2.  DEATH

          The illusion of an absolute, unequivocal end to Life is the grossest fallacy I ever accepted.  Death is a myth perpetuated by those who knowingly or unknowingly prey on ignorance and fear, and who are knowingly or unknowingly ignorant and fearful.  Perhaps because of its pervasiveness in society, I believed the myth, though proof has never been offered to validate death as the end to life.

There is no death—and further, there is a rational path to illustrate the faulted logic of such an irrational concept (I find a certain irony, by the way, in people who believe in a benevolent, omniscient, omnipotent God, and also believe that such a benevolent Creator should condemn everyone, everywhere, without exception, ultimately to their death…)

Man has, in this area, exempted himself from the rules governing the rest of the Universe.    Many people, like audience members of a deft illusionist, believe what they see—someone dies—and ignore the sleight of hand behind the trick—I, like everything else, am nothing more than Matter and Energy, and in "life" and "death" I act as energy and matter always do.  I transform.

 —Star Power—

 To understand the illusion of Death, I had to first understand the origin of Life.  The secret is in the stars.

Stars have burned since the beginning of the universe—roughly 13 billion years ago by current estimates—far longer than there have been humans.  The sun is a middle-aged (at about 4.6 billion years), fairly average star shining in our galactic backyard.  Even as such, it is an amazing testament of creation; the dazzling light it emits not only gives life (in the forms of heat and vitamin E, for example), but also defies the existence of an end to life.

Following this paragraph is a picture of the Periodic Chart—an arrangement of all known elements, organized by chemical and atomic properties.  Within these elements are the basic constituents for life. 

(http://www.can-do.com)

 A basic understanding of the Periodic Table is relevant to understanding the cycles of stars, which itself is important to understanding where life ultimately comes from, and where it goes.

—Cloud City—

 Space is big…and mostly empty (thus, the name), even considering the millions of galaxies discovered, and within this mostly empty space, there are occasional patches of gas, called Nebulae, misty remnants of the originating event (or “Big Bang”, if you prefer) that began the known universe.  Nebulae are made mostly of Hydrogen (H, the first element in the Periodic Chart, on the upper left), some helium (He, upper right), and a little of everything else on the chart.

When astronomers study stars, they determine their age by plotting brightness and temperature on a Hertzsprung-Russell (“H-R”) diagram (pictured following this paragraph).  Astronomers have scoured the skies, but it turns out, never find groups of stars older than about 10 billion years, one of many indicators pointing to a definitive origin of the Universe.

HERTZSPRUNG – RUSSELL DIAGRAM (H-R DIAGRAM) (http://www.bramboroson.com/astro/apr1.htm) 

           On the diagram, notice most stars burn within certain parameters, forming a line from the lower right to the upper left (this pattern is known as the "Main Sequence").  As a star reaches the end of its Main Sequence cycle, it exhausts most of its remaining energy in a giant explosion, a “Supernova”.  When there is a supernova event, a shockwave rushes away from the star (not unlike ripples expand from a rock tossed into a pond).  As the shockwaves travel through space, they rush into nebulae, pushing the gases together, causing the gases to swirl and compress into smaller, denser clouds.  As the gas clouds become bigger and heavier, the increased density leads to gravitational attraction.  From there, the process feeds on itself—the more mass an object gains, the more gravity it has.  As gases compress, the center warms from the gravitational friction, eventually forming proto-stars (“pre”-stars).

 —Mounting Pressure—

           Gravity continues building pressure in these condensed gas clouds and the temperature rises until the hydrogen reaches (roughly) a million degrees, causing a fusion reaction at the proto-star’s core.  This Hydrogen Fusion reaction happens when protons are slammed together with so much energy they fuse to one another, releasing even more energy with the impact.  Gravity keeps building, but the intensity of the fusion reaction is so powerful it fights gravity back.  If the proto-star gains too much mass, it becomes too big to contain itself.  In other words, the pressure beats the gravity; it may split into two stars.  If the proto-star does not gain enough mass, there will not be sufficient gravity to raise the temperature to the million-degree threshold needed for a hydrogen fusion reaction; the gravity beats the pressure—a star will not form.  However, if a state of stability is reached, the star attains “Hydrostatic Equilibrium” (that is, the fusion reaction does not exceed the pull of gravity and gravity does not overcome the fusion reaction); then, we say, a star is born.

          As Hydrogen Fusion occurs, Helium is produced (notice again that Hydrogen is number 1 and Helium is number 2 on the Periodic Chart).  Eventually, a star will use all of its hydrogen, leaving only the helium to burn.  Since there is now less energy to burn (all of the Hydrogen now being gone), the core decreases (with less energy, there is less pressure to keep gravity away; now gravity is winning again).  As gravity condenses the core, the core generates heat.

—Star Children—

           If the temperature of the core reaches 50 to 100 million degrees, Helium Fusion begins, causing the tremendous pressure once more to beat gravity.  As Helium Fusion increases, the star produces more elements, and continues burning through them:  Beryllium, Carbon, Oxygen, Lithium, Boron, Nitrogen, etc… all the way down to Iron, on the Periodic Chart.  A star can not fuse past Iron because to do so requires more energy than it has already expended.

