Often when people argue for the abolition of money, they suggest replacing it with barter. The trouble is, barter is based on the same mindset as money: Make Sure You Get Your Fair Share. That is Separation (non-Community) Thinking. What's really being said is "I'm afraid I won't get my fair share, and I'll starve/freeze/insert-fear-here, and I'll DIE!"
Much better is Pay It Forward.
1. Do something for the community or just a member of it.
2. Don't worry about getting paid back.
3. If you need help, ask for it.
That's a summary of the entire Everything Free philosophy, if you will. If you do it enough, as and when you're able, the movement will spread. If we all take care of each other, our real needs will be met.
Other disadvantages of barter include the fact that it's taxable. Any quid pro quo can be assigned a monetary value by the government, and, presto changeo, the receiver got some Income based on what he gave as barter for it!
Barter systems require a lot of tracking--Fair Share Thinking. If you can stop worrying about the Value of what you give because you're certain that you will be taken care of and that you'll get what you need, then fear disappears and community-based giving replaces it.
Friday, May 28, 2010
Nourishment and Protection
I've had some questions from readers about how to make this work. I don't have all the answers, so I'd love to hear from other folks that might have ideas, but there is one thing I know will be an absolute requirement: we have to understand that the entire process runs on Caring.
We have to understand that we really are all in this together. If currency collapses to the point where nobody can afford to buy anything, we'll be forced to start taking care of each other anyway. Why not start now?
A long time ago someone noticed that there are three basic needs: Food, Clothing, and Shelter. I would add medical care to this, but if you think about it, it really falls under the heading of Shelter. In fact, those categories would be better understood if generalized a bit. Let's call them Nourishment and Protection.
If we don't have to earn money, then we don't need "jobs". So if your job involves something that doesn't directly produce something in the above two categories, it probably involves filling up the economy with more non-essential products in order to keep people working, earning, and consuming. You might want to align yourself with one of the two essential needs.
Think about what's included in the two general categories. For instance, Recreation is a form of Nourishment. So are Art, Exercise, Counseling, Education, Entertainment, and many others. Please feel free to suggest some of them.
We have to understand that we really are all in this together. If currency collapses to the point where nobody can afford to buy anything, we'll be forced to start taking care of each other anyway. Why not start now?
A long time ago someone noticed that there are three basic needs: Food, Clothing, and Shelter. I would add medical care to this, but if you think about it, it really falls under the heading of Shelter. In fact, those categories would be better understood if generalized a bit. Let's call them Nourishment and Protection.
If we don't have to earn money, then we don't need "jobs". So if your job involves something that doesn't directly produce something in the above two categories, it probably involves filling up the economy with more non-essential products in order to keep people working, earning, and consuming. You might want to align yourself with one of the two essential needs.
Think about what's included in the two general categories. For instance, Recreation is a form of Nourishment. So are Art, Exercise, Counseling, Education, Entertainment, and many others. Please feel free to suggest some of them.
Saturday, January 23, 2010
Million Dollar Watch
A few years ago we had the good fortune to find ourselves in London, and my wife wanted to go to Harrod's, the famous department store. Once in there we wandered off in different directions, and I, having no particular destination in mind, wandered into the jewelry section. Now I do have a weakness for watches, mostly because I'm a tool and gadget guy, and there are now watches that can do everything but make toast. And they can be very beautiful objects as well.
Harrod's had some gorgeous stuff, but almost immediately I got hit with sticker shock. Knowing that I wouldn't be buying anything, I decided to find the most expensive watch in the place. I did. With the help of my trusty calculator, I soon figured out that it was selling for a cool million bucks. Okay, it was pretty. Lots of diamonds and such. But I started to wonder what anybody would want with a million-dollar watch.
I came up with two reasons: 1) it was beautiful, and 2) "because I can afford it and you can't". There it was: another example of how money informs our lives. Wealth is another way of saying, "I'm better than you.". In a world without money and where we're devoted to working do ensure that everybody has enough, such a watch might still exist, but the value would come from somewhere else, and its message would be different.
Things like diamonds that are scarce and beautiful would still be valued higher than, say, beautiful pieces of quartz, which are relatively plentiful and perhaps less prized as beautiful.
Now let's say that I've been able, in the absence of money, to persuade some people to undertake the nasty and dangerous business of mining diamonds, perhaps by making it a lot less nasty and dangerous, but that's another whole set of ideas, so I digressed. At any rate, I now have a quantity of beautiful diamonds and am now in the enviable position of choosing who would be best to receive them. Am I just going to stand on a street corner and hand them out to passers-by? There's nothing to stop me, but if I value them for their beauty and rarity, I'm probably not. I'm going to think about giving them to someone who can enhance their beauty. I'm going to be thinking about people like jewelry makers and watch makers. In fact, I'm probably going to try to get them into the hands of the best ones I know, people who do high-quality work. If I've still got a lot of ego, it'll be about bragging rights: "I'm a regular supplier of diamonds to Madam Whoever, the finest watch-maker in the area." How big the "area" is will be directly proportional to the size of my ego.
If I don't have such an ego, I'm stll going to be trying to get them to high-quality workers who will enhance their beauty so I and others can appreciate it.
So value doesn't disappear along with money, it's just that it's no longer hiding behind the smoke screen of money. It's out in the open pointing to its true sources, beauty and rarity. Surprised?
Harrod's had some gorgeous stuff, but almost immediately I got hit with sticker shock. Knowing that I wouldn't be buying anything, I decided to find the most expensive watch in the place. I did. With the help of my trusty calculator, I soon figured out that it was selling for a cool million bucks. Okay, it was pretty. Lots of diamonds and such. But I started to wonder what anybody would want with a million-dollar watch.
I came up with two reasons: 1) it was beautiful, and 2) "because I can afford it and you can't". There it was: another example of how money informs our lives. Wealth is another way of saying, "I'm better than you.". In a world without money and where we're devoted to working do ensure that everybody has enough, such a watch might still exist, but the value would come from somewhere else, and its message would be different.
Things like diamonds that are scarce and beautiful would still be valued higher than, say, beautiful pieces of quartz, which are relatively plentiful and perhaps less prized as beautiful.
Now let's say that I've been able, in the absence of money, to persuade some people to undertake the nasty and dangerous business of mining diamonds, perhaps by making it a lot less nasty and dangerous, but that's another whole set of ideas, so I digressed. At any rate, I now have a quantity of beautiful diamonds and am now in the enviable position of choosing who would be best to receive them. Am I just going to stand on a street corner and hand them out to passers-by? There's nothing to stop me, but if I value them for their beauty and rarity, I'm probably not. I'm going to think about giving them to someone who can enhance their beauty. I'm going to be thinking about people like jewelry makers and watch makers. In fact, I'm probably going to try to get them into the hands of the best ones I know, people who do high-quality work. If I've still got a lot of ego, it'll be about bragging rights: "I'm a regular supplier of diamonds to Madam Whoever, the finest watch-maker in the area." How big the "area" is will be directly proportional to the size of my ego.
If I don't have such an ego, I'm stll going to be trying to get them to high-quality workers who will enhance their beauty so I and others can appreciate it.
So value doesn't disappear along with money, it's just that it's no longer hiding behind the smoke screen of money. It's out in the open pointing to its true sources, beauty and rarity. Surprised?
Thursday, January 7, 2010
Suppose President Beetlebaum held a press conference and said, "Here's the deal. We'll abolish the currency if each one of you will do the following: stay where you are and keep doing whatever work you're doing for the moment--that is unless you're in the financial sector. Those folks can take the week off, since you have nothing to do. If everybody continues to do their jobs, then everybody will be taken care of. If you need food, go to the store, and they'll give you what you need, but please take only what you need. If you work in a food store, your job becomes making sure that people can get what they need. And since there's no money, everything is free!
"If we all take care of each other, everything will work out. Please understand that no one is going to take anything away from you. You now own your house or apartment. Of course, your belongings are still yours."
So here you are, out of work and trained as a stockbroker. What do you do? Well, let's see. You don't have to work, but you have no worries about losing your house or anything else, for that matter. Here in your high-rise New York apartment, you've got a room that you use for your hobby, which is restoring old clocks. So you work on those for a couple of days and since you're not pressed for time, you finish one of the clocks. What to do with it? You can't sell it, so you have three choices: you can keep it, you can trade it for something, or you can give it away. For now, you can't decide. Then you remember your mentor, Sam, who runs a clock shop in Brooklyn, who has been generous with his time and taught you a lot. You decide to go see him and show him the clock.
So you get on the train with the clock and get off in Brooklyn down the street from the clock shop. When you walk in, the owner greets you from behind the desk. You notice that the shop is only about half-full of clocks. Sam says, "A lot of people have come in wanting clocks, so I've been giving them away, but some other folks have also been dropping off clocks. Some are for repair, but some are unwanted. In fact I've got so many that it'll take me a long time to fix them all. Do you want to help?" And you hang your clock in an empty space on Sam's wall.
Suddenly, you're doing what you've been wanting to do for years, what you thought you'd maybe do in retirement to supplement your Social Security. You thought you'd have to move out of New York, back to Poughkeepsie where it's cheaper to live. Now you're doing it with your mentor, living where you like, and having a lot of fun doing it. Your blood pressure drops forty points, and you stop taking that anti-anxiety medicine. Life just got a whole lot better!
"If we all take care of each other, everything will work out. Please understand that no one is going to take anything away from you. You now own your house or apartment. Of course, your belongings are still yours."
So here you are, out of work and trained as a stockbroker. What do you do? Well, let's see. You don't have to work, but you have no worries about losing your house or anything else, for that matter. Here in your high-rise New York apartment, you've got a room that you use for your hobby, which is restoring old clocks. So you work on those for a couple of days and since you're not pressed for time, you finish one of the clocks. What to do with it? You can't sell it, so you have three choices: you can keep it, you can trade it for something, or you can give it away. For now, you can't decide. Then you remember your mentor, Sam, who runs a clock shop in Brooklyn, who has been generous with his time and taught you a lot. You decide to go see him and show him the clock.
So you get on the train with the clock and get off in Brooklyn down the street from the clock shop. When you walk in, the owner greets you from behind the desk. You notice that the shop is only about half-full of clocks. Sam says, "A lot of people have come in wanting clocks, so I've been giving them away, but some other folks have also been dropping off clocks. Some are for repair, but some are unwanted. In fact I've got so many that it'll take me a long time to fix them all. Do you want to help?" And you hang your clock in an empty space on Sam's wall.
Suddenly, you're doing what you've been wanting to do for years, what you thought you'd maybe do in retirement to supplement your Social Security. You thought you'd have to move out of New York, back to Poughkeepsie where it's cheaper to live. Now you're doing it with your mentor, living where you like, and having a lot of fun doing it. Your blood pressure drops forty points, and you stop taking that anti-anxiety medicine. Life just got a whole lot better!
Saturday, December 26, 2009
Malthus Was Wrong
I actually wrote the text below a couple of years ago, but it's never been published until now.
Malthus Was Wrong
The major reason that we're in the fix we're in is that many years ago a man named Malthus looked around and said, "There's not enough." And he made such a convincing case for it that the world economy dances to his tune to this very day. What's more, nearly every facet of our lives is informed by this idea, and we're almost totally unconscious of it. And it demonstrably wrong.
Buckminster Fuller's argument throughout most of his life was that we really do have enough, we're just being horribly inefficient about using it.
I don't think that, as it says in the Bible, "Love of money is the root of all evil", but so much of our self-worth is tied up with how financially successful we perceive ourselves to be that it might as well be true.
If money were abolished (or preferably, simply atrophied away to nothing), perhaps we would be less eager to measure other people's worth at all. If I'm not your competition or your friend or your lover, what's left? What's my role? Perhaps the mere existence of roles and our perceived need to assign other people to them is conditioned by our sense of lack and insufficiency. Perhaps the disappearance of roles would facilitate the disappearance of our defensiveness and fear and allow us to be together simply enjoying whatever is present in the moment. Imagine no longer wasting mental and emotional energy on preparation for defending ourselves against the possible hostile actions of others, actions that almost never happen even in our present world anyway.
So what has to change for a money-less world (or at least world-view) to take hold? First we need to realize our interdependency. No one can do entirely for him/herself and expect to rise above mere survival. Specialization, as we have learned throughout history, allows us to be more efficient and to emphasize quality, But a competitive economy works at cross purposes to quality. Such an economy rewards mass production of cheap products at low prices. Quality is the luxury of the rich.
If we realize our interdependency, then the next logical step is to realize the need to be in service to that. If I understand that whatever I do or produce ultimately reflects back to me, then I must create for others what I would want for myself. From a purely pragmatic point of view, if I contribute to fulfilling the needs of others, then others will want to fulfill my needs. Reputation will mean something, and quality work will be in demand. If I produce quality chairs, then soon I will not be able to keep up with demand. I will also have incentive to help upgrade the skills of lesser crafts people, and if they wish to improve the quality of their work, they will be seeking me out. Thus quality constantly increases.
The major reason that we're in the fix we're in is that many years ago a man named Malthus looked around and said, "There's not enough." And he made such a convincing case for it that the world economy dances to his tune to this very day. What's more, nearly every facet of our lives is informed by this idea, and we're almost totally unconscious of it. And it demonstrably wrong.
Buckminster Fuller's argument throughout most of his life was that we really do have enough, we're just being horribly inefficient about using it.
I don't think that, as it says in the Bible, "Love of money is the root of all evil", but so much of our self-worth is tied up with how financially successful we perceive ourselves to be that it might as well be true.
If money were abolished (or preferably, simply atrophied away to nothing), perhaps we would be less eager to measure other people's worth at all. If I'm not your competition or your friend or your lover, what's left? What's my role? Perhaps the mere existence of roles and our perceived need to assign other people to them is conditioned by our sense of lack and insufficiency. Perhaps the disappearance of roles would facilitate the disappearance of our defensiveness and fear and allow us to be together simply enjoying whatever is present in the moment. Imagine no longer wasting mental and emotional energy on preparation for defending ourselves against the possible hostile actions of others, actions that almost never happen even in our present world anyway.
So what has to change for a money-less world (or at least world-view) to take hold? First we need to realize our interdependency. No one can do entirely for him/herself and expect to rise above mere survival. Specialization, as we have learned throughout history, allows us to be more efficient and to emphasize quality, But a competitive economy works at cross purposes to quality. Such an economy rewards mass production of cheap products at low prices. Quality is the luxury of the rich.
If we realize our interdependency, then the next logical step is to realize the need to be in service to that. If I understand that whatever I do or produce ultimately reflects back to me, then I must create for others what I would want for myself. From a purely pragmatic point of view, if I contribute to fulfilling the needs of others, then others will want to fulfill my needs. Reputation will mean something, and quality work will be in demand. If I produce quality chairs, then soon I will not be able to keep up with demand. I will also have incentive to help upgrade the skills of lesser crafts people, and if they wish to improve the quality of their work, they will be seeking me out. Thus quality constantly increases.
Saturday, December 19, 2009
But I Digress
If some of the previous posts seem to be off-topic, my apologies. All will be clear anon.
So what might a world without money look like? For it to work we'd all have to start taking care of each other, mindful that we ARE our brothers' keepers. Remember in the Bible what the first incidence of competition was like? That's right, it was Cain and Abel. To refresh your memory, Cain is a herdsman and Abel is a farmer. They both offer some of their produce to God, but God likes Abel's stuff best. (What does that say about the merits of vegetarianism?) So Cain gets jealous, kills Abel and tries to hide the body. God shows up and says, "So, Cain, where's your brother?" Cain says, "I dunno. Am I my brother's keeper?" And God says, "You bet your sweet bippy you are! And I'm gonna make the rest of your life miserable as a result!"
Okay, so I paraphrased a bit.
You might say that we invented money so that we could get away with not taking care of each other, and by that I mean that we were trying to assure that individual transactions were "fair". First of all, "fair" is dualistic. "That person over there should get as much value as I do over here." Now that there's self-and-other in play, the next step is fear: "What if he's got more than me? How will I survive?" From there we move right into greed: "I need to make sure that I get more than him so that I'll be safe."
So now fair was not fair enough, and we ought to be making a "profit" on every transaction. You can see where that led. Some folks have been able to get away with not delivering full value for the money, so some folks got richer and most other folks got poorer, because it's too arduous to try to figure out if every transaction is fair.
What if we suddenly all remembered that we are all connected, all in this together? Now it makes sense that Jesus passed out only two commandments, and the second was "Love thy neighbor as thyself". Because he is! You want to take care of yourself, don't you? Well?
If we were devoted to taking care of others-as-self, we'd make sure that everybody we encountered was doing okay, had enough. And we would trust that we would be treated the same. How would we do that? By giving away the fruits of our labor and receiving freely-given fruits of other peoples labor. Economists will gleefully point out that barter is clumsy: a bushel of apples doesn't equal a banjo. (I have friends who would say that the person who got the apples got the better deal, but that's another story.)
But we're not talking about barter here. There's a principle here, and it is "to each according to their needs; from each according to their abilities." I can hear the cries of "Socialism!!" all the way over here. More about that in another post. For now imagine that currency suddenly disappears and that we smart enough to keep on doing exactly what we've been doing all along. Truckers drive trucks, therapists do therapy, presidents preside, etc. The difference is that when we go to the store to get something, it's free. Need flour? It's free. Need a new car? It's free. Need to fly to Timbuktu? It's free. Need lumber to do your carpentry? It's free.
Now somebody is going to object, "But people will just quit working and hoard stuff!" Not if they're conscious of non-separation they're not, and it's going to take everybody remembering that for this society to even start. That's what the Shift is all about. You'd feel bad if you weren't contributing something, and you'd feel bad if you were taking more than you need and that some folks might not get their needs met as a result. So contributing your energy will be what gives you satisfaction in life. Love feel much better than guilt or smugness.
Let's look at some side affects: doctors would doctor because they love doing it, and insurance companies would disappear. Farmers would farm because they want to, and they would be able to revive small farming because the "economics of scale" would disappear. Small crafts people would be able to replace factories, because quality would replace cheapness. Banks will disappear with the rest of the financial industry. I'll be doing a lot of posts on what will change, but feel free to chime in here anytime....
Now the objection will be raised "What about all those factory jobs that will be lost?" Jobs? There's no such thing as a job anymore. Wow! Think about that! You can spend your time doing something you love and giving it away. What's going to be rewarded here is quality, and you can't produce quality if you don't love what you're doing. So how are you going to build houses? You get a contractor (who by the way gets immense satisfaction from what s/he does) to round up all the needed workers and gets them to commit to building a house for you. Now you really appreciate all the great work this person has done for you, so you recommend him or her to all your friends that need housing. Word gets around that he delivers quality (because all his workers love what they do), and suddenly the contractor has plenty of steady work for the whole crew.
So what about the chores that nobody wants to do? Hard manual labor, jobs with a high distaste factor, like cleaning toilets? Who's going to love those jobs? Will the entire infrastructure collapse?
Stay tuned....
So what might a world without money look like? For it to work we'd all have to start taking care of each other, mindful that we ARE our brothers' keepers. Remember in the Bible what the first incidence of competition was like? That's right, it was Cain and Abel. To refresh your memory, Cain is a herdsman and Abel is a farmer. They both offer some of their produce to God, but God likes Abel's stuff best. (What does that say about the merits of vegetarianism?) So Cain gets jealous, kills Abel and tries to hide the body. God shows up and says, "So, Cain, where's your brother?" Cain says, "I dunno. Am I my brother's keeper?" And God says, "You bet your sweet bippy you are! And I'm gonna make the rest of your life miserable as a result!"
Okay, so I paraphrased a bit.
You might say that we invented money so that we could get away with not taking care of each other, and by that I mean that we were trying to assure that individual transactions were "fair". First of all, "fair" is dualistic. "That person over there should get as much value as I do over here." Now that there's self-and-other in play, the next step is fear: "What if he's got more than me? How will I survive?" From there we move right into greed: "I need to make sure that I get more than him so that I'll be safe."
So now fair was not fair enough, and we ought to be making a "profit" on every transaction. You can see where that led. Some folks have been able to get away with not delivering full value for the money, so some folks got richer and most other folks got poorer, because it's too arduous to try to figure out if every transaction is fair.
What if we suddenly all remembered that we are all connected, all in this together? Now it makes sense that Jesus passed out only two commandments, and the second was "Love thy neighbor as thyself". Because he is! You want to take care of yourself, don't you? Well?
If we were devoted to taking care of others-as-self, we'd make sure that everybody we encountered was doing okay, had enough. And we would trust that we would be treated the same. How would we do that? By giving away the fruits of our labor and receiving freely-given fruits of other peoples labor. Economists will gleefully point out that barter is clumsy: a bushel of apples doesn't equal a banjo. (I have friends who would say that the person who got the apples got the better deal, but that's another story.)
But we're not talking about barter here. There's a principle here, and it is "to each according to their needs; from each according to their abilities." I can hear the cries of "Socialism!!" all the way over here. More about that in another post. For now imagine that currency suddenly disappears and that we smart enough to keep on doing exactly what we've been doing all along. Truckers drive trucks, therapists do therapy, presidents preside, etc. The difference is that when we go to the store to get something, it's free. Need flour? It's free. Need a new car? It's free. Need to fly to Timbuktu? It's free. Need lumber to do your carpentry? It's free.
Now somebody is going to object, "But people will just quit working and hoard stuff!" Not if they're conscious of non-separation they're not, and it's going to take everybody remembering that for this society to even start. That's what the Shift is all about. You'd feel bad if you weren't contributing something, and you'd feel bad if you were taking more than you need and that some folks might not get their needs met as a result. So contributing your energy will be what gives you satisfaction in life. Love feel much better than guilt or smugness.
Let's look at some side affects: doctors would doctor because they love doing it, and insurance companies would disappear. Farmers would farm because they want to, and they would be able to revive small farming because the "economics of scale" would disappear. Small crafts people would be able to replace factories, because quality would replace cheapness. Banks will disappear with the rest of the financial industry. I'll be doing a lot of posts on what will change, but feel free to chime in here anytime....
Now the objection will be raised "What about all those factory jobs that will be lost?" Jobs? There's no such thing as a job anymore. Wow! Think about that! You can spend your time doing something you love and giving it away. What's going to be rewarded here is quality, and you can't produce quality if you don't love what you're doing. So how are you going to build houses? You get a contractor (who by the way gets immense satisfaction from what s/he does) to round up all the needed workers and gets them to commit to building a house for you. Now you really appreciate all the great work this person has done for you, so you recommend him or her to all your friends that need housing. Word gets around that he delivers quality (because all his workers love what they do), and suddenly the contractor has plenty of steady work for the whole crew.
So what about the chores that nobody wants to do? Hard manual labor, jobs with a high distaste factor, like cleaning toilets? Who's going to love those jobs? Will the entire infrastructure collapse?
Stay tuned....
Two Hoaxes
As a species mankind has been the victim of two all-pervading hoaxes.
The first is the hoax of the personal self, and the second, derived from the first, is the hoax of death.
The first is the result of an honest mistake. Our senses, limited as they are, are producing a lie. I seem to be over here, doing whatever with this body that I seem to control. The "doing" produces the illusion of time and space, when in reality there is only Here and Now. I thought "I" just did something, when in reality that something is already a memory which presents itself to the pure awareness that is the only "thing" Here Now. Even the thought of "awareness" is an object of awareness, not awareness itself at all. Just a thought, just an object of awareness, fundamentally no different from a pretty girl in view, although much more attractive. I say that because we glom (for lack of a better word) onto our thoughts and sense data without the least hesitation, unlike what we go through regarding the girl.
So we, in affect, construct this world, this alleged reality because we have similar senses and therefore agree (sometimes) on what they are presenting. But we know, for instance, that there are radio waves, gamma rays, ultra violet and infrared light, and who knows what else penetrating or bouncing off every cell in our bodies all the time. Yet we choose to pretend that what we see is all there is, just as we choose to pretend that there is some entity called a "self" that no one has ever seen or produced for viewing under any form of light, yet that somehow has independent existence. It's a agreement that we've created based on the assumption that that apparent entity over there seems to behave as we do. Another term for it is "consensus reality".
We operate in this consensus reality for some "time", and then we "die", or so we believe. We base this assumption on the memory of witnessing some other entity stop functioning in an integrated manner and not reverse that state. Yet we make the assumption that this entity has experienced something. But if it experienced something it would not be dead. We have some anecdotal evidence of near-death
experiences, but we have no evidence of anybody experiencing death.
And how do we explain dreamless sleep or anesthesia? If you've ever had a tooth extracted under sodium pentothal the experience from the inside resembles a time discontinuity. The doctor sticks a needle in your arm, you pass out almost instantaneously, and then you are awake (notice I didn't say "You wake up"). The usual comment is "So, when are you guys gonna get started?", and the usual response is, "We've already finished." From the point of view of consciousness, no time passed between being out cold and being awake. Now if you look carefully, that's the only true point of view. Everything else is inference or speculation, in other words, an idea.
If we apply that same test to death, it has to look like, "You approach loss of consciousness you are awake somewhere." No discontinuity. We can speculate to the end of time what happens after "death", but from the point of consciousness, there is no death. If there is experience there is consciousness. Period. So awareness always is. Always.
The first is the hoax of the personal self, and the second, derived from the first, is the hoax of death.
The first is the result of an honest mistake. Our senses, limited as they are, are producing a lie. I seem to be over here, doing whatever with this body that I seem to control. The "doing" produces the illusion of time and space, when in reality there is only Here and Now. I thought "I" just did something, when in reality that something is already a memory which presents itself to the pure awareness that is the only "thing" Here Now. Even the thought of "awareness" is an object of awareness, not awareness itself at all. Just a thought, just an object of awareness, fundamentally no different from a pretty girl in view, although much more attractive. I say that because we glom (for lack of a better word) onto our thoughts and sense data without the least hesitation, unlike what we go through regarding the girl.
So we, in affect, construct this world, this alleged reality because we have similar senses and therefore agree (sometimes) on what they are presenting. But we know, for instance, that there are radio waves, gamma rays, ultra violet and infrared light, and who knows what else penetrating or bouncing off every cell in our bodies all the time. Yet we choose to pretend that what we see is all there is, just as we choose to pretend that there is some entity called a "self" that no one has ever seen or produced for viewing under any form of light, yet that somehow has independent existence. It's a agreement that we've created based on the assumption that that apparent entity over there seems to behave as we do. Another term for it is "consensus reality".
We operate in this consensus reality for some "time", and then we "die", or so we believe. We base this assumption on the memory of witnessing some other entity stop functioning in an integrated manner and not reverse that state. Yet we make the assumption that this entity has experienced something. But if it experienced something it would not be dead. We have some anecdotal evidence of near-death
experiences, but we have no evidence of anybody experiencing death.
And how do we explain dreamless sleep or anesthesia? If you've ever had a tooth extracted under sodium pentothal the experience from the inside resembles a time discontinuity. The doctor sticks a needle in your arm, you pass out almost instantaneously, and then you are awake (notice I didn't say "You wake up"). The usual comment is "So, when are you guys gonna get started?", and the usual response is, "We've already finished." From the point of view of consciousness, no time passed between being out cold and being awake. Now if you look carefully, that's the only true point of view. Everything else is inference or speculation, in other words, an idea.
If we apply that same test to death, it has to look like, "You approach loss of consciousness you are awake somewhere." No discontinuity. We can speculate to the end of time what happens after "death", but from the point of consciousness, there is no death. If there is experience there is consciousness. Period. So awareness always is. Always.
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