There's Pain in the Fear of the Stone

"Everyone has to judge from himself," he said, flushing. "Absolute freedom will occur only when it doesn't matter whether one lives or dies. That's the goal for everyone." 

"The goal? But then no one might want to live?" 

"No, no one," he said decisively. 

"Man fears death because he loves life-that's how I understand it," I observed, "and that's what nature decreed." 

Manuscript of Dostoevsky's Devils

"That's disgusting-it's where the whole deception lies!" he cried, his eyes flashing. "Life is pain, life is fear, and man is unhappy. Everything is now pain and fear. Man loves life now because he loves pain and fear. That's how it's been. Life is given in return for pain and fear now, and that's the whole deception. But man is still not really man. There will come a new man, happy and proud. he who doesn't care whether he lives or dies-he'll be the new man. He who conquers pain and fear-will become God. And then the old God will no longer exist." 

"Doesn't that mean then, that you think God exists?" 

"He doesn't exist, yet He does. There's no pain in the stone, but there's pain in the fear of the stone. God is the pain of fear of death. He who conquers pain and fear-will become God. Then a new life will dawn; there'll be a new man; everything will be new . . . History will be divided into two parts: from the gorilla to the destruction of God, and from the destruction of God to . . ." 

"To the gorilla?" 

Dostoevsky, Fyodor, and Katz, Michael R., trans. Devils. Oxford University Press, 1999, 121

To the gorilla, indeed.