          After a star has depleted its remaining energy, leaving only the iron core, it uses its last resource to survive:  Gravity itself.  As the star shrinks, it becomes hotter and smaller (and thus dimmer, moving left, and down, on the H-R Diagram), ultimately becoming a White Dwarf.  White Dwarfs are so dense the very atoms that make them collapse, forming a new state of matter (Degenerate Matter—at this point, iron can no longer be created by liberating energy, but rather by absorbing energy).

          An extraordinarily massive star will reach a pressure point where the atoms collapse in a fraction of a second—when this happens, we say a white dwarf goes supernova.  This massive explosion raises the temperature to billions of degrees—manufacturing so much energy the star produces the rest of the remaining elements, completing the Periodic Table.  So much energy is produced so quickly the star explodes from the center out, allowing the elements to escape.

          As these heavy elements are thrown into space, and comprise the very substances I am made of, it can be said in the most literal sense, I am truly a Star Child.  Humans are Carbon-based; water is composed of Hydrogen and Oxygen.  Blood will turn red when the Oxygen outside of my body mixes with the Iron inside of me…everything comes from elements born of stars.

 —Star Light, Star Bright—

 As I stare into space, I am bombarded with the energy of light, which scientists call “electromagnetic radiation”.  There are many types of electromagnetic radiation.  Some of it is optical; that is, I see it with my eyes.  In fact, everything I see with my unaided eyes gives off electromagnetic radiation in what is called the "visible spectrum", including myself.  There are wavelengths of radiation I can not see with the naked eye, outside of the visible spectrum:  radio, infrared, ultraviolet, x-rays, and gamma rays, for example.  Anything that is observed gives off energy at one of these wavelengths, from the largest galaxy, to microscopic organisms, from the sky to my skin.

          I perceive optical/visible radiation in the form of colors, from Red (longer, slower wavelengths) to Violet (faster, shorter wavelengths).  I experience other wavelengths without sight.  Infrared, for example, I sense as heat.  I can not see my body heat, but if I look through Infrared goggles, I can clearly observe objects, even at night, by seeing the differences in their temperature—the infrared wavelengths.

 —Red is not Red—

           When I look at a “red” object, like an apple, what I actually see is the wavelength reflected from that object; all other wavelengths are absorbed or pass through it.  In that sense, I could say a “red” object is actually every color except “red”, which is the wavelength reflected back in the form of visible electromagnetic radiation.  A “green” object, therefore, absorbs all wavelengths except yellow and blue, which is reflected back to my eyes (yellow and blue together create green).  A banana looks yellow because all colors except red and green are absorbed.  I see “white” when all wavelengths of visible light are reflected and “black” when all wavelengths are absorbed.  Therefore, "white" is actually the absence of all colors and "black" is the presence of all colors.  Children learn this quickly, by experimenting with crayons.  When a child colors over a yellow crayon with a blue one, the ensuing mixed color is green.  When all colors in the crayon box are mixed, the hodge-podge of color becomes a waxy black.  As molecules absorb wavelengths of light, their energy increases—this is why on a hot day, the surface of a white car remains cooler (reflecting all wavelengths of colors) than the surface of a black car (absorbing all colors/wavelengths).  Even my skin glows with visible-light wavelengths (if it did not, I would not be able to see myself or others—at least, not with my eyes).

          This is not really surprising.  After all, I am made of the same elements as the stars; I glow with light as the stars do (although luckily, I do not glow through the same process of Hydrogen Fusion).

 —How Fast is Your Favorite Color?—

           By measuring wavelengths of electromagnetic radiation, I can determine how fast an object is moving and whether it is heading toward or away from me.  This is known as the "Doppler Effect".  The easiest way to describe the Doppler Effect is to first consider the way it works with sound waves.  I think of how a fire truck siren sounds as it approaches me, and then as it passes by.  As the truck gets closer, the space between my ear and the sound waves from the siren shrinks; the sound waves are forced closer together (thus the waves are pushed toward the blue end of the electromagnetic spectrum).  I hear the siren picking up in pitch.  As it passes, the space between me and the siren grows and so does the space between the sound waves.  I hear the siren fade into the distance (the waves are now red-shifted).  Light works the same; when I look into space, I can measure the visible light wavelengths of objects such as galaxies to determine if they are coming toward me (blue-shifted) or moving away (red-shifted), and the speed at which they are moving.

          This is important because by measuring the speed of an object relative to me, I can also determine its distance from me.  For example, I know our nearest galactic neighbor, the Andromeda Galaxy, is about 2.5 million light years away.  That means if I left the Andromeda Galaxy today, traveling 186,000 miles per second (roughly the speed of light), I would not arrive on Earth for another 2.5 million years!  That also means on Earth, no one would see me leave until 2.5 million years from now, because it would take the light wavelengths from my departure 2.5 million years to reach their eyes.  Traveling at the speed of light, no one would see me leave Andromeda until the day I arrived on Earth.  Everything I see happening in the Andromeda Galaxy today actually took place 2.5 million years ago!

