Death and Dying

What captured me in this book was the notion that the creations wanted to die. They are manifestations of something that is not quite right. In a sense they are like actual man, they are imperfect and instead of being the exact replication of nature and oneness, are always separated from each other and nature. They sense their imperfection and want to die because of it.

Here, the ocean sees the humans as the gods and tries to replicate them and their memories yet it cannot. Because of this distance, the incarnations want to die. On one hand we have Kelvin dreaming of the ocean and dreaming of creation, something that seems like it came straight from the entity. He says, "The beat of our heart combines, and all at once, out of the surrounding void where nothing exists or can exists, steals a presence of indefinable, unimaginable cruelty." He continues, "[...] I howl soundlessly, begging for death and for an end. But simultaneously I am dispersed in all directions, and my grief expands in a suffering more acute than any waking state, a pervasive, scatttered pain piercing the distant blacks and reds, [...] I felt myself being invaded through and through, I crumbled, disintegrated, and only emptiness remained" (180).

The creations love life and the concept of death is something does not appeal to these creations. "Does not appeal" is to light of a phrase- the creations fight till their last breath for life, much like the symmetriads when they realize their impending death. In this passage we find that the creations have a distance from what destroys them and they are not committing suicide but rather something outside of themselves is ending their life.

When Snow and Kris are discussing the ocean as a god, Kris says, "It repeats itself, Snow, and the being I'm thinking of would never do that." When the incarnation of Gibarian comes to visit Kris he off-handedly says, "No, I am the real Gibarian-just a new incarnation." The first thing that comes to mind is the notion of reincarnation on this planet. If reincarnation is true and we all do come back to this earth to repeat the same things then we are like the creatures on this ocean planet. We are like the symmetriads or asymmetriads who form some great masterpiece and then cave in on ourselves, destroying our masterpieces with evil and malice.

A true god is nothing but pure creation. When this imperfect god created us he created us as a tool to experience himself. Just like the ocean created the replicas to experience itself and discover something new, our planet or god created ourselves as an expression of it. Kris notedly says to Snow, "He has created eternity, which was to have measured his power, and which measures his unending defeat." He also says, "This god has no existence outside of matter, he would like to free himself from matter yet he cannot."

Death then in a cosmic sense is the escape from immortality. The god wants to die and experience something out of the world it has created and the only way it could do this was to create an imperfect creation. These creations die so that the god can experience what death feels like. They are the contrast and lens in which it views itself. When Gibarian comes to visit Kris the two of them have a conversation that goes like this,
"You are not Gibarian."
"No? Then who am I? A dream?"
"No, you are only a puppet. But you don't realize that you are."
"And how do you know what you are?"