The Final Choice

Note: This revised edition was first published under the title The Final Choice: Playing the Survival Game. These are dangerous times and history seems to be accelerating—toward what? It’s starting to look like a big crash. No, not a clash of civilizations but civilization itself crashing. There are world trends propelling us towards doomsday: the lunacy of nuclear brinkmanship, the inexorable march toward climate catastrophe, the savage economic inequality that reigns over a suffering Earth—none of these bode well for the future. The more pronounced these trends, the greater the need to take stock of our options. This book looks at consciousness facing the threat of annihilation. Beyond politics, it examines some forgotten forces at our disposal in the quest for transcendence. It attempts to sketch a mythology of transcendence, based on the raw materials of human experience, ordinary and extraordinary. The meaning of death changes from culture to culture, and is evolving as we speak. The modern near-death experience transforms the meaning of death into something quite different from the mainline view of death as the extinction of consciousness. Near-death phenomena imply new dimensions of meaning—and as well, a new dimension of existence. It opens the door into an expanded world of consciousness, upending scientific physicalism. The NDE is a discovery as revolutionary in psychology as quantum mechanics was in physics. In both cases we have an enigma, a window to alternate realities, and metaphysical shock therapy. The Final Choice goes behind the surface-meaning of death. The search leads to the re-discovery of the ancient philosopher, Heraclitus, who said that no matter how far you search, you will never find the boundaries of Mind. Facing the looming collapse of world civilization, the question of a possible global near-death experience arises. Major world-trends today force us to reflect on these awesome possibilities.