The Fear of Death

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This is a vision of pure energy, which does not discriminate between good and evil, creation and destruction. No wonder it entered modern history through the story of Robert Oppenheimer’s response to the rst atomic explosion at Alamogordo on July 16, 1945. What other image from world literature could have been so uncannily right for that occasion?

If a thousand suns were to rise

and stand in the noon sky, blazing, such brilliance would be like the erce brilliance of that mighty Self. (11.12)

As the bomb exploded, Oppenheimer thought of another, later verse:

I am death, shatterer of worlds, annihilating all things. (11.32)

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Voice from the Whirlwind at the end of the Book of Job and a single, hair- raising verse from Second Isaiah: “I form the light, and create

darkness; I make peace, and create evil: I the Lord do all these things.”

Realizing that both the creative and the destructive issue from the innite intelligence of the universe allows us to accept the whole of reality:

The Tao doesn’t take sides;

it gives birth to both good and evil. The Master doesn’t take sides;

she welcomes both saints and sinners.

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Bertrand Russell 

When I am acquainted with 'my seeing the sun', it seems plain that I am acquainted with two different things in relation to each other. On the one hand there is the sense-datum which represents the sun to me, on the other hand there is that which sees this sense- datum. All acquaintance, such as my acquaintance with the sense-datum which represents the sun, seems obviously a relation between the person acquainted and the object with which the person is acquainted. When a case of acquaintance is one with which I can be acquainted (as I am acquainted with my acquaintance with the sense-datum representing the sun), it is plain that the person acquainted is myself. Thus, when I am acquainted with my seeing the sun, the whole fact with which I am acquainted is 'Self-acquainted-with- sense-datum'.

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