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Speculations on life after death

After all the speculation about life after death in the various literature I’ve had the opportunity to read, I finally had an extraordinary and insightful experience last week to gather my own qualitative data.

It happened when I stood up too quickly and experienced my first-ever total blackout of consciousness. First, the head started feeling numb, much like any other body part would when blood supply is restricted from it. Next, the vision began to cloud with white static Gaussian noise, reminiscent of a television screen with a malfunctioning antenna. What follows is the strength fading from the lower limbs, similar to when a car’s battery stops working and the engine stalls. Then, the body collapsed to the ground, and the head bumping the wall behind me (it remained aching for a few days after that).

The final sensation before the consciousness completely faded was the total relaxation of all the muscles in the body starting from the heart, emanating outwards. Somehow the eyes remained open during the whole process. In the minds, its observed all manner of attachments layered on top of the consciousness ceased to be when the base layer faded, leaving only darkness accompanied with total and absolute peace.

When consciousness was regained, I observed three people were standing over me who hadn’t been there before. I had no sense of time passing during the blackout.

From this qualitative experience, I derive the conclusion that consciousness enters oblivion after the body dies. Thereafter the body breaks down, and its energy returns to the environment.

With oblivion as the base case, it becomes intriguing to optimize the use of energy by adopting Boyle’s Law —weaving a rich, intricate existence while the body and mind are still functioning. Similar to creating a unique multiplication equation before introducing zero at the end.

When zero is introduced, the body disintegrates, and consciousness enters oblivion. What remains is a mathematical equation weaved across time and space that is a unique and irreplicable but somewhat useless because the only thing it ever returns is zero.

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The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui way of life

Shamanic world view

The practitioner of the shamanic tradition at once sees the world as it is as well as a manifestation of infinite energy that is is constant flux.

The sequence of four enemies a knowledge seeker must inevitably face

  • Fear: The fear of uncertainty and the unknown is the first enemy a knowledge seeker must face. As he progresses along his journey, he will be faced with fear over an over again. The work is to face the fear and keep moving forward in the question for knowledge. With time, this fear will dissipate and he will get clarity
  • Clarity: Clarity is a subtle enemy. Succumbing to this enemy means the inability to decipher real clarity from one’s egotistical illusion. The work is to constantly question the perceive clarity while moving forward in the quest for knowledge. With time comes true clarity which brings with it a lot of power
  • Power: Power is a very seductive enemy. With great power comes the temptation to abuse this power. Succumbing to this enemy brings around rampant destruction due to abusive use of power. The work is to constantly keep power in check while continuing the pursuit and application of knowledge. With time, comes the final enemy, old age.
  • Old age: Is an enemy that can only be conquered temporarily. The work is to constantly fight the desire to lie and rest. Yielding to this enemy will result in no further pursuit and application of the knowledge acquired.

Noteworthy plants

  • Jimson weed: Psychedelic to help you relive and see your past memories
  • Peyote: Another plant to aid in the communion with the spirits
  • Mescalito: Hallucinogenic drug made from the flowering heads of cactus
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Reflections on navigating inflection points

Sometimes there comes an inflection point where you have to make a great leap of faith.

I can still remember that morning back in 2008, when I woke up in Shymkent, Khazakastan. I was feeling undecided about taking up Bernhard and Franzikas’ offer the night before to go visit them in Europe or just turning around and heading back home to Singapore overland. I was down to just USD3,000 in my bank account at that point. Shymkent was about the half way mark if you were planning to travel overland from Asia to Europe.

Sitting in the cafe sipping my coffee, I saw then the only other backpacker I have seen during this entire period, other than the pack I was with, walking through the door.

I soon realized after a quick chat he was heading in the direction of Asia overland. He had maps for territories westwards and I for those eastwards. After brief moment of deliberation I exchanged maps with him.

2008 was a period before smart phones and Google maps existed, giving up the map eastwards was like shutting the door to retreat back to Asia if I decided at any point to abort. You could imagine how frightening that experience was.

24 hours later in Astana, I saw broadcast over the news that severe riots had finally broke out after months of tension in the western region of China. The path back eastwards overland was closed and nailed shut. I guess I had no choice but to fully committed at that point. Strangely, with total clarity of purpose brought about a profound sense of calm.

Three months later after experiencing an actual deport, crashing at a few friends’ place and sleeping in the streets on multiple occasions I arrived in London UK, accomplishing my overland trip from Asia to Europe. And it was at the height of the 2008 financial crisis… Oh boy…

And that was definitely not the only inflection point I have experienced. In hindsight, inflection points tends to force you to either fully and totally commit to whatever your pursuits are or give up. The process catalyzes a one way change. It require a great deal of faith. Successful navigation of such events brings along with it total clarity of purpose until the next inflection point.

