I wrote the book, “How Not To Die” after years of careful study of life through the prisms of some tribal myths of humanity, philosophy, religion and science. It was a nightmarish childhood which ignited and propelled this study.
My desire for answers would not relent to the deadening songs of ‘believe in’, ‘this is the way life is’ and those other clichés that make the majority of human beings become mere shadows of the immense powers that we all are.
I had asked this question, “what is life”, of my mother, to no understanding avail. I had asked of my grandmother “Is there really God?”, with the same color of comprehension suitable to comfort a mind in the whirlwind called confusion. I’d asked of people who I assumed knew, at least much better than I to no outcome favoring the desired.
Then I asked the books. The book knew everything, right? And I learned sane, inane, facts, fallacies, opinions couched in “divine truth” and “scientific facts”. I was indiscriminate in my learning. So, “what are ‘we’ doing ‘here’?”, “What is here?” “What is a human?”, “What am I?” “Do ‘we’, actually, die?” “What happened when and after ‘we’ ‘die’, if we really die?”, “What is to die?”, “What is death?” and tons of such questions enveloped my mind.
“What is life, living, alive?” Are these mere words coined by incomprehensible philosophers, creative poets and artful novelists? Or do they mean something, really, in life?
“What is the human spirit or soul?” “What is the physical universe?”, “What is the human body?”, “What is the human mind?”, “What is the brain?”
“How did the human spirit, the physical universe, the human body, and mind came to be?”, “What are their anatomies, values and functions?”, “How do these impact the life and living of the individual human, the social fabric and humanity?”
I asked more questions, sometimes driven to the surface of my consciousness from an unknown being and depth. And then, I learned. I learned from those nice and horrible books, great and not-so-great people, my experiences, my basic beliefs, and from my extrapolations and observation of life. All in all, I learned a tiny bit of the enigmatic but simple life.
How Not To Die was written after years of listening to the silences that impinge on the deafening noises of customs, religions, science and philosophy, particularly with regard to the human spirit.
This book was a progeny of dismembered words of truths, facts, fallacies, illusions, dreams, imaginations, opinions, and delusions of humanity, as represented by the tiny segments of knowledge I observed, of myself, others and life.
The book offered practical ways for an individual to become aware, and regain knowledge of true self. It offered understandings of the natures of the human being, the values of the machine – human body, the aim of life, and the necessity of death. It gives credence to the statement that “if you seek for the Creator you must first and foremost find you”.
The book addressed some critical issues relating to the aggressive and unrelenting efforts by governments, religions and education institutions to keep dumb and unconscious the human spirit by their unwholesome focus on the human body in all things designed and executed.