(Goodreads.com)
“Je me revolt contra la mort.”
–Arthur Rimbaud
“Hegel … said that consciousness craves recognition more than it craves love. Recognition makes one feel “real,” providing a kind of extended life for us through others. It affords hope of survival in the great (albeit fickle) memory of human experience. If I want to “survive” in this sense, I must make myself known, famous or infamous. I have to be able to count on the spotlight staying on me.”
“Money and technology aren’t going to save us; if anything, they are what threaten to destroy us. So I find myself imagining something like a collective near-death experience triggering a revolution of consciousness. My view is that the closer we edge toward plunging into apocalyptic mayhem, the more the archetypal energies of spiritual rejuvenation are likely top awaken and begin to transform us en masse. How this will take place is anybody’s guess.”
“A map of the world that does not include Utopia is not worth even glancing at.”
–Oscar Wilde
“Jung himself had a remarkable near-death experience. He had a heart attack after he broke his foot. ‘I felt violent resistance to my doctor because he had brought me back to life,’ he wrote in his autobiography. He said it took him more than three weeks so make up his mind to live again. He regretted having to return to this ‘gray world with its boxes.’ The other world he glimpsed was fuller, not broken up into bits of time and pieces of space. ‘Although my belief in the world returned to me, I have never since entirely freed myself of the impression that this life is a segment of existence which is enacted in a three-dimensional boxlike universe especially set up for it.’ During his near-death experience, Jung had a vision of Zeus and Hera consummating a mystical marriage ceremony. The contemplation of such awe-inspiring images, and the cosmic feelings associated with them. might be numinous enough to weaken the ordinary will to live.”
“We are led to a disquieting possibility: the counterpart of individual near-death experience may be unfolding in history with the near-death experience of humanity as a whole. is it a coincidence that just as the scientific intellect is beginning to penetrate the mystery of what may lie beyond the death of the brain the scientific intellect has also created the means to destroy life on earth through nuclear war and/or climate catastrophe?”
“Raymond Moody in his book Glimpses of Eternity, describes cases of a dying person drawing people present into his near-death experience. This suggests the possibility of a group near-death experience.”
“The status quo is the sure road to the worst outcomes [nuclear war, climate catastrophe] and the momentum toward disaster is daunting. Reason, politics as usual, democracy itself may not be up to the task.”
“Edward Teller, known affectionately as ‘father of the hydrogen bomb’ and inspired believer in its uses, once said that ‘we would be unfaithful to the tradition of Western civilization if we shied away from what man can accomplish ‘ Teller associated making the hydrogen bomb with fulfilling the duty of Western civilization.”