire?

I have no interest in unity. Unity and rigor are not synonyms. I could
care less about what you or other's believe, and have no desire or even
the vaguest curiosity about 'unifying' your belief system.

What more do I desire? I desire simply that we talk about important
things; life, death, sex, wisdom, community, replicability, survival,
raw experience, on and on... Things all pagans share, whatever their
mythology.

If you don't wish to talk about such things, fine. If you want to stop me
from talking about such things, well, that's your problem.

>>wce@hogbbs.scol.pa.us (Bill Eichman) writes:
>>I have seen no signs, after many years of study, of a convincing modern
>>pagan philosophy of death, or at least one that wasn't lifted whole clth
>>or manufactured by one of the 'founding fathers'.

>I'm curious as to what you mean by that last sentence. Is that a prop or a
>diss, complement or insult, good or bad? What are you looking for in a

It's both. It's simply realistic.

>Please explain what you would find to be "convincing" and "modern"? And you

"Modern" philosophies would, for instance, take the knowledge gathered
by the modern sciences into account, among other things...

"Convincing" means consistent, rigorous, without loose ends, internally
coherent, like any good argument or thesis.

>say that philosophies are either lifted or manufactured. In what other
>ways can one generate a philosophy?

Through the synthesis of new experiences and explanations into the
still-valuable elements of earlier philosophies.

It's not enough to reclaim the old-- the old has to be integrated into
the new, if it's to be relevant to our life here on this planet.

Much too long of a post...

Later, Bill