Eternal Recurrence

If you are reading this, upon completion of this thought process do me a favor.... sit still, breathe real slow, and try to imagine yourself not existing. An atheists death i suppose, just picture one minute you thinking and feeling and seeing, and the next just blinked out. How difficult is it to imagine oneself Not Existing. Yourself in the first person sense gone. It seems overwhelming to try and imagine. Sometimes when my mood strikes a particular combination of things (tiredness i believe being one of them), i can feel like i'm standing on the edge of that abyss of existing/not existing. Only for a moment or two, then its gone.

During that moment however, i'm filled with a powerful feeling, one of recognition, a sense of understanding almost. It's as if i have teetered on that ledge before and quickly backtrack my process of living and end up here again. Those of you that know me understand my fascination with Nietzsche. One of his ideas crops up here, that of eternal recurrence. If your life does flash before your eyes, like some people say, i guess that would be it. If you truly do get a flash of life right before your eyes that only lasts a moment of 'real time', it would still feel like your life being lived over again. Every minute of it. Horrible, painful and mundane, fun and excrutiating. Nietzsche says that one should model their life over this idea that you have to relive every second of your existence eternally.

Now some astronomers and the like would say that given enough time and space, everything that could happen, has, and then all thats left (given there is still an infinite amount of time) gets repeated over and over again, a sort of cosmic re-run. What makes us so arrogant as to think that this is the first run through? Is it possible that we have all gone through these motions before? My typing, your reading, just another lap around the same track. Well hopefully, the first and original go round you have read this (or something similar, i won't presuppose the arrogance that my writing is the catlyst for where i am going with this) and changed afew things to make the reliving as enjoyable as possible. However, just in case this is the first go round, you (and I as well) should make a few adjustments to ensure that we can have a more enjoyable eternal recurrance.

And if not, if all of this is nonsense and you find it trite and irritating, just picture not existing. Or come as close as you can. Maybe you'll get that tingling little sensation that you have done this before.