ONE OF MY FELLOW-INMATES at the senior residence I inhabit asked me "Would you rather live a rich exciting life and die young, or would you prefer to live, as you have, into quiet old age?"
I replied "I'd rather live forever."
But afterwards I thought about it a bit more. I'm not a Christian (although my brother is.) I don't profess any religion and I don't rely on any false hopes of an afterlife. Nonetheless I lean favourably towards the Eastern speculation that in some sense the Universe itself is immortal. I'm even inclined to agree with the proposition that the stuff of the world is mind-stuff.
No dogma, you see. Just musings.
Then an old idea came forward to my mind again: that Christianity, although clearly untrue and a mere fable, provides a model of life, a metaphor. And in that narrative even God himself knows what it is to die.
This almost accords with the doctrine in the Hindu Advaita Vedanta, which perceives the "I AM" as an event in the mind of the Stateless State, of the Absolute, or the Supreme Reality, called Parabrahman. It is pure awareness, prior to thoughts, free from perceptions, associations, memories. "I AM"
Rupert Sheldrake has suggested (in a private communication) that with the experience of awareness of awareness -- the self knowledge that I AM -- Brahman teaches itself to be more than just "Being" but a
conscious being, akin to a living organism.
I submit that with this lightning stroke the unconscious, silent Brahman detonates our entire cosmos of change and transition. It will expand out into who-knows-what and then must somehow contract and die.
The Christian legend of God incarnated as a man who knows death parallels this journey. It's a comfort to imagine that the source of all being has chosen to experience death itself, even if it ain't so. Thus Christianity is model, a metaphor and not a theory and certainly not a dogma that I will ever entertain or adopt.