Death and the Pantheist The god Pan acts as blind set of rules^1 that constrains^2 dis-order into order. Pan is driven to continuance, which in biological terms means survival.^3 It is the urge to continue, meaning to survive that determines how Pan acts, that is to say, how IT applies its rules set. When Pan attains a relatively high degree of order its emergent effect, observed as biological manifestations such as the human, mouse or single cell, survives by feeding on alternate manifestations. In short at the biological level of manifestation Pan survives by sustaining itself as a food chain.^4 Each Pan manifestation acts as both predator and prey. And to the predator the prey is worth more ‘dead than alive.’^5 In the end, all Pan manifestations, as localised Pan elaborations, are eliminated or self-eliminate in Pan’s quest for survival as a higher complexity order. It follows that the pantheist^6 does not fear death, i.e. the loss of redundant because lower order complexity manifestation because, being Pan, she needs must upgrade to survive. What the pantheist fears is dying, the sheer horror of the actual or anticipated pain and suffering of gradual physical and mental decay to decrepitude and dissolution.^8 Notwithstanding the valiant attempts of 1^st and 2^nd development phase individuals to ease and so ameliorate the strangulation effect of decay-onto-death, the smart pantheist, knowing that she-as-Pan will survive as new manifestation, opts for voluntary exit^10 from here niche. She realises that once she reaches the wholly unproductive development stage of ‘eat, shit, wait for death’ and when she is squandering valuable biological resources required for Pan’s further manifestation, that it is time to quit and make room for new Pan manifestations.^11 Then reluctantly, but happily, she drinks her perma-sleep^12 potion and so completes Pan’s recycling and upgrading rules set. Home © 2018 by Victor Langheld

1. In other words, as algorithm operating as automaton. 2. A set of rules functions as a set of constraints that order and preserve (i.e. aid survival) and upgrade complexity from which intended or not intended manifestations emerge. 3. That is Pan’s sole outcome, which is understood up the complexity chain as goal, purpose or destination. All manifestations happen as emergent effects of outcome (or goal) achievement, which is survival. It’s the formless goal, formless as far as Pan (as the Nirguna Brahman of the Upanishads) or initially its countless manifestations are concerned (later made specific/formal as manifestation, hence as Saguna Brahman) that determines, i.e. forms the path and which happens as (necessarily unpredictable) emergent effect (or affect). 4. In simple terms, whereas initially, say immediately after the Big Bang Pan arranges the disorder into atoms and which function as once-off batteries that dispense energy and, in combination, various emergent effects, later on Pan arranges the initially created batteries as a complex rechargeable battery with continuously varying emergent effects, the latter needing to be recharged, i.e. by assimilating other rechargeable and non-rechargeable batteries end emergent effects packages. 5. One-up complexity feeds on, recharges and upgrades itself from one-down complexity. 6. i.e. the pantheist as a niche application of PAN. 7. The pantheist serves, is a slave routine to PAN, the universal ordering rules set operating, perhaps, like a Turing Machine. 8. Only the old, like myself, know what actual physical and mental decay feels like and the emotional sorrow and anguish that brings. The old (albeit not all) have been condemned and sentenced to die a slow, lingering, painful death, a truly cruel ending. That claim by the religious idiot St Paul – and later St Augustine – that death results as ‘wages of sin’, to wit, ‘because we sin we die’, not to mention the physical resurrection and eternal life of the ‘sinless’, was one of the great 1^st (religious) development stage frauds of all time. 9. To wit, as final stage care as offered in hospices. 10. Formerly called euthanasia (Greek; pleasant death). By and large voluntary death was not only acceptable but welcomed in all advanced ancient cultures, specifically amongst the upper class. Like abortion that served the well-being of the female and as infanticide helped controle population growth thereby enhancing the survival of the social unit, so euthanasia contributed to the wellbeing (meaning survival) of a social unit. 11. By the time the world’s population reach 10 or even 12 billion humans amidst dwindling natural resources and states can no longer afford care for the elderly, voluntary exit on demand (just like abortion) will become the norm and enshrined in the constitutions of advanced nations. 12. At death Pan’s manifestation dissolves and Pan reverts to ‘waiting time’, in one’s PC called ‘sleep’, and described in Buddhism as Nirvana.