I made this quote up 30 years ago and have been seeing it pop up around here and there.
"I don't want freedom of religion, I want Freedom FROM religion".
I always thought it would make a nice bumper sticker but was too lazy to do it.
It's a ritualized panic about death. Thats what it is, really. Panicked people do and say the craziest shit. I would be more terrified of the idea of there being a place in which I have to continue spending the rest of eternity, conscious. But then again, we know almost nothing about life and or even the universe. That lack of knowledge is our source of the discomfort about death, essentially.
It's tough to admit even to yourself that all you are and all you have worked and striven for will mean nothing in the end but if you can look at the scale large enough you will see that in the end nothing matters and with that knowledge comes freedom.
Even the smallest action has significance in this endless multiverse of ours. Travel back in time and you could profoundly change the future with tiny decisions. If you were to travel back in time millions of years ago and step on a bug, it could change the entire future of humanity. And the further back into the past you go, the bigger the future-changing impact becomes... So even a single insignificant ant will have significantly formed the future, billions of years from now, through his tiny actions.
I would even go as far as to wager that each atom is something without which the universe could not exist if they were not where and what they were supposed to be. Everything in existence is working together towards the common goal of "keeping the game running".
I have had a similar view that everything from the creation of the universe is a wave that has eminated from that one point and all we do as a bunch of particles within this force is effect the waves behind and in front of us by either increasing or decreasing those waves intensities with our decisions and movements.
But even though, in the end it all comes to a halt and starts all over again from zero.
*yeah I've done alot of psychedelics in my day.
"Everything in the universe is ... is ... is made of one element, which is a note, a single note. Atoms are really vibrations, you know, which are extensions of THE BIG NOTE ... Everything's one note. Everything, even the ponies. The note, however, is the ultimate power, but see, the pigs don't know that, the ponies don't know that ..."
Spider: We are ... actually the same note, but ...
John: But different octave.
Spider: Right. We are 4,928 octaves below the big note.
Monica: Are ya ... are you trying to tell me that ... that this whole universe revolves around one note?
Spider: No, it doesn't revolve around it; that's what it is. It's one note.
Spider: Everybody knows that lights are notes. Light, light, is just a vibration of the note, too. Everything is.
Monica: That one note makes everything else so insignificant.