While one might sensibly expect this to be a routine,
personal-discretionary procedure for mature/sane adults,
this is almost nowhere the case, even in the early 21st
Century CE, because of both profane-religious and
nation/state insistence that human life is theirs -
certainly not the affected individual’s! - to give or take.
At most, and then subject to draconian, grudging
restrictions, PAS may be permitted by a few states [but
never by profane religion] in cases of imminent,
extremely-agonizing expiration from disease or injury.
Beloved pets may receive the mercy of a gentle VAS
drift-off to the Rainbow Bridge90 from no-longer-
89 That at the very last, despite a lifetime of J/C Catholicism, Tolkien
himself experienced and expressed this Nœsis (my highlighting)
gruntles me. For Aragorn to follow it with “Farewell!” thus seems
little more than disingenuous dramatics. “Back in a moment after I
change from khat to khabit!” would have been more to the point,
though requiring Arwen to come up with a less-tragic rejoinder.
90 At the Rainbow Bridge, Earth family-animal MSs await their
humans in a serene, secure, and healing setting. The Bridge gets its
name from the bodies of spectral-light which replace the animals’
cast-off OU ones. When in this form an animal rushes to greet its
human, it is sometimes visible from Earth as a “shooting star”.
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operational bodies, but rarely if ever is this same mercy
available to their human family.
Scenarios in which individual humans own their own
bodies are still in the realm of science-fiction.
In the 1973 motion picture Soylent Green, Edward G.
Robinson - as an elderly gentleman tired of life in an
overpopulated, environmentally-degraded near-future, is
able to patronize a courteous and comforting suicide
facility: He drinks a lethal cocktail and reclines on a
comfortable bed to drift off to “light classical” music and
projected vistas of bygone natural beauty and serenity.
One day perhaps this will become the civilized standard. 91
Soylent Green was anticipated in 1895 by Robert W.
Chambers, who in his legendary collection of outré short
stories The King in Yellow was not optimistic about the
new century:
In the winter of 1901 began that agitation for the
repeal of the laws prohibiting suicide which bore its final
fruit in the month of April 1920, when the first
Government Lethal Chamber was opened in New York on
Washington Square ... 92
In the 1976 film Logan’s Run, PAS was portrayed as a
systematic state deception to prevent over-population by
killing everyone at age 30 in a fake “reincarnation”
ceremony. The cynical reality, of course, was the BBS.
91 On the other hand, after Edward expired his corpse was conveyer-
belted to a large vat in which it was cooked with others to create the
“Soylent Green” crackers distributed to the food-desperate populace.
When Charlton Heston protested that “Soylent Green is people!”, he
was ignored and arrested.
92 Chambers, Robert W., The King in Yellow. New York: F. Tennyson
Neely, 1895, page #11.
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The following year George Lucas’ Star Wars retained
the BBS for ordinary humans & aliens, but exempted
initiates, the “Jedi”, who could in/dis/recarnate at will. 93
But in the 21st Century CE in this galaxy, body-
bondage still prevails. For such mature and responsible
guidance as does exist, two standard, regularly-updated
reference books are Final Exit by Derek Humphry and
The Peaceful Pill Handbook by Dr. Philip Nitschke & Dr.
Fiona Stewart.
Neither book advocates nor encourages suicide; they
exist primarily to warn readers against known dangers,
risks, and exploitations in subject areas so susceptible
to rumor, misinformation, and cold-blooded fraud.
They do not “preach” either pro or con; they assume
and expect the reader to be responsible for personal
decisions.
Similarly MindStar’s intent in identifying these works
is simply and specifically protection of readers. While
rejecting unjustified fears of “death”, MindStar maintains
that decisions concerning it should be reached only with
the greatest of care and understanding.
On subjects such as this there will always come a
point where the reader is either trusted or not. Education,
experience, ethics, and responsibility to oneself as well as
others all play a part. But “the buck stops with you”.
J. Prescience
With physical “death” looming so prominently and
inevitably before all humans, one would expect
considerable and careful attention to it. That this is
93 Lucas borrowed “Jedi” from the [non-initiate] Jeddak (warrior-
king) or Jeddara (-queen) of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Mars novels.
Since Star Wars does not explain this capacity of Jedis, I do in
FireForce.
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anything but the norm obviously follows from BBS
propaganda and the terror it generates.
Assuming that MindStar has substantially, if not
completely alleviated this masochism, what are some of
the generalities that merit a prudent individual’s interest?
