"Burroughs, William S. - Immortality" - читать интересную книгу автора (Burroughs William S)

ultimately unworkable. In Space Vampires Colin Wilson speaks of benign
vampires. Take a little, leave a little. But they always take more than
they leave by the basic nature of the vampire process of inconspicuous
but inexorable consumption. The vampire converts quality-live blood,
vitality, youth, talent-into quantity-food and time for himself. He
perpetrates the most basic betrayal of the spirit, reducing all human
dreams to his shit. And that's the wrongest wrong a man can be.

Personal immortality in a physical body is impossible, since a physical
body exists in time and time is that which ends. When someone says he
wants to live forever, he forgets that forever is a time word. All
three-dimensional immortality projects, to say the least, are
ill-advised, since they always immerse the aspirant deeper in time.

The tiresome concept of personal immortality is predicated on the
illusion of some unchangeable precious essence: greedy old MEEEEEEEE
forever. But as the Buddhists say, there is no MEEEEEEEE, no unchanging
ego.

What we think of as our ego is defensive reaction, just as the symptoms
of an illness-fever, swelling, sweating-are the body's reaction to an
invading organism. Our beloved ego, arising from the rotten weeds of
lust and fear and anger, has no more continuity that a fever sweat.
There is no ego; only a shifting process as unreal as the Cities of the
Odor Eaters that dissolve in rain. A moment's introspection demonstrates
that we are not the same as we were a year ago or a week ago. "What ever
possessed me to do that?"

A step toward rational immortality is to break down the concept of a
separate personal, and therefore inexorably mortal, ego. This opens many
doors. Your spirit could reside in a number of bodies, not as some
hideous parasite draining the host, but as a helpful little visitor.
"Roger the Lodger . . don't take up much room . . show you a trick or
two . . never overstay my welcome.

"Take fifty photos of the same person over an hour. Some of them will
look so unlike the subject as to be unrecognizable. And some of them
will look like some other person. "Why, he looks just like Khrushchev
with one gold tooth peeking out.

"The illusion of a separate, inviolable identity limits your perceptions
and confines you in time. You live in other people and other people live
in you- "visiting," we call it-and of course it's ever so much easier
with one's Clonies.

When I first heard about cloning I thought, what a fruitful concept:
why, one could be in a hundred different places at once and experience
everything the other clones did. I am amazed at the outcry against this
good thing not only from men of the cloth but also from scientists, the
very scientists whose patient research has brought cloning within our