Women in Love - Death and The Afterlife

I have always been puzzled when it comes to death such that my convictions have evolved from first believing in an afterlife to then finding greater comfort in absolute nothingness and now finally settling on the concept of reincarnation. The thing that got me with heaven and hell, the rub as it were, was that it was endless, there was nothing speculated beyond that stage.  As human beings, I believe we are all physiologically programmed with the end in mind, there's no getting away from the passage of time and the teliological desire.  Everything has a beginning, but the end is the future and that is what we aspire to and what we are concerned with.  An entire film may be terrible but if the end is excellent then we can forgive the previous 80 minutes.  Therefore, for me, the idea of a constant state of any kind, an endless existence, was quite frightening; the only way this would not be terrible would be if in death as I'm sure would be the case, we are completely inhuman, freed from these desires and able to exist in an utterly other state. Something which we will never experience because to experience it would mean being something other than you or me entirely.  Far too abstract for me.  Reincarnation is therefore the only logical answer, nothing is created, all is recycled through transference.


Leaving reincarnation aside, these thoughts tie in somewhat with the Death Wish as explored in a previous post: Women in Love - The Death Instinct, Love and Tennyson. But it is also reassuring to find my sentiments expressed by Lawrence's Ursula in Women in Love, indubitably presenting a more eloquent, succinct and lucid argument:

But the great, dark, illimitable kingdom of death, there humanity was

put to scorn. So much they could do upon earth, the multifarious little

gods that they were. But the kingdom of death put them all to scorn,

they dwindled into their true vulgar silliness in face of it.

How beautiful, how grand and perfect death was, how good to look

forward to. There one would wash off all the lies and ignominy and dirt

that had been put upon one here, a perfect bath of cleanness and glad

refreshment, and go unknown, unquestioned, unabased. After all, one was

rich, if only in the promise of perfect death. It was a gladness above

all, that this remained to look forward to, the pure inhuman otherness

of death.

Whatever life might be, it could not take away death, the inhuman

transcendent death. Oh, let us ask no question of it, what it is or is

not. To know is human, and in death we do not know, we are not human.

And the joy of this compensates for all the bitterness of knowledge and

the sordidness of our humanity. In death we shall not be human, and we

shall not know. -p.167, DHLawrence, Women in Love