Facing the Great Beyond

Michal Lapinsky

(This essay/poem was originally published in the book Mind in the Line of Fire: Psychoanalytic Voices to the Challenges of Our Times, published in 2023 by the IPA in the Community & the World Committees, with the full copyright granted to the author.)

“Original art work©️ https://www.gosialapinski.com”

Can you look beyond your own grave
where nothingness reigns, where you will be no more,
where nothing will be left of your immortal self
which has dissolved into an abyss that has no name
where there is no conjugation of "to be",
the only noun is "void"; there is no-where, no time —
"nothing to think with and nothing to love". 1)

But maybe it is not true, perhaps there is a great beyond
where looking in the mirror you will see no wrinkles
or grey hair, you will have all the teeth in place,
flexible joints and a spritely step
and you will never see the dawn of oblivion —
it will never come to haunt you. 

I do not even think of heaven — a glib and tacky one
with choirs of sexless angels or hordes of lusty virgins
and fruit from the tree of ignorance aplenty. 

But there must be something! Did not the poets tell you:
"Non omnis moriar — I will not wholly die" ? 2)
It may not be a place at the almighty’s feet —
that one has been already taken by a noble legion
of martyrs and saints, as well as church officials.

Yours could be happily placed on cloud nine
in the realm of fancy, where your existence will continue
in the remnants of your creativity recorded on pieces of parchment
left in the debris of abandoned projects and, more substantially,
passed on in your genes to subsequent generations
as far as they will have a chance to carry on. 

From that beyond you could listen to the lovely music
which you had chosen carefully for your own funeral
and see how many people came, and who had stayed away
whether there would be any appreciation shown
and sadness truly felt for your having gone. 

It would be interesting to find out if anyone
remembers you and cares enough to read your papers,
memoirs or amateurish poems. And would your children have
any interest in what's been left of you in all these scraps,
computer records and scores of photos? In their memories?
It would be such a joy to see how they are faring
how their own children grow, and have a scope to give

them all, your blessings and your love 

untainted by the pain of your unseemly loss
and not embittered by your envy of their going on living. 

This comforting perspective is easily blown away:
the bubble of illusion bursts, the terror strikes, takes hold —
the end is nigh, it can come any minute, even right now
and you, your thinking mind, with all the records of yourself
and of your world, will disappear, your loved ones will be gone
your heart will stop and darkness will descend.
This is the final blazing truth: the dusk of your oblivion
has arrived, the sun will be eclipsed
and nothing is "more terrible, nothing more true". 1)

But this can’t be, it surely is a lie. You must not look beyond
the pleasure principle 3) — hold on to it. Your life —
the physical and psychic one — facing this threat
must reassert and fortify itself, no matter how.
And surely, it is obvious that we all are going to die
but there is something in us that does not believe it. 4)

You can find solace in the mirror of Narcissus,
youthful and perfect, and looking into it, apply
the Botox of denial, to cover up the ugly face of death.
But if you want to "live your life to the full"
with no tomorrow and no ending, avoid his fate.
Narcissus did lose his life 5) — but you can have a better fortune.
Acquire power and control to be able to live beyond
the limitations of ordinary, hapless creatures:
you could obtain the ownership of the obliging globe
and access its immeasurable riches which, like a Magic Pudding 6),
an all-giving breast, will at your disposal.

You can exploit it, ravish it and tear its entrails out
using its every bit, and as a member
of the privileged and enlightened caste
you are fully entitled to satisfy not only hunger
but your greed and lust, with no guilt and no accountability.
The great empire that you've built with this resource
will be a special place, a triumph of humanity
capable of conquering nature and fostering growth
which by consumption of more, more and more
will bring abundance, prosperity and happiness. 

You must not look towards where people starve to death,
fight over the scraps found in a rubbish tip, or perish
in fires, floods or avalanches and mudslides.
You need to turn your gaze away. You must believe
that it is only accidental, surely a fabrication
a slander by the envious, prophets of impending doom.
There always will be a remedy, a ruse, a science
that bending to your will, can find a certain way
by which any depletion, pollution and destruction
will be undone, and inconvenient truth extinguished. 

And while the human mind is serving you this way
it will manufacture for you a true heaven on earth
lasting as long as you will live; and you can even get
a custom made extension if you employ a crafty
and accomplished shaman, conjurer or a priest
who can procure for you a place in the great beyond.

So you can proceed in blissful ignorance
and indifference to the fate of the unlucky others:
those who are dying now, as well as the virtuous meek
who will end up inhabiting the earth no longer inhabitable.
It won’t be your concern, and you can safely say,
"'Après moi, le déluge’ 7), because I will not ever see
what happens next, and what is out of sight …
Frankly, why should I even care, since the whole world
does nothing to prevent my sad and cruel end?"

You envisage yourself in your brand new white Tesla
driving across a desert, next to the flooded fields
of rotting crops, and punctuated by the stumps
of dead black trees and scattered with decaying carcasses.
You are wearing the safety goggles and the oxygen mask
you still have what’s left of your Magic Pudding, now worn out.
Its magic still works, though, making it possible
to disregard the evidence that shows that in the hereafter,
which now is clearly visible there will be nothing left
of life if this truth is not heeded and consequences drawn
from it. You surely know it but not quite; like death itself
it's not for you, it will only apply to others. You can go on …

When you can see the future just like a doomsday film
it gives you a pleasurable thrill. It's like a dream of death
from which you can wake up. And it is just as well
since being in it is like a nightmare horror
which you can’t bear and cannot break out from.
If that’s the way you see the future — it is murder, 8)
and you are not the victim of this crime,
you take a part in it. The future world will surely die
while you are "buying time" with the forged currency of lies
supported by halfhearted and tokenistic actions,
while you can keep on turning a blind eye. 

When you are able to step out and watch it from aside,
it is clear that for the last few decades, in spite of promises
nothing decisive and effective has been done.
Your heart sinks then; the hope that it will be done is fading, too
as time is running out, and maybe it already has.

Don't let your spirit die, don't sink into despair —
you can still join the ranks of revelers,
consumers of charisma, cosmetic surgery or happy pills.
And you will do your bit when you stop eating meat,
not use plastic containers, grow your own vegetables

and put a sticker, “Climate Action Now” on your electric car.

Is it still possible to share Freud's optimism
about the future of mankind, when he expressed the view
that the voice of reason — which is a soft one and which does not rest
until it has been heard  — finally, despite rebuffs, succeeds? 9) 

And don't forget that Freud himself chose death
which he had fought in his tormented body
for many years, with such stoicism and courage,
when the eruption of another terrible world war 10)
must have shown to him, as it did to the world,
that mankind yet again had entered the disastrous path
of mindless destruction, confirming that the voice of reason
and sanity does not really count and can be overthrown. 

Maybe putting your hopes in the power of reason,
and the value of truth that should prevail because
of its merits, is another form of wishful thinking.
It disregards the war that is insidiously conducted
against reality and sanity under the deceptive cloak
of make-beliefs, which assert their power with promises:
of a paradise on earth created by human ingenuity,
of inexhaustible and renewable resources,
of death that can be extinguished or postponed forever. 

Underestimating this extraordinary capacity of humans
for self-deception, for making threatening and unwanted things go away
at will, could be another self-deception, the more dangerous,
because it can prevent the acceptance of the inconvenient truth
that persuasive talk is futile when no one's listening
and that reason can't prevail when sheer unreason reigns. 

If that's the case, it could be time for you to finally conclude
that it is necessary to scream because silence is the real crime
against humanity11) , but to accept that this can be no longer a soft voice
that you have to scream at the top of your lungs
you have to loudly beat the talking drums
transmitting the alarm across the globe
you need to blow the trumpet of an angel of truth
and mercy, to wake up the conscience, and to resurrect
the dead consciousness buried deeply for too long. 

Endnotes

1) Philip Larkin. Aubade

2) Horace. Exegi monumentum. Odes: 3.30; A.S. Pushkin. Monument. (Pamyatnik). Both poets express the belief that they will continue their existence through their work, which will stand as their monument, to be admired in the future.

3) Freud. Beyond the Pleasure Principle. Standard Edition. Vol. XVIII

4) Karl Jung in an interview with John Freeman. 1959. YouTube: 2AMu-G51y

5) Myth of Narcissus. In Ovid's version, Narcissus, after having rejected the love of Echo and others is doomed to fall in love with his own image, which cannot be fulfilled. He withers, dies and is turned into a flower. (Ovid. Metamorphoses)

6) The Magic Pudding. Norman Lindsay. (Sydney. Angus & Robertson.1st Ed. 1918). In that popular children's book by an Australian artist and writer, the Magic Pudding has the property of replenishing itself, and "That's where the magic comes in … The more you eat the more you get". At the end of the book, its owners, after many adventures, consisting largely of preventing others from taking the Magic Pudding from them, enjoy the exclusive possession of it in self-contained seclusion, securing thus the unimpeded continuity of abundance and unlimited supply. So in fact, there is no "The End". 

7) Attributed to Louis XV, meaning "When I am dead the deluge may come for aught I care". 

8) Song The Future by Leonard Cohen. Album The Future.1992

9) Freud. Future of an Illusion. Standard Edition. Vol. XXI

10) Peter Gay. A Life for Our Time.1988

11) Nadyezhda Mandelstam, in "Hoping against hope". (1999); also in Segal, H. (1987). Silence is the real crime. In International Review of Psycho-Analysis, 14: 3-12