on freedom
It's curious how the understanding of certain “primitives” is only accessible after a lot of digging and facilitation. Take “freedom”, for example. Takes time and striving, research and experiment, for certain properties of it to sink in. We use the words to remember the insights, but will these words have any meaning outside of the context of the specific personal timeline?
Freedom is yin-yang: A consciousness capable of Narrative Omnipotence (say, a Brahman, who was creating the multiverse by dreaming it, but now is becoming lucid, capable of reshaping his experience with a conscious will) has only a limited motivation to continue. It is the illusion of loss and captivity which translates into (evolutionary) motivation for freedom. But freedom seeks captivity and suffering in turn.
If there's a lasting value in human life, it might be for the consciousness to remember the benefits of freedom. Hells are the furnaces which keep the heavens warm, and suffering fuels happiness, albeit on the other end of the human experience (2023-10-23): a typical human is not a being experiencing the total freedom of Narrative Omnipotence, but the unconscious hungers stemming from the lack of it are the grist to the mill of the multiverse, one of the reasons for why “*it intends to spin on*”. God(s) inhale the “*fume*” of our suffering, it is what keeps them *high*.
There is, therefore, a certain truth to Christian suffering-for-ecstasy exchange Dick was so fond of. The birth of Darth Vader was the death of Anakin Skywalker. A person who suffers might burn forever, “*laminated*” in the hell of that life. That person “dies”, while somewhere else a blissful ((kayra-v1: creature of heaven is born)).
“*To live is to change, and to be perfect is to have changed often*” is not just about the “*novelty search*”: it is also the “*narrow gate*” (Mat 7:13): Dying often and dying incrementally, for a chance (to learn to stir the direction of the change, and then) to shed the suffering and captivity like a snake sheds a skin.
p.s. Some say that suffering (dukkha) comes from desire (taṇhā), and can be minimized by detachment (nirodha). We say that suffering comes from a lack of will. Having invested a bit of time in the effortless verbal will, and in reducing the “*bad dreams*” of corruption (2023-01-08), a consciousness has the power to feel all kinds of happiness: the form of Buddha Vajradhara and the “*old aggregates*” of the I, serenity of a Jedi and the “eye of the storm” of a Sith, - are equally available and fruitful (Mat 13:52, Ps 1). “*There’s no suffering, only ignorance*”.
We might concur though, that desire directed *elsewhere* might *distract* a consciousness from achieving the control of their present experience.
Now, *suppose* that the truth of the present experience is a needle over a vinyl disc (caricature in 2021-04-10, seed in 2022-10-05, audience in 2023-02-09): From the point of view of that hypothesis, there is no time but the present to choose between suffering and ecstasy. Everyone replaying that disc will experience whatever we are experiencing. Like a Braindance (in Cyberpunk 2077). By being in a hell or a heaven right now, the person of that disc will be forever in the “*prison*” of a moment (cf. LEXX s01e02 “Burst of Life”). There is a certain humour in that by inventing the “*laminations*” Dick eternalizes the very suffering he so wished to escape. And yet both Dick and Frankl show how suffering is used often to spice and fertilize certain forms of the bliss. Being “*saved*” figures largely in Dick's value system, and by grasping for beauty and understanding, by investing in the suffering of Exegesis, he was now and then “*saved*” through the *moments* of visions and revelations, “*laminated*” in ((slerpﾞ13: the warmth of the gods' inhalation.))
This synthesis-pain and hope-is above tragedy and is absolute beauty
But a “*duping delight*” of a liar is also meaningful. And when a tribe of apes murders another tribe in a bid for territory (cf. “*10,000,000 B.C.*” in Everything Everywhere All At Once 2022 @58) - they are rewarded with the endorphins and the sense of eternal *glory* as well.