1. Prudence
As with other major factors affecting your existence
and activities, generally the sooner you begin to
contemplate this subject and its many ramifications, the
better.
Your incarnate presence affects others as well as
yourself, so any plans and options should include
appropriate attention to their “ripples”. Make it a point to
dialogue with impacted-others. The more you do this, the
easier and more conversational it will become, without
being “morbid”. Indeed as you become comfortable in
your own case, others may learn from your example.
2. Practicality
It is not the function of MindStar to be a “checklist” of
physical-“death” tasks, plans, legal & funeral
arrangements, etc. There is plenty of professional,
specialized literature on such subjects, as well as
professional services.
Since discarding one’s body is not a reversible action,
especial attention should be paid to maximizing its health
and versatility while you do have access to and control
over it. The body is an invaluable, unique tool for
identifying and exploring your concept, perception, and
full exercise of existence and OU-extension. Never
underestimate nor underappreciate this.
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3. Pageantry
Previously and incidentally MindStar has mentioned
pomp & ceremony associated with “death”: funerals,
commemorative holidays, awards & medals, parties,
parades, orations, and of course profane-religious
fetishism.
Some of this is sentimental, some BBS fear-reaction,
some financial or etc. exploitation. Since you’re
the star
of the show, by all means get pre-involved in activities,
invitations, budgets. Decide your own disposition and
tomb. King Tutankhamen proved that you can take it
with you, so decide on accoutrements, decoration,
memorabilia. If archæologists discover and dig up your
tomb 5,000 years from now, what would you like them to
find94 and try to figure out?95
In the 21st Century artificial-intelligence and
miniaturized technology are fast reaching the point where
a holographic “you” will be able to greet visitors, chatting
appropriately with b0th the desired and the detested,
including personal messages for the face-recognized.
Imhotep may have needed the Scroll of Thoth and Kharis
nine Tana-leaves, but all “you” will require is a suitable
“app” hooked up to a nearby solar panel. Enjoy!
94 A wound-up “joy buzzer” is a good tension-reliever, as is a spring-
loaded snake [particularly if you’re expecting Indiana Jones].
95 In a charming satire of the celebrity of Tut’s tomb, David
Macaulay’s Motel of the Mysteries (HMH Books, 1979) recounts the
distant-future discovery of an ancient 20th-Century tomb & religious
shrine, an intact (!) “motel” near the ruins of St. Louis. With
scientific solemnity the toilet bowl is determined to be an acoustic
altar, before which a priest would first don the sacred collar (the
seat), then kneel and intone into it the ritual invocation “SANITIZED
FOR YOUR PROTECTION”. Miniature jewelry reproductions are
offered for sale as these priceless artifacts tour major museums.
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Chapter 8: Sic Itur Ad Astra
To die would be an awfully big adventure.
- Peter Pan
Bow down: I am the emperor of dreams;
I crown me with the million-colored sun
Of secret worlds incredible, and take
Their trailing skies for vestment when I soar,
Throned on the mounting zenith, and illume
The spaceward-flown horizon infinite ...
- Clark Ashton Smith, The Hashish-Eater
IN SEPTEMTRIONE CRESCO
I arise in the Seven Stars [of the Celestial North Pole].
- Motto on the Coat of Arms of Michael,
13th Baron of Rachane, Scotland
Granted by the Lord Lyon King of Arms
Edinburgh, 18th May 2006
A. States of Life
In Isha Schwaller de Lubicz’ Her-Bak, the chronicle of
an ancient Egyptian youth’s education from profane to
priest, he is exposed to increasingly more complex
aspects of existence, all of which leads him towards the
ultimate mystery of his own conscious existence, its OU
perspective, and his gradual realization that his own SU is
a “thing apart” from the natural order of the OU neteru.
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“What is man?” he asks. “If man is the most complete
being on Earth, I ought, knowing this, to know all else;
but I’m a man and I don’t know myself. I don’t know who
or what is in me.” The Sage (a Priest of Isis) responds:
What is life? It is a form of the divine presence. It is
the power, immanent in created things, to change
themselves by successive destructions of form until the
spirit or activating force of the original life-stream is
freed.
This power resides in the very nature of things.
Successive destruction of forms, metamorphoses, by
the divine fire with rebirth of forms new and living is
an expression of consciousness. It is the spiritual aim of
all human life to attain a state of consciousness that is
independent of bodily circumstance.
What I have just said concerns the living spirit
bestowed on the man already quickened, like every
living thing, by a rudimentary soul, which makes of
such a man a creature superior to the animal-human
kingdom.