          In fact, the sun is about 93 million miles from Earth.  It takes the light from the sun nearly 8 minutes of traveling across space to reach my eyes.  Therefore, I am always seeing the sun as it looked about 8 minutes ago.  If the sun suddenly stopped shining, I would not know until about 8 minutes later (well, not quite; I would likely see a ring of expanding darkness as the last light left the disc of the star).  By contrast, light from the moon takes only 1.5 seconds to reach my eyes.  This is because the moon is significantly closer and the light has less distance to travel.  When I look at a person standing five feet away, I am actually seeing them as they appeared about a nanosecond ago—that is how long it takes the light from their body to reach my eyes.

 —Light Shines—

           Returning to the galactic scale, if Andromeda is the Milky Way's closest neighboring galaxy, and it takes light from Andromeda a couple million years to reach me, then how big is the universe?  In any practical (or impractical) term, it is infinite—no matter how big I can imagine it, it is bigger.  The size of the universe is beyond the comprehension of Man.  I may believe I possess a rudimentary understanding of how big it is, but I can not actually imagine the size of the universe any more than I can actually imagine a trillion dollars, or all the drops of water in all the oceans.  Given such scope, and understanding Earth, then, is smaller than a dot (.) in my own galaxy, and that my galaxy is not even a speck among the 100 billion or so known galaxies strewn throughout space, I can easily infer that, for all practical purposes, light shines forever.

Recapitulation

     I have offered no new information here—in fact, in this chapter I have only used long-standing facts learned in basic Astronomy and Physical Science classes, so how does this fundamental information disprove the standard superstitious view of death?  From here, it is a matter of logic:

1)     Stars existed long before we did.

2)     Stars shine, sending Light into the universe.

3)     Stars provided the constituent parts of matter I am made from; I am made of the same elements as Stars.

4)     As a literal being of light, I too, shine and send light into the universe.

5)     The universe is infinite.  This means my life—my light—shines eternally, forever broadcasting my existence into the Universe.

     I give off light the same way an apple does.  That light travels into the universe, traveling forever in every direction.  My entire life, everything I do, every action I take, is in a sense recorded and broadcast forever.  As proof of that, I look no further than the Andromeda Galaxy—what I see there today happened over 2 million years ago.  If a baby was born in Andromeda 2.5 million years ago, I could see him take his first breath today—his entire life would replay for me, just as he lived it then.  If there is life in other galaxies, they could see me sitting at my desk typing this sentence at the moment my light reaches them—long after my body-machine has expired.  Perhaps to inhabitants of Andromeda (if there are any), dinosaurs rule Earth at this moment.

     People grieve for those they believe have passed away ("passed away"—an interesting term, as opposed to, say, “shine on”).  I find solace in understanding my loved ones never "die".  They are as infinite as stars; their light shines into the universe forever, as does mine.  I have considered that every time I mistreat someone, that moment lives in the universe forever as well.  Every time I say one thing and do another, every private moment where some secret disgusting thing is brought to light (if you will pardon the pun), every single time I act in a way that is not aligned with what makes me happy, everything I do shines eternally.  I am blessed or doomed to repeat all the good and all the bad in my life until the end of time, until the end of the universe. 

     When conscious of this knowledge, I ask myself the same question every stereotypical parent asks every stereotypical teen, hoping the child will gain wisdom and act responsibly:

          Now that you know the truth…what are you going to do with the rest of your life?

Endoepisteme: The Philosophy

          There is no death.  Death is a single word definition of the phrase, "Fear of the unknown".  When the mysticism behind an "end to life" is unveiled, the illogical premise of death leads to control and manipulation of fear through mystical and ritualistic intimidation.  Fundamental understanding of the universe and its governing laws lead to a proper perception of infinity and eternal light—the antithesis of death.  Life must have a logical premise.  This is true by nature of clearly defined laws to Reality that are indisputably adhered to, regardless of intent, will, or wish.  If the premise of life is not endo-epistemic, it is inherently determined by manipulation of fear.

—MANUAL application—

          How do I apply these principles to my life?

1.     I inquire of myself.  What knowledge do I have of death?  All I have seen is the human machine, like every machine, follows the law of entropy and eventually runs out of motive power to sustain itself.

2.     Given there is no logical premise to support a theistic religion, I know there is thus no secret or convenient "after-life" to console me for grievances I cause to others, or to allow me another chance to live beyond the consequences of this—my only life.

3.     I choose my destiny and accept responsibility for my choices.  If there are regrets, then there are regrets and I must deal with them in whichever way I choose to live with them, or beyond them.

4.     I look beyond the illusion of a mystical life.  All life is logical—there are boundaries to how the machinery operates.  I may never understand the whole of the machine, but once I understand the philosophy behind the machinery, I remove the illusion of mysticism.  I begin, instead, to see the logic of the mechanism, and then I can apply the knowledge to my own rational living.

In the next chapter, I will consider another common misconception I, until now, accepted without question.