A month ago I would have dismissed what I am writing here as the mad ramblings of someone who had read Jung and Freud while drunk and standing on his head. I’m not trying to philosophize or indulge in self-analysis. Actually, my view of psychology is that it’s mostly nonsense; I view the average psychiatrist as a tri-part mixture of scientist, snake oil salesman, and telephone psychic who bills by the minute and banks on the credulity of his or her clients.
Oh, yes, I tried seeking help several weeks ago. I spent a considerable rainy-day fund; what the hell, I had no other use for it anyway. I got referrals to several psychiatrists and an analyst; the latter said, in essence, that my inner conflict was rooted in a classic Oedipal complex, and that the reason I could not sleep was the guilt I felt over a transparent wish to make love to my dead mother. She suggested, among other things, therapy which would include therapeutic love-making sessions with her at $1,000 dollars per hour. The other psychiatrists were somewhat more helpful, if somewhat less honest about the nature of their profession, but the treatment they recommended would take many months before any palpable effect of their pharmacological arsenals could be discerned. One prescribed shock treatment (with a straight face and long explanation about the renaissance of this wonderful and altogether misunderstood treatment that would have been the pride of any grand inquisitor had science or the devil provided such a tool to the precursors of that ancient learned profession), and two others suggested I voluntarily check into a sleep clinic for observation and treatment; and, of course, they all prescribed sleeping pills. I can’t really blame them, though; I wouldn’t have believed me either. In any case, I soon realized I was on my own.
I’m so damned sleepy. And resigned. Let them win. They mean me no harm; it’s as much a matter of survival for them as it is for me. I’ll still be me, somewhere in that cubicle, able to think and speak with them, for as long as my body continues to function. I’ve made a living will requiring that no extraordinary measures be undertaken to prolong my life. In this state, it will be honored. But I can’t request they take my life; euthanasia laws are anathema in this country as they interfere with the profitability of the health care business. Even if that were not the case, they wouldn’t apply; after all, I’ll soon only be in a coma, not suffering from a painful terminal condition that would justify a mercy killing. I’d take my own life. I should, in fact, but that would only make me into a nut case and my death would have no meaning.
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It feels good to be doing something altruistic in the end, even if it turns out to be in vain. Doubtless a psych consult would conclude I am delusional and suffering from some sort of martyr complex. I trust the public will embrace a kinder diagnosis.
Time is definitely relative when it comes to the subconscious. The conventional wisdom is that dreams are really quite short in duration and that we have many of them every night, though we remember but a few, or none. Some, however, believe that we can dream the same dream for many hours. In either case, anyone with the ability to recollect dreams vividly knows that they can seem to last days, years or even a lifetime, yet all in the space of minutes in “real time.” The comatose can live for many years without life support equipment, and I’m only thirty two years old. At least I’ll be giving new life to countless others for a subjective eternity. And I know I won’t be harmed; the others are at least partially, and perhaps exclusively, my own ancestors all the way back to the beginning of my line.
How ironic, to know there is no God, no hope for redemption, and that hell lurks just beneath the surface of consciousness itself in all of us. A favorite tag line of mine that reflects my sardonic humor is simply that Hobbes was an optimist. Indeed, it seems I was right, but the joke’s on me, for life in the state of nature is not only brutal, painful and brief but it has the capacity to continue subjectively ad infinitum in each living human being. God may be dead, but it is not by any means lonely in a world without a prime mover; quite the contrary, it’s too damned crowded within us all.
If you still do not believe me, then there is only one more thing I can say: search for other egos within you and you will soon learn they are there. And if you lack the resolve to do so, then look for them in your children and children’s children, for it is they who have the weakest boundaries between the conscious and subconscious minds and in that porous condition you can best observe their other selves as they struggle to form their own conscious identities, bursting forth and asserting themselves when you least expect it.
Still not convinced? Well, time will prove me right. I have no children, but have contributed my genetic material to several sperm banks in the last month; you see, I too want to live again, if only in the subconscious minds of some future descendants; it is the only form of immortality we can have, and, much more importantly for me, the only way to prove my claim.
Look within your children, those of you who receive the anonymous gift of life, for I will try with all my energy to manifest myself in future generations. I know now that it can be done, and I will attempt to prove it through my issue in every generation as yet unborn.