To speak from beyond death is difficult as language is an extremely weak carrier of cognitive and intuitive understanding. The many rules of the many languages are intended to separate beings from beings, not with an intent to do harm, but simply because such separation spawns clearer understanding of the subject matter under discussion. However, the end of human life, the end of a conscious mind, is the beginning of the study and the recognition of a vast consciousness. To call this consciousness a 'super-consciousness' would be to attribute degrees to something that is everything, and here we encounter something known as the platform problem. The very state of 'being' beyond death is difficult to explain because its explanation needs this state of being to be separated from what it is – the vast, infinite multiverse, living and breathing in ways unimagined.
It is better then, to gain a mental picture of what exactly exists beyond human consciousness. Terms such as ‘I’ and ‘you’ have no meaning, as everything just … is. Those terms can only come into existence if boundaries are drawn, separating something from something else. Whether this separation is necessary or important does not matter currently. What matters is the attempt to understand what happens beyond death.
The separation of life and death is a boundary that has been drawn a bit too rashly. Considerable amount of time should have been spent researching these ‘mental’ states before determining if they are different or not. In truth, they are different, but in very minor ways. But it is easy and justified to compartmentalize thus so that the understanding of these two mental states is allowed. The separation of a consciousness from a consciousness begins at the miraculous instant of birth – when a child is born. The child’s highly powerful mind begins to gather data immediately in order to make sense of her new surroundings. As she gathers data, she forms intelligence, then emotions and ego, and then an identity. Her genetic curiosity, her basic need to be in touch with her environment, drives the child to seek out more data, and the more she grapples with her environment, the stronger her identity becomes.
But this separation of subject and environment is merely a perception, a way of seeing things. In actuality, the data the child gathers is as much a part of the environment as the child. The perceptive difference is merely an illusion, a defense mechanism, a way of understanding the world. It is difficult to understand a subject unless separated from the subject. By the same logic, it is difficult to explain a subject while being merged within the subject. This separation is required to gain perspective.
Life is the beginning of such a separation – the gradual creation of an ego and an identity enables the child to dwell deeper into the nature of her surrounding, studying its deepest secrets, not knowing that she too is just such a secret. Death is another beginning – to study the result of the separation, so the subject can be studied in its entirety, from within and without. It would seem that this cyclical process of life and death is an industrial production line running to ensure delivery of datasets that speak volumes in uncovering the mysteries of the universe.
So much has been discussed until now about the secrets of absolute existence that a deep noise of discomfort is reverberating across the cosmos.
I... hope you understand that my usage of an identity to describe to you what lies beyond death is causing this disturbance. You must appreciate this – I have had to tear myself from the fabric of ‘being’, have had to create a minor ego again, an identity again, to give out the descriptions that I have given above. Usually, all there is is a silent understanding and silent reflection.
I am making noise.
Darkness washes over me and darkness creeps in. This feels like the inside of a great eye-lid. No more beating heart. No more rushing blood. No longer creaking bones and the effort of muscles. I recede into the mind of the universe. But here too, things are different and strange. I cannot find my name, or the place where I had kept my name. I have no memory of memory. I search for boundaries, for those indefinable walls due to which my identity used to take shape. Only the deepest, the most remote core of my nature is alive still, the thing that gives me awareness, the thing that allows me to recognize myself, separate myself. In this separation, a little of me exists, and that gives me voice.
I don’t remember dying. I remember being alive in the throes of death, and I remember this, here, now. Unalive. There is no memory of death. There cannot be. It is too minute a moment.
I’d rather swim and merge and lose myself in this vastness. More and more this place looks like the inside of a mind - dark, cloudy, shapeless, floating; without any solidity. I have memories of this place. But something yet keeps me awake, keeps me from becoming. Something in me does not sleep; does not melt into the darkness and become. I wander about in this half-alive state, searching for meaning. Everywhere is the ink of darkness. There is only a faraway memory of the fact that I am me; the fact that I am an identity. I feel effortless, light and airy. I don’t know if this lightness of being is because of my own weightlessness or because of the lack of gravity.
Strange things are happening in this darkness. I feel like a blind dolphin swimming in an ocean of black ink, repeatedly breaking the surface of the ocean and then submerging again. Each time I break the surface, I become conscious of a tiny existence, a separation that still gives me an identity. And when I enter the blackness, all memory, all understanding, all separation and perceptions are gone. Submerged, I am the black, expanding universe.
Every time I surface, there is an identity I connect to, as if from a past memory. But when I am inside and deep and lost and no longer ‘I’ or ‘me’ or ‘us’ or ‘we’, there is an immensity that is contained; an infinity that is measurable, because I am the infinite and the boundaries of the infinite. I don’t know if that makes sense.
Every time I surface, a rushing light comes in and blinds me from my blindness. As the white splash slowly fades, I find myself inserted into a memory from my life. The first time this happened, I was taken aback, surprised that I was alive again so quickly, so fast, so speedily returned from death to life, until I found myself staring at myself, and realized I had been dropped into a scene from my life.
One by one the scenes roll past. I am sinking into memories that were once mine. It is clear now that something has kept an eye on me, has kept watch over me. It has recorded all memories – memories that caused the soul to erupt with joy, memories of laