394 becoming more human by becoming more godlike
fact and the knowledge of death as well as by the anticipation of death
in physical and mental decline. Ignorant of the ultimate ground of real-
ity, and of the beginning and end of time, we could nevertheless exist in
an unhurried and endless roaming. Life would lose its dramatic con-
centration. Our experience would more closely resemble that of an ani-
mal. It would be without the selective memory that we possess. It would
not include the foreknowledge of the annihilation that awaits us. We
would approach the experience of an eternal present, not in the form in
which we can now know it— that of an all- consuming activity that re-
leases us temporarily from concern about the past and the future— but
as a per sis tent and normal feature of existence.
We could leave the question of the ground of reality in suspense, or
indefi nitely postponed, in the hope that we might someday be able to
answer it, or simply dismiss it in the midst of our endless present. Our
eternity would radically diminish the weight of our groundlessness.
Suppose, on the other hand, that we were, despite our mortality, able
to discern the ground of being and to look into the beginning and end
of time but that we nevertheless remained condemned to die. Th e
ground of reality could not be one that denied the reality of death, for
death forms part of the hypothesis. We cannot consider the implica-
tions of such a circumstance for our experience without the content of
supposed solutions to the enigma of reality and of existence. Th is much,
however, seems clear: no matter what the answer, it would leave us un-
reconciled to the world: no riches of the universe and no marvels held
in the womb of time could ever compensate us for not being part of that
future. On the contrary, the more wonderful the future of the universe
might be, the more terrible would be the punishment visited on us by
the certainty of death.
In the history of thought, however, the set of such understandings of
our situation is an empty one. Every philosophy or theology that has
claimed to disclose the nature of ultimate reality has denied death. Th e
religions of salvation deny it by promising eternal life. Th e overcoming
of the world (whether in Buddhism, the Vedas, or the philosophies of
Schopenhauer and of Plato) denies it by negating the deep reality of the
distinct self or by describing us as chained to a wheel of endless rebirth.
Th ey too are feel- good theologies and philosophies precisely because