I remember an atheist once describing a near-death experience in great detail, and I paid attention because hey, they're the least likely to shade it with expectations. (I thought it was 2 when he had that extreme medical test in Ann Arbor, Michigan a few years back, but I've spent a couple hours searching through his journals already and no dice. It's kind of not worth it since this is just another one of my rambling half-assed journals :p)

The reason it interests me is it was a near-death experience that eats all others for breakfast... or at least gives them context.

Basically, he (whichever he, I thought I knew the source, now I'm not so sure) described it was every memory, every emotion, every thought you ever had, blurring together into one mush. It wasn't exactly unpleasant, but all the mental defenses we normally keep up just weren't there either.

As I've thought about it over the years, it makes sense of every Heaven and every Hell.

"My life flashed before my eyes" - yup, that's exactly what this is, every memory at the same time.

"You'll be reunited will all your loved ones" - yes, everyone you ever remembered is there, in your unfiltered memories.

If you lived a good life, there will be mostly happy memories and it will be "Heaven". If you had a bad life, there will be mostly unpleasant memories and it will be "Hell."

That's it. This might very well be THE Elephant every religion was talking about but never quite grasping the reality of.

The goal, then, is to live your life, so that at the end, the sum total of your memories is enjoyable to rewatch. (well, if your goal is for the final 14 minutes of existence to be pleasant as you fade into oblivion, that is... I can think of many reasons for living a life that's fun at the time but would produce an undesirable sum total.) So that the sum total of your emotions and feelings you've ever felt is happy. This can be as much attitude as life experience, some people who have had hard lives full of struggle emerge seemingly all the happier for it. Someone with a life of priviledged luxury who bitched about everything is loading themselves up with memories of being unhappy.

There's none of the unfairness of doing a life of bad deeds and then converting or being forgiven at the end. This bank of memories to be experienced is built up one moment at a time. You can't fake it. You can't cheat.

It's not fair either. Someone who was abused for years will have a lifetime of memories of abuse. Those girls abucted by that Castro guy... when they die their experience will be dominated by the long time spent with him... it's dicey whether someone can ever rack up enough good memories to overwhelm such a large chunk of their life. You can be victimized so bad, you go to "Hell" for it.

But then again... there's no painless ways to die.