rip

I don't think you have to... well, I was going to say "I don't think you have to die to get to the bit where you rest in peace" but it's more like "I don't think you have to kill whatever you're haunting to get to the bit where you rest in peace". Like you might have to let your self-concept go out (not kill it, but let it run out of fuel for the combustion process, so as to learn that you persist after that extinguishment), but you needn't do your body in along the way, I think.

That's my experience, anyway.

It occurs that to me that this might have been what Jesus was after with the "be born again" thing? Because, if so, Jesus might have been a natural information theorist. This has category and type and topological theory all over it. Once you stop burning content you become the you-shaped hole in the universe. That's an operation described by conservation principles. If that holds, then Christianity itself might be on the verge of this transition - about to learn that the people/energy/ideas/momentum/aliveness in it can survive the category error of the original self-concept winking out.

Unexpected! That entire previous paragraph was unexpected. More so the ending than the beginning. That first connection was natural, ... and so was the second, but I didn't see the second coming.

*facepalm