Human beings find it difficult to come to terms with finite existence. An aura of immortality and perpetual self-gazing lurks within. Little do they know, the greatest gift they could ever receive is mortality.
You only crave for something till you find it. The same logic applies to immortality. Since we are all mortals, our perception of immortality leaves much to be desired. If a never ending life, suspended in perpetuity would be worth living or mirror a cursed existence?
“You either die a hero or live long enough to be the villain.” This quote fits ever so perfectly in the context of life. Historically human beings have gone for conquest and wars to satisfy their ego. Amassing material wealth and possession just to see everything drift as they lie on their death bed. Would a sense of immortality aggravate this evolutionary urge to reach the top of hierarchical food chain, or would that kill ambition since there is forever at disposal.
The case of human beings is peculiar as they have a sense of self, thanks to human cognition that helps them plan, hoard and manipulate. Wild animals are just fighting to feed themselves, their basic natural need or instinct to survive. The changes that an animal would feel upon achieving immortality is evident. It would just sit around without the need to hunt, only hunting when it would feel like having a snack. It is not animals and their ability to process the sense of immortality that should worry anybody, since this knowledge can only turn lethal mixed with the cocktail of human cognition.
Time puts value to actions. In the absence of time, those actions won’t fetch the desired value. Same logic works in the case of a lifetime. A defined lifetime combined with cognition drives human beings to action to achieve their desires, like education in the growth phase, marriage in menstruation phase followed with procreation. Human beings have designed their lives based on the scale of existence. In case of an infinite scale these actions can be indefinitely suspended in limbo. There would be no sense of urgency to put thought to action in a time vacuum.
The idea of a life spanning cosmic limitations, covering light years, witnessing the birth and death of galaxies and innumerable companions isn’t just sad but scary at so many levels. What is there to experience when you have experienced everything multiple times? The same universal drama continues in front of the tired eyes, while the curse of immortality keeps the eyes from shutting.
None of us chose to be a part of this circus. This absurdity found us via consciousness. We were born, gained consciousness and with it developed our sense of self. We started interacting with the world around us through the prism of consciousness. The same consciousness that geared us to survive and reproduce, so our genes could propagate further down generations. Mere understanding of the hollowed nature of existence even a limited life has to offer sent Buddha off his kingdom into finding nirvana. All it needed was the truth of life to flash in front of his eyes. He realized the truth that “life is actually suffering” and no amount of distraction could convince him otherwise. He wanted to escape the cycle of life and death and sought nirvana. He learnt through his meditations that there is no better salvation than having never been born.
We wrap ourselves with delusions to keep the mind distracted, so it never seeks truth. In fact we are so scared of truth that our society has built guard rails around real knowledge and its consumption, feeding us cheap thrills for us to behave like guinea pigs to be slaughtered at the behest of consumerism. We have built large and complex structures of dogma to avoid the pain of life. These structures keep us occupied running on the hedonic treadmill, till our breathe runs out. The next generation awaits in line to copy our existence.
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