circuitbird:

It’s worth noting that both SEELE and Gendo have mechanisms for eliminating the fundamental Death Anxiety in ways that Ernest Becker suggests are doomed to fail.

The terror of the mind/body dualism – which, in Evangelion, is symbolically represented by the Fruit of Knowledge and Fruit of Life – cannot be resolved through carnal reverence nor traditional religious means. Both are alternate versions of personal delusion in which existential meaning is sought through faulty channels: the body, which by definition cannot lend itself to spiritual transcendence, and monolithic faith systems, which are themselves imposed hero systems that cater deceitfully to the fear of oblivion they intend to absolve.

SEELE = a symbol for the classical religious pathway, in its singular control and perversion of spiritual goals. This is echoed by the imagery that represents SEELE, from the angel-like appearance of the Mass Production Evas to the biblical/numerical significance of the seven organization members.

Gendo Ikari’s agenda = a symbol for the bodily pathway, since his desire to reunite with Yui is precisely that: desire. His goals are rooted in the corporeal dimensions of human love and attachment, and he is clearly not satisfied with her occupation of a purely spiritual space, or at least not one that is separate from him inside Unit 01. His obsession with this physicality is so all-consuming that he creates a clone of her – Rei – to serve as the body vehicle for his ultimate plans.

The focus is then on Shinji, the despairing boy, the individual, to discover his own purpose and existential value for himself. And his only hope for doing this is by directly confronting the terror of oblivion, the terror of death and of fundamental aloneness, in all its forms. Only then can he truly transcend. There is a reason why he is the hero of the story.