Death has been on my mind. I had a terrible nightmare last night. I dreamt that a man had gotten stuck in a shaft that was filling up with boiling water. He didn't know it was going to be hot water or that he would get stuck. As the water overtook him he screamed. The haunting part was that after he died, there was still air trapped in him and he gave a post death scream, that was just a meaningless sigh. I awoke with terror still gripping me strongly. I've noticed that dreams can amplify emotions to levels I've never experienced in waking life. It's what I imagine a bad LSD trip must feel like. One loses the sense of control and awareness of the real environment/social situation.
I experienced a different kind of sense of my own mortality at an ace hardware store only a few days ago. Walking through the isles, searching for supplies for a DIY teepee project, I realized that what I was doing was so basic in nature, akin to an ape using stone tools. I imagined the future world of Nebogifel and the other Morlocks from The Time Ships where everything that they need is extruded from the floor because of their advanced mastery over physical matter. I can imagine another future where humans conquer aging and death as well, living thousands of years, perhaps forever. I realized that I am so close to our hairy ape ancestors and so far away from a future of immortals. I had an overwhelming sense of being temporally locked into this time period. I was seeing myself from the outside locked in time, locked into the beginning of the story of humanity, a footnote, a prelude.
In the future world of immortals, more possibilities will be actualized than have ever been. A person can experience, discover, and develop so much more. I want a piece of that in some form or another since I am temporally locked in. Take one positive attribute, say, patience. Imagine the patience of someone who has a lived a thousand years! This is a kind of patience molded by experiences. Perhaps I could gain the experience of an immortal by absorbing lifetimes of experiences through imagination. One can actively imagine myriad numbers of situations that life can take, immersing oneself so thoroughly into these stories, that we come out on the other side much stronger, wizened by them. Barring being able to simulate worlds through lucid dreaming or powerful visualization (though this is a possible avenue) one can read and write stories. All these methods of imagineering can have a psychophysical effect just like my terrible nightmare can stimulate the chemical machinery that makes me feel utter terror. We need not be limited by one line of life experience. Most importantly, we can develop/learn much faster through our imagineering. We can develop recursively, constantly changing our source code every time we experience another life story. Maybe this is a pretty obvious concept but I'm just coming at this from the other end.
Welp there's my quick hack for transcending the limitations of death.
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