I guess part of the reason I founded GetData.IO was to provide people with a simple and affordable way to get the data they need so as to navigate those inflection points that life inevitably throw at them.  To help them make that decision they know they need to make and to have that peace of mind when the decision is finally made.

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Diogenes the Cynic: The war against the world

Diogenes the cynic: the war against the world

The building blocks of Diogenes’ philosophy

  1. Self sufficiency: only need yourself and dispense with societal support
  2. Shamelessness: be willing to break even the most sacrosanct rules to express absolute freedom
  3. Indifference: be unconcerned with things not within your control
  4. Insensibility: to become insensible to both pain and pleasure
  5. Ignorance: To limit intellectual activities to those that are of immediate value for human life
  6. Disciplined training:
    • commit to a program of self training that strengthens his character,
    • lessens dependencies on social and physical needs,
    • maintain his desires and impulses under strict rational control
  7. Strength of character:
    • aspire to develop in himself a character and physical constitution like those associated with Hercules
    • that renders him impervious to vicissitudes and sufferings of human life
  8. Poverty:
    • understand that virtue and happiness cannot be found in the search and acquisition of physical possessions
    • divest himself of as many things as possible,
    • retaining the bare necessities to keep him alive and that assure him the freedom that Hercules esteemed as the most precious thing in the world
  9. Philanthrophy
    • Recognize his moral obligation to make himself useful in the task of dispelling illusions that rob people of their ability to be happy and live in accordance with nature
  10. Contempt for the opinions of many
    • renounce the need to be honored or appreciated by others
    • welcome repudiation and insults
    • look with contempt or suspicion at the values and customs by which people guide themselves
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Future concerns

One of the primary fear of the future an average man has stems from the “abstract idea” of how physical discomfort would feel like during old age just prior to the point of death and how terrible it might be.
 
This primary fear is the main driver behind the average man’s continued effort to accumulate resources of various forms. It is done with hopes to alleviate that “discomfort” when it does eventually come.
 
The problem with that mode of thinking is the future is unknowable and man ends up wasting his precious limited life span over provisioning, not to mention it’s overall negative impact on the environment.
 
An alternate approach as practiced in various ascetic traditions is to steadily build the ability to keep equanimity at various thresholds of discomfort through daily practice. This curtails over-provisioning , frees up precious time to do more meaningful stuff and is generally good for the environment.
 
Related references:
– Diogenes
– Seneca
– Meditations, Marcus Aurelius
– Vipassana mediation
– TaoDeChing, Lao Tze
– The Tiger’s Cave, Trevor Leggett
– Zen mind, Beginner’s mind, Shinryu Suzuki
– The book of five rings, Musashi
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The mushroom at the end of the world

  • staying alive for every species requires livable collaboration
  • scalability is not an ordinary feature of nature and requires a lot of work
  • expect interactions between scalable and non-scalable projects
  • The bulk of the work is threading through the non-scalable to reach the scalable

On the middle man

  • a necessary consummate translator within the supply chain
  • he maintains a mental map of who needs what
  • helps efficiently route the inventory to the most suitable individual

On Freedom

  • it is the concept of not having to be a cog in the machine.
  • it does not necessarily lead to great economic outcome for the pursuing individual
  • it allows the individual the ability to freely allocate the use of his time

The matsutake mushroom

  • along most parts of supply chain it symbolizes a social exchange which strengthens social ties
  • it is only during the sorting when the mushroom is looked at purely as a commodity

Man and nature

  • The satoyama revitalization
    • man is part of nature
    • man’s disturbance to nature is part of nature
  • unintentional design is the interplay of man and nature
    • animal/human activities/disturbance
    • pine tree growth
    • matsutake mushroom colonization and growth
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Reflections on communicating with your users via email

While sending a personal email to each individual user who directly uses our API just now, it occurred to me the main difference between talking with someone you have relationship with (like your mum/girlfriend/wife…?) versus simply doing a mass email blast to a group of “strangers”, is the potential lack of warmth and empathy in the latter on the sender’s side.
 
No one really likes being treated like a number on a Excel sheet. It sucks.
The key challenge becomes how do you scale your communication as the amount of people you need to communicate with increases without alienating them. Or does it even matter?

Related Reference

  • Permission Marketing, Seth Godin
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Reflections on maximizing output with limited resources

  • Embrace constrains. The main constrain anyone will experience is time
  • When constrain is acknowledged, one learns the importance of prioritization
  • When the importance of prioritization is acknowledged, one learns the need to horn one’s judgement and foresight through constant learning
  • When self aware of where one’s lack of judgement and foresight in specific domains, one learns the need to exercise prudence
  • When one learns the importance of prudence, one practices by utilizing minimal amount of resources to de-risk the maximum possible areas of uncertainty.
  • When one learns the importance of de-risking, one gives emphasis on strategizing and avoids blind execution.

Related references

  • The Goal, Eliyahu Goldratt
  • Mastery, Robert Greene