The Great Gig in the Sky

While I'm catching up, I want to give my thanks for all of the music Rick Wright has brought into this world. On the 15th, he left us to go play The Great Gig in the Sky, which, incidentally, happens to be the foundation for the single most spiritually and intellectually profound moment of my life.

I'll post the account of that experience, my first LSD trip, when I get the write-up off of my old computer. In the meantime, here are my thoughts on death, largely gleened from that trip:

I believe that death is as much a part of life as birth. In the Toaist sense, creation is destruction and destruction is creation; life and death, like Yin and Yang, are merely two sides of the same coin, not distinct entities. Like the myth of the Phoenix, from the ashes, life springs anew. Death should not be feared as the end of life, because neither the physical, spiritual, nor essential aspects of existence are ever lost; the matter that constructs us never disappears, the soul, as a metaphysical expression of the energy that permeates us, is eternal, and so long as you leave a legacy behind, in the memories of those that loved you and in your children, and your children's children, the essential will always carry on. Death, should instead be celebrated, not as an end, but as a transformation. Just as one wouldn't say that a caterpillar dies when it becomes a butterfly, neither should the perishing of a human form be considered our end; we are in fact composed of the very matter scattered by supernovae--our lives made possible by the death of a star.