Visions of death and God

The Churning of the Ocean of Milk

Visions of death and God

Since boyhood, I have been afflicted by visions of death and God.

I would be very interested to know about other philosophers' experiences with visions.

I don't remember now which happened first?

I was maybe five years old. It was the end of summer and the family was staying at my grandmother's dacha. It was a very gray day. I was down by the water. The sky was gray, the rocky beach was gray, the water was gray. I realized then, It would always be like this, gray.

One night about the same time I couldn't sleep. 'I am going to die.' I thought. And then, 'I'm still a small boy now.' And from that thought, I knew, 'It is certain.' I was at the end of a tunnel. A large rock was coming down the tunnel. It was a very long way off. But it would, certainly, crush me at the end. I broke into tears and called for my mother and father. I got up, it must not have been too late, the lights in the front room were still on. I found my mother sitting. 'I don't want to die!' Mother put me back to bed, and saying, 'You see how old I am. I'm very much older than you are. You won't die for a long time.' At her words I lapsed back into terror, trying to sooth me, she confirmed it, 'Death is certain.'

Another time, I had got into Father's study and was looking through his books, medical texts. One I took down off the shelf, and setting it down, opened it at random. The book opened to one of those black-and-white medical photos of a man with no arms and no legs. I recoiled in horror. To this day, opening anything which might have some unexpected content makes me nervous: a book, a box, a cupboard or drawer...

"If you are squeamish/
Don't prod the beach rubble."

- Sappho

It was years and years before any of this came back to me. Not until I started reading philosophy. And then it did not stop. Every night at falling asleep it is the same: visions of death and God, gasp, terror, sit up, visions of the churning noumena, horror, visions of absurdity and disintegration and disconnection, dread, visions of life's futility and brevity, visions of the endlessness of space and time, and on and on.

A few are memorable. On finishing reading Job, that same night, Why is a horse larger than a donkey? Another time I wished for an erotic vision and it was granted. Religious fanaticism would have been an understatement of my mood in those days. When I read The Birth of Tragedy a line jumped out, it meant exactly my visionary nights, "the terrible truth of existence." And also in Heart of Darkness, the same line, "The horror, the horror."

No one knows who hasn't been there. Philosophy does not come from logic or from scholarship.

Philosophy comes from visions of death and God.

Dako wrote:

It was years and years before any of this came back to me. Not until I started reading up philosophy. And then it did not stop. Every night at falling asleep it is the same: visions of death and God, gasp, terror, sit up, visions of the churning noumena, horror, visions of absurdity and disintegration and disconnection, dread, visions of life's futility and brevity, visions of the endlessness of space and time, and on and on.

wow, is this for real?

i mean, are you serious?

Drone wrote:

Dako wrote:

It was years and years before any of this came back to me. Not until I started reading philosophy. And then it did not stop. Every night at falling asleep it is the same: visions of death and God, gasp, terror, sit up, visions of the churning noumena, horror, visions of absurdity and disintegration and disconnection, dread, visions of life's futility and brevity, visions of the endlessness of space and time, and on and on.

wow, is this for real?

i mean, are you serious?

Yes. Your go.

Dako wrote:

Yes. Your go.

i have never had such 'visions', Dako. or if I had, I didn't comprehend it.

but I'd agree with you if you said that philosophical inquiry begins with the idea of death...

Drone wrote:

I'd agree with you if you said that philosophical inquiry begins with the idea of death...

Not even the idea. A vision is experience. When someone has some vision, and he jots it down, now he has just stupid maxims. It can't re-actualized; or rather, when it is, that is what art is.

Revelation constitutes a large part of my thought, as it did Nietzsche's:

The concept of revelation, in the sense that something suddenly, with unspeakable certainty and subtlety, becomes visible, audible, something that shakes and overturns one to the depths, simply describes the fact. One hears, one does not seek; one takes, one does not ask who gives; a thought flashs up like lightning, with neccesity, unfalteringly formed - I have never had any choice.
-Nietzsche, Ecce Homo, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, 3

PS I have visions of Yahweh on a regular basis. I've come to like him- he's a cute little fella, despite the tentacles.

Impious wrote:

Revelation constitutes a large part of my thought, as it did Nietzsche's:

Thank-you for these lines, they seem a good description.

Quote :

PS I have visions of Yahweh on a regular basis. I've come to like him- he's a cute little fella, despite the tentacles.

This does not.

LOL. I might do a drawing of how I see Yahweh.

Please do.

Impious wrote:

LOL. I might do a drawing of how I see Yahweh.

.........................................always remembering that JESUS sain " no man has seen GOD at any time :

http://www.apologeticspress.org/APPubPage.aspx?pub=1&issue=499&article=376



*rubs eyes* and wipes glasses as well ....



p.s. ecce homo?





There is always some madness in love. But there is also always some reason in madness.
– Friedrich Nietzsche

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