5.1.4.1
THE FINAL ANAGNORISIS
( The silence of ...** has become eternal.
( The Norm remains as the source
that will never cease to inform and to
inspire. )*** )*
It is the final anagnorisis,
the recognition of all-neutralness,
which brings everything to rest, and
whose sole accompaniment is complete silence.
| * |
to be commenced with in the case of death |
| ** |
a name or, for instance, our
sibling |
| *** |
may be deleted |
Since dying is something that all of us will do, or that will happen to
all of us, an observance held for a person who has died, does in no way
discriminate between different sorts of people, and is therefore not
exclusivistic.
Maybe, being born is also something that happened to all of us, but it
happened to us as human bodies, not as human people.
When we speak of
"denominational observances",
it is people who perform a certain ceremony or who follow a certain custom,
in this case because they adhere to a particular denominational
doctrine. This is something that can be said of a person
who has just died, or of a person who is voluntarily going to
join us, it is not something that can be said of an infant.
To have oneself cremated or buried under the denomination of
the Ananorm is not an
intrinsic duty; what is
the intrinsic duty of a neutral-inclusivist is that
'e
must not allow
'imself or
'er fellow-adherents to be
cremated or buried under an incompatible denomination.
Thus, no neutral-inclusivist shall have the emblem of a supernaturalist,
exclusivist and/or
extremist
ideology on 'er urn or grave, nor
shall such an emblem be present at 'er funeral.
It is only when a common ceremony is held for people of different
ideological backgrounds that the emblem of another ideology may be
displayed on a footing of equality with the
nanacatena or another adequate
symbol emblematic of the
Ananormative ideals.
In the event that we do part from a dead person under the
denomination of
the Norm, the ceremony will
usually, but not necessarily, be held before or during the cremation or
burial of the corpse. Neither eulogistic nor dyslogistic speeches should
be delivered at such a ceremony. Instead of eulogizing the dead
person as in many religious or exclusivist observances,
the Dao of Nanhonore may be
read or sung, a variant of the Dao, any other canonical prose poem,
and/or any poem or piece of prose whose content does not violate the
principles of the Ananormative order.
The
neutral-inclusive funeral
ceremony should be centered on one or more neutral-inclusive themes.
The first, and perhaps sole, person to choose or to have chosen these
themes is the person for whom the observance is held 'imself.
This includes the choice of the (variant of the) Dao of Nanhonore and/or
another poem or piece of prose, and the music to be played, if any.
Should the death of the person (or the deaths of the persons) concerned be
specially connected with the struggle for the realization of Ananormative
ideals, it may fit the occasion very well to read the last one or two
(noncanonical) paragraphs of the chapter Life and Nonlife.
This is
the passage in the Book of
Fundamentals which precedes the Dao of Nanhonore.
Someone who wants to be cremated or buried under the neutral-inclusive
denomination may also wish the ceremony to take place in complete silence,
and possibly in (almost) complete dark as well.
If the ceremony does not take place in complete silence, the reading or
singing of (a variant of) the Final Anagnorisis will naturally invoke at
least a moment of silence.
The term anagnorisis in the final anagnorisis
stands for recognition of (all-)neutrality. Symbolically, it is
when all turbulence has ceased, when all impertinences are ignored,
when all disputes have been settled, when all doubt has been removed,
that pure perfection finally is, or can be, recognized, that is,
anagnorized. Ultimately there is no false or irrelevant anagnorisis,
and it is ancient symbolism (or knowledge) that every
true anagnorisis ushers in stillness. It ushers in a stillness
which supersedes all physical or emotional unrest and all
uncertainty of belief. Not only are unneutrality, irrelevance
and falsehood absent when anagnorisis is brought about, neutrality,
relevance and truth are, then, not even spoken of anymore.
It is this silence, the silence observed after the Final Anagnorisis has
been read or sung, which is the most solemn way of marking the end of a
person's corporeal existence, the end of both pleasure and pain, when all
personal hopes have been extinguished and all personal fears stilled.
