"Up from Earth's Center through the Seventh Gate
                 I rose, and on the Throne of Saturn sate,
                 And many Knots unravel'd by the Road,
                 But not the Knot of Human Death and Fate."
                  --The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, E. Fitzgerald trans.

                  ...But I'm not Omar. He was a great poet and thinker who had the misfortune of being born
                  within the Moslem system of thought, which is nearly as much a disadvantage as being a
                  Christian. The Mohammedan religious beliefs leave no room for discovering who and what
                  you really are. Not unless you break from them, which if you consider the reactions of
                  Moslem fundamentalists to heresy, is very hazardous to your health. This disadvantageous
                  situation might possibly be responsible for his evident depression and fondness for alcohol.

                  The verse above is written within the framework of astrological mysticism. In that frame,
                  Saturn is viewed as the limit of the physical world and in Omar's day was viewed as the lord
                  of death. Since then, three more planets have been found outside the orbit of the planet
                  Saturn, with a probability I posit of one more yet to be found (there is currently no ruler for
                  the sign Libra, and anyone who believes the ancient assignment of Venus to that sign is
                  slightly stupid). In the verse above, Omar stands at the edge of human knowledge and looks
                  out into the darkness from which comes back to him no answer.

                  The answer to poor Omar's two part question is quite simple. The body is merely a
                  complex machine that a person operates by means of flows of energy and intention,
                  analogous to a person's body driving a car. A car has controls which can be worked to make it
                  do things. A body also has controls -- almost infinitely finer and more delicate than a car's --
                  that can be worked to make it do things. When a body dies its operator abandons it, and
                  usually finds a new model to drive. Only instead of a car dealership, a person finds a new
                  body at just before, during or right after birth. Hospitals and nurseries are very popular
                  places among ghosts. So that answers Omar's question about human death. Usually a person
                  gets another body -- occasionally not, due to insanity, spiritual reenlightenment, or a
                  temporary shortage of new births.

                  Now to the second half of Omar's plaintive query: human fate. I suppose that could be a
                  little slippery depending on exactly how one defines "fate", but I'm going to use what
                  definition suits me, to hell with what you think!

                  I suppose Omar means "fate after death". First thing that happens is the person pops out
                  of the body and hovers a few feet above it and looks down on it. This seems, from my
                  personal memories of being killed, to be a trigger for what the pop psychologists are calling
                  these days "closure". A person looks down on the dead body and lets it really sink in that
                  their prized possession is no longer functional. Somewhere around this point (timing varies a
                  bit from person to person) they relive their entire lifetime as a high speed movie. This is
                  viewed in the greatest detail -- not just highlights! -- in literally an instant. If this doesn't
                  sound possible to you, please be advised that your precious stable reality is not what you
                  think it is. Subjective elapsed time is variable, and controllable by a person.

                  This mechanism of reliving the entire life sometimes kicks in when a person is close to
                  death, or has a very close call of some sort. People have reported having their entire life "flash
                  before their eyes" in an instant during accidents.

                  The next thing that happens to most of us is that various forgetters kick in on us from the
                  depths of our minds. One causes a person to simply to float slowly upward away from the
                  body until all the details below are too far way to see clearly. While this happens a blurring is
                  going on within the memory that leaves most newborn babies with a blank slate.

                  Another forgetter is one that I personally dislike and find vaguely alarming: a tunnel
                  materializes around the person, down which they are swept until they either enter a blinding
                  light or a golden image. I've managed to trigger this mechanism while alive, in this lifetime in
                  fact, and I'd like you to know that it can be overcome with sufficient application of energy
                  and intention. I blasted my way out by causing a mental burst of white light right into the
                  golden icon at the end of the tunnel. This destroyed the entire hallucination. I hope that
                  whoever the sick sombitch was who thought up that one is permanently stuck to a golden
                  idol hanging on a wall somewhere on an otherwise uninhabited planet. Fuck you, buddy!

                  As for fate, like I said earlier, most of us simply reincarnate at that point. But there are
                  some disquieting facts that I'd like to share with you. One is that animals seem to be operated
                  by the same sort of thing that operates human bodies, but those spirits aren't as powerful.
                  Are they the same thing we are, or something else? To be completely honest with you, I don't
                  know. It may be that by operating bodies we slowly over millenia or aeons degenerate into
                  weaker and weaker conditions. Was a spider once like us? It is what I fear. But perhaps not.
                  If true then our fate may be to become weaker and weaker as we are ground down by the
                  weight of our experiences. If this is true then Gautama (the Buddha) was right and we should
                  disconnect from the world. Indeed, if true perhaps we should entirely give up living in bodies
                  upon planets.

                  What I have to tell you is that reality is not what you've been taught. Everything you
                  think about your own nature and the nature of the universe around you is as false as medieval
                  sailors who thought that the world was flat. The only thing flat around here is your poor
                  head. I'm not making this shit up. I remember things you wouldn't believe. I don't remember
                  any "beginning" to the universe or to myself. Perhaps there was one. Perhaps not. The last
                  and final word I have for you as to your fate, O Human, is that near as my memories of the
                  past can determine, we are all immortal spirits that go on being conscious for eternity. Your
                  body can fail but you can never cease to exist.

                  There you go, Omar. Happy?

                  Ouran