He who recognizes the divine meaning of life knows
that knowledge has but one aim, which is to achieve the
successive stages that liberate him from the perishable.
For things die only in their body; the spirit, the divine
Word, returns to its source and dies not.
Unhappy is the kea that fails to recover its soul. 96
Such an explanation generally represents the
perspective of the OU priesthoods, who sought to
interpret and explain humanity within that universe.
They were forced to conceptualize incarnate humanity as
a temporary particularization of the general OU, each
such human uncomfortably aware of this tension and
striving to eliminate it through re-absorption into the
OU. While this Sage suggests that this is done by
successive, progressively-more-refined incarnations (a
96 Schwaller de Lubicz, Isha, Her-Bak: Egyptian Initiate. New York:
Inner Traditions, 1967, page #35.
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general premise of reincarnationism), there is little in
original Egyptian metaphysics to support this. 97
Had Her-Bak’s initiation been into the Priesthood of
Set rather than that of Isis, he would presumably have
been answered much in the vein of this book; but that
would have necessitated a far different exposure to the
OU reality surrounding him than he received. Repeatedly
and remorselessly his complete separateness would have
been dramatized to him, removing the reassuring and
relaxing prospect of both incarnate and disincarnate OU-
inclusion.
Thus Setian initiation exposes and incites a crisis in
the initiate which initiation through the other, natural
neteru avoids. This crisis is definitive and exhilarating to
the Setian mentality, but can be devastating to one of the
other neteru. As starkly summarized by H.P. Lovecraft:
Life is a hideous thing, and from the background
behind what we know of it peer dæmoniacal hints of
truth which make it sometimes a thousandfold more
hideous. Science, already oppressive with its shocking
revelations, will perhaps be the ultimate exterminator
of our human species -- if separate species we be -- for
its reserve of unguessed horrors could never be borne
by mortal brains if loosed upon the world. 98
As we have seen, conventional visions of post-
incarnate immortality tend to the OU-totality model,
fumbling between either immediate OU-reabsorption or
97 In Secrets of the Great Pyramid Peter Tompkins has suggested
that a crucial rationale of Egyptian mummification was precisely to
prevent further terrestrial reincarnation. Permanent preservation of
the body gave the more material emanations the anchor they needed
until the multifaceted MS could fully integrate itself in a completely
independent environment.
98 Lovecraft, H.P., “Arthur Jermyn” in Dagon and Other Macabre
Tales. Sauk City: Arkham House, 1965, page #47.
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some sequence of progressive or karma-varying
terrestrial reincarnation. In the absence of a non-natural
telos, humanity is forced into either free-will or
within such constraints leads to only one result:
dissolution of the self, the independent consciousness.
To the OU-initiate this is indeed expected and even
anticipated, often with the assumption that one’s
personality will not in fact be extinguished, but rather
melded into that of the collective gods/God. Such an
outcome would indeed relieve the tension and
exclusiveness of separateness; it is less comprehensible
how it would permit any vestige of the previously-
individual life-being to continue.
In his book Life After Death, the eminent philosopher
Maurice Maeterlinck addressed his perceived reliance
upon bodily definition of self:
I care not if the loftiest, the freest, the fairest
portions of my mind be eternally living and radiant in
the supreme gladness; they are no longer mine; I do
not know them. Death has cut the network of nerves or
memories that connected them with I know not what
centers wherein lies the point which I feel to be my very
self. They are thus set loose, floating in space and time;
and their fate is as alien to me as that of the most
distant stars.
Yet Maeterlinck is not so certain that the physical
body’s materials and mechanisms are the whole story. He
senses that the entirety of himself is more than the sum
of such tangible physical parts, and indeed may be
completely apart and distinct from them, using them only
as an OU-interactive device. He continues:
All that befalls has no existence for me unless I can
recall it within that mysterious being which is I know
not where and precisely nowhere and which I turn like
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a mirror about this world whose phenomena take shape
only insofar as they are reflected in it. 99
Maeterlinck used the term “ego” [in a non-Freudian
sense] to refer to this individual identity somewhere/
somehow beyond the purely physical, in which he defined
“mind” as physically-driven brain functioning:
This ego, as we conceive it when we reflect upon the
consequences of its destruction - this ego, therefore, is
neither our mind nor our body, since we recognize that
both are waves that roll by and are incessantly
renewed. Is it an immovable point, which could not be
form or substance, for these are always in evolution,
nor yet life, which is the cause or effect of form and
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