I just re-watched Aronofsky’s The Fountain. [For a synopsis/review go here]. I was struck by a line that Izzi tells Tommy she heard from a Mayan guide: “Death is the road to awe.” According to Izzi, the guide shared that when his father died a tree grew on his grave. His father became part of the tree–bark and blossom. When the birds ate of the tree, his father took flight with the birds. The guide concluded: “Death was his road to awe.”

This phrase stuck with me because it pulled me in two seemingly opposite directions. On the one hand, it made me roll my metaphorical eyes. Something about it sounds like a cross between a New Age aphorism and a line you would read in the liner notes of an emo album. Death is the road to awe? What does that mean? Death is the road to nothing. Only the living are in awe of Daddy’s cells in birdy bellies. And what about those who don’t “become” trees? “Don’t worry Honey, Daddy became a thistle, under which a pack of stanky weasels made their nest!” Death is the road to aweful.

On the other hand, perhaps death does help to create a road to awe, or at least, help engender a posture of awe. I think of the insight that non-being is part of being. Humans are aware of the proximity of non-being and impending negation, and this creates anxiety. But are anxiety and awe so far apart? Rilke writes, “For beauty is nothing but/ the beginning of terror, that we are still able to bear . . .” Death, as the Unknown, is a necessary horizon for awe.

Of course, awe is a state of consciousness. My spleen does not feel awe. As far as I know, neither do the bacteria in my stomach. There is a process that I am a part of that never dies. This was the Mayan guide’s point. But normally this does little to comfort for my conscious mind, my ego. However, there are those moments where death does not seem so scary. There are those people–like Izzi–who make friends with the dark. They face the horizon of non-being and let go, not only of their ego, but with their ego. This can sometimes happen, as it did with Izzi, through a state of awe.

I am not sure how this works. But I do think that an acceptance of death can come through awe, through a state of wonder, where the ego releases its fears and is filled with Fear–with “terror that we are still able to bear.” I get an inkling of this state when I watch Aranofsky’s film, which prompts me to reformulate Izzi’s line: “Awe is the road to death.”