There’s something that puts the end of the world in perspective.

You see, in a hundred years at least 7 billion people will die. It’s a certain thing, completely unavoidable. It’s so routine it’s no longer considered much of a tragedy, because it’s been going on since the dawn of time – every hundred years or so the oldest human on Earth dies, and as he dies, everybody that was alive at the time he was born is already dead.

So, it’s not dying that is exceptional when we talk about the end of the world, because death is inevitable to the living. What is exceptional is that there are no replacement bodies, there is no longer a next generation. There is no longer an endless circle of birth and death, there are no longer human bodies to provide the experience-vessels to those who think this place has something to offer. That door had been closed.

Another thing that is associated with the idea of the end of the world is suffering. This is because the idea of individual death is associated with suffering, which is imagined to be terrible by those who have never been close to death. I have, and I know this to be nonsense. I’ve been so close to death, I don’t think it’s actually possible to get closer than I’ve been and end up with a functioning body afterwards, and I can tell you with complete certainty that death as such is only a breath away from a bad situation. When you’re terribly sick, or gravely injured, death actually halves the suffering, because it takes at least as much suffering to recover, if not more, than it did to approach death. So, basically, when you’re gravely ill, you have the option to end the suffering there by dying, or at least double the suffering by slowly climbing out of the hole that is sickness, in order to fully recover. If you’re suddenly injured, you’re usually in too much of a shock to experience much suffering, and if you then die, it’s a very swift and easy thing; however, if you wake up in the emergency room or in an intensive care unit, that’s where the actual suffering starts, if you are to get better. You can experience days, weeks, months, sometimes years of pain, disability, disfigurement or other forms of hardship, and yet, people see this process with optimism, because it’s recovery, you get to live afterwards. So it’s not suffering that people fear in death – it’s not being. They fear not being so much, they imagine it as huge suffering, a terrible thing that is to be avoided at all cost, but it’s actually the prolongation of life that causes suffering. Death ends it. It is the fear of death that makes people prolong the suffering of their elderly parents and other relatives, making their agony linger and extend the limits of suffering far more than was common throughout history, and it’s not seen as senseless cruelty that it is, because it’s supposed to fight or at least delay death, which is so feared. It is the fear of death that makes you attach your elderly parents and grandparents to machines that prolong the worst agony that precedes death, not because death is horrible, but because you are afraid.

The end of the world is the point where there’s no longer the advanced technology and medicine and misguided compassion to prolong the suffering from the point of the inevitable suck, to the point of soul-crushing, seemingly endless agony in which you forget you ever were something that is not this degradation and suffering, and that there ever was life or existence that wasn’t degradation and suffering. When you are injured or sick to the point of death, you just die, and are free from the shackles of suffering that this body imposes upon you. There is a limit to how much you can normally suffer before you die, without anyone to “help you”. It can look terrible, and it is terrible, but it is not that much more terrible than the many illnesses we all had and recovered from; the difference between influenza you have and recover from, and the one you die from is insignificant, in terms of suffering. Also, when you take a look at the historic methods of execution of the death penalty, it turns out it is easy to kill people quickly and with relatively little agony, but it takes quite a bit of ingenuity to kill them in a slow, lingering fashion. The modern life support for the sick and elderly, however, takes the cake for being the most viciously cruel, routinely sadistic and awful way of giving someone a slow, lingering death. Crucifixion and impaling don’t even come close. So, essentially, it turns out that hatred and malevolence never produced as painful, humiliating and lingering a form of death as did fear, compassion and love.

I cannot say that all people are wrong to fear death. Some are so evil, that what awaits them beyond death is much worse than any agony they could possibly experience in this life, and they are fully justified in fearing death. Some live such a meaningless, empty and trivial life, that it’s quite possible there’s no afterlife for them because there’s really nothing there, there is no immortal soul present in the body, and death cannot create what doesn’t exist to begin with. Death isn’t the same thing to all people. To the evil ones, the cruel, mocking and cynical ones, who make this life a hell for all others, death is the end of their evil playground. In death, they lose the ability to control and hurt others, and are about to face justice. They are right to be afraid, because what awaits them is indeed most terrible. Also, for those who are virtuous, whose sophisticated souls incessantly tested the limits of the world in attempt to exceed it, who improved the lives of others with love, beauty and consciousness, they are freed by death, to expand into greatness undreamt of, something that cannot even be properly imagined while limited by flesh.

But death doesn’t create. It only liberates what you truly are, in your essential nature, and what you are then faces God, and you then see the reality of it all, devoid of all deception and illusion.

The end of the world, therefore, isn’t much different, on an individual level, from the ordinary death we all face. What makes it special is not more death, because death is certain to all who now live, in any case. Also, what makes it special is not judgment after death, because that, too, is what we all face. What makes it special is that there will be no children, no continuation, and no hope projected into the world, no burial by the caring survivors; and deaths come not by trickle, but by flood. Whether you end or not, however, is quite a separate matter, dependent upon your personal relationship with God.