Subtitles
now there really isn't anything radically wrong with being sick or 00:00:05
dying 00:00:15
who said you're supposed to survive? who gave you the idea that it's a gas to go 00:00:18
on and on and on? and we can't say that it's a good thing for everything to go 00:00:27
on living from the very simple demonstration that if we enable 00:00:33
everybody to go on living we over crowd ourselves that we're like a nun pruned 00:00:36
tree and so therefore a one person who dies in a way is honourable because he's 00:00:43
making room for others and the panic that all life everywhere must be saved 00:00:55
although each one of us individually will naturally appreciate it 00:01:05
when anybody saves our life if we apply that case you see all around we can see 00:01:10
that it's not workable we can also look further into it and see that if our 00:01:18
death could be indefinitely postponed we would not actually go on postponing it 00:01:28
indefinitely because after a certain point we would realize that that isn't 00:01:38
the way in which we wanted to survive why else would we have children 00:01:46
because children arranged for us to survive in another way by as it were 00:01:54
passing on a torch so that you don't have to carry it all the time 00:02:06
there comes a point where you can give it up and say now you work it's a far 00:02:13
more amusing arrangement for nature to continue the process of life through 00:02:22
different individuals than it is always with the same individual because as each 00:02:29
new individual approaches life life is renewed and one remembers how 00:02:35
fascinating the most ordinary everyday things are to a child because they see 00:02:42
them all as marvelous because they see them all in a way that is not related to 00:02:48
survival and profit and when we get to thinking of everything in terms of 00:02:54
survival and profit value as we do then the shapes of scratches on the floor 00:02:59
cease to have magic and most things in fact cease to have magic so therefore in 00:03:07
the course of nature once we have ceased to see magic in the world anymore we are 00:03:18
no longer fulfilling nature's game of being aware of itself there's no point 00:03:24
in it anymore and so we die and so something else comes to birth which gets 00:03:30
an entirely new view and so nature's self-awareness is a game worth the 00:03:37
candle it is not therefore natural for us to wish to prolong life indefinitely 00:03:43
but we live in a culture where it has been rubbed into us in every conceivable 00:03:53
way that to die is a terrible thing and that is a tremendous disease from 00:04:01
which our culture in particular suffers and we notice it firstly in the way in 00:04:11
which death is swept under the carpet this is one of the major problems in 00:04:16
hospital work when a family conspires with the doctor to keep from grandmother 00:04:22
the knowledge that she is dying grandmother suspects that she is dying 00:04:33
but probably doesn't really want to know for sure and her family talk with her in 00:04:42
such a way as to say well it'll be you you you'll probably be getting alright 00:04:49
in a few weeks and won't it be nice to be able to do this that and the other 00:04:53
because they have this funny feeling that it's important to build up courage 00:04:57
and hope and so they become liars and a mutual mistrust develops because once 00:05:02
you are playing the game on that level you tend to play the mistrust on other 00:05:13
levels and so the person is left to die alone suddenly unprepared and doped up 00:05:16
to the point where death hardly happens 00:05:33
and there is no derivation from it of the peculiar spiritual experience that 00:05:44
can come with death so you see this is always the opportunity presented by 00:05:51
death that if one can go into death with eyes open to give up before you die this 00:05:59
extraordinary thing can happen to you so that from your standpoint in that 00:06:14
position at that time you would say I wouldn't have missed that opportunity 00:06:19
for the world now I understand why we die the reason we die is to give us the 00:06:24
opportunity to understand what life's all about by letting go because then we 00:06:30
come to a situation that the ego can't deal with when we are no longer 00:06:37
hypnotized by that then our natural consciousness can see clearly what all 00:06:42
this universe is for so therefore we have missed this golden opportunity by 00:06:47
institutionalizing death out of the way instead of having a socially understood 00:06:57
acceptance of death and rejoicing in death so it follows from that you see 00:07:08
that if any one of us could at this moment be as one about to die 00:07:18
genuinely and honestly we would understand the mystery of life because 00:07:31
death is the as if in a certain sense the source of life just as we see in 00:07:43
nature when the leaves fall from the trees they mold and rot and this 00:07:51
supplies humors from which more plants can grow it's a cycle like that but in 00:07:55
every way symbolic and otherwise human beings try to stop that cycle Unamuno 00:08:02
said human beings are the only species that hoard their dead and therefore with 00:08:08
the ghastly art of the mortician we try to make the body unpalatable to the 00:08:16
world and so to stop life as if to be eaten in due course were an indignity to 00:08:23
the human being whereas we eat everything else and we 00:08:31
give nothing back so that is a kind of a social symptom of our profound 00:08:35
disorientation with respect to death 00:08:43
you 00:09:13