Eschatology Ltd.
Hi there. Are you tired of death? Dying? Irrecoverable loss? Insurmountable grief? The rending of garments and the tearing of hair, the gnashing of teeth, etc.? Waking at night to ponder your own imminent demise? Fearing for the lives of everyone you know and love?
Well, we at Eschatology Ltd. hear you—you and people like you. We want to help, and that’s why we’re here today to talk to you about something we call the Spirit World.
What is the Spirit World? you ask.
It’s simple: the Spirit World is the place we go when our bodies die, and it turns out that it’s located right here, on top of this physical world.
You find that hard to imagine? Don’t worry about it. That’s our job. And anyway, you can’t see into the Spirit World—unless you’re a spirit reading this, haha!—but the spirits there sure can see into this one. And wow, do they ever keep an eye on all of us. Watching over us is their biggest pastime. That’s right: there are no mysteries or secrets waiting for you on the other side of nonexistence, only all the loved ones who’ve been missing you as much as you’ve missed them since the moment they let go of that last whistling breath. So cheer up, and don’t sweat the death thing. However much life you have remaining, there’s a big reunion party waiting at the end. Do us a favor: tell Uncle Howie we say Hey.
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Hello again. Are you tired of hearing about the Spirit World? All that hocus pocus about immaterial beings hemming you in wherever you go? Have you had it with considering the possibility that your great-grandparents are looking on each time you notice an attractive body part on a stranger or use the toilet? Do you have doubts that Earth is destined to eventually become home to countless ghosts with nothing to do and no source of entertainment? Are you sick of shamans who spend all week getting high in the woods insisting that you listen to their drug stories? Are you disturbed by the apparent lack of justice for all that happens in the world you can see, feel, hear, taste, and smell?
If so, we at Eschatology Ltd. get it. We really do. The Spirit World ain’t what it’s cracked up to be, and if we’re being completely honest, it was just a prototype, a kind of rough draft we decided to run with while we came up with a better product. And we’d be lying if we said a few heads hadn’t rolled since the Spirit World went live. Okay, more than a few. Our current team wants you to know we’re grateful for your patience, and we’re just as upset about all your ancestors and friends who had to be put to death because they broke a rule some shaman made up after eating a fistful of datura seeds, but we’re happy to report that those people are all in Heaven now.
That’s right, Heaven! Heaven is a new development, one that has everyone here at Eschatology Ltd. over the moon, in manner of speaking. Think of Heaven as a destination for all the good people. All the well-behaved, morally upright, heroic, generous, popular, wealthy, and physically attractive people go there when they die, and when they arrive, they have their bodies back and can do whatever they want to. Plus the experience of dying leaves all the Heaven-worthy people even more conscientious, charitable, and grateful than they were on Earth. Consequently, everyone in Heaven is extremely chill. It’s basically a big resort, extremely live-and-let-live. Do a few people sleep around or occasionally do a little cocaine? Probably, but what’s the harm? Isn’t it great to be alive? It goes without saying that the location of this place is top secret.
What happens to the people who don’t get into Heaven? you ask.
As it turns out, there is a destination for them. It’s called Hell. Also remotely located, the physical geography there consists of a flat, fiery plain stretching as far as the eye can see under a permanent night rent by crackling bolts of lightning. People who go to Hell find that their nerves are continuously regenerated, so that they experience the pain of burning to death without ever getting any relief. As to whether an individual’s stay in Hell is permanent, the jury’s out on that. But don’t worry—sentencing is our job. You probably wouldn’t know anybody there, anyhow. The place is full of murderers and thieves, people who worship the wrong gods or spend beyond their means or both, the acne-scarred, relatives you’d rather not think about, the weak personal hygiene crowd, and folks who always say the wrong thing. You won’t even notice they’re missing.
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Hi. That’s right, it’s us again. Nice to see you. So, yeah. Heaven and Hell, not plausible. We should have seen this coming. What did we expect, that you’d buy the idea that all the good people go to live in a country club in the sky? While the impoverished, disfigured, or psychologically disordered were sent to burn in a giant bonfire? Did we truly think you’d imagine separate worlds like this could exist in the absence of other alternatives? That you’d be comfortable with everyone born into a different religion being consigned to eternal suffering? That you’d fail to grasp that Heaven and Hell were basically the Spirit World all over again, only divided into a pair of dissimilar and noncontiguous continents? That you’d miss the emerging ideas in physics indicating that human conceptions of the universe are delusions at every level? That you wouldn’t catch the increasing evidence suggesting we’re totally alone, existentially speaking, in our cluttered corner of space?
Yikes. You’re right. Not a great look for us here at Eschatology Ltd. We are more than a little embarrassed. But maybe you’ll let us explain.
When we came up with Heaven and Hell, we were under tremendous pressure. There was this whole set of revolutions taking place—agricultural, industrial, scientific, cultural. To say this made for fierce competition would be an understatement. Things were changing so quickly that, for a while, we thought we’d better sit back, let Heaven and Hell ride, and see how it all played out. Surely things will slow down, we thought. Well, no, you’re right. Took the words right out of our mouths. They sure didn’t slow down, and we’ve only recently started to think they never will.
We’ll be honest with you. Some of us wanted to sell you the new Big Idea, the one where we solve the fear-of-death problem once and for all by taking death out of the equation. Let’s call the proponents of this brave concept the Apotheosis Camp. They’re a rowdy bunch. The only thing they agree on is what they want: immortality. How to achieve it, not so much. Some suggest gene splicing holds the key. Others argue we could all upload our consciousnesses into a big computer and simulate everlasting life—that’s right, a kind of electronic, online Spirit World. Still others favor a middle-ground reincarnation program, engineered using a combination of advanced data applications and genetic manipulation. A few think organ replacements will do the trick, that we could just keep swapping out old parts until we’re working with total rebuilds. We’ll see. The various factions are still workshopping their ideas, and right now there’s more speculation and imagination than cohesion and coherence. Truth be told, we at Eschatology Ltd. simply aren’t comfortable bringing you Apotheosis on such shaky ground.
All this is to say: we were wrong. And we don’t know. This leaves us in an awkward position with respect to fear-of-mortality mitigation. Not an easy thing to admit, mind you, considering we’re in the fear-of-mortality-mitigation business. But we want you to know that we value your patronage. We’d like to keep you as a customer. We’d like to do better. It’s with this in mind that we’re bringing you this message today: we’ve combed through the archives and sifted the data. We’ve test-run models based on concepts from other religions, ideas like samsara and immanent consciousness, and a few secular ones, including some frankly creepy Hegelian shit we’d rather not revisit. We’ve consulted all the latest science, and we’ve had long and painfully mathematical conversations about quantum mechanics that would make you regret ever wondering about the afterlife at all (though we are grateful you do—and always will be (we hope—haha!)).
What we’ve come up with, after much soul-searching (figuratively speaking, of course) and banging our heads against the wall (ditto), is this: Maybe.
That’s right. Maybe. We can offer you Maybe.
Hold on. Don’t go. Hear us out. We know it’s not much, but it’s not nothing, either. It might even be more than you think. Give Maybe a whirl. Take it for a test drive. Shape the word with your mouth. Say it. Out loud. Maybe. Maybe we don’t die. See? Doesn’t that feel good? Now repeat after me: Maybe there is no death. Maybe it only appears so. Maybe there is more beyond this Earthly life, and maybe the deceased subject discovers it upon the moment of expiration. Maybe they see something is there instead of nothing. Something like the world they left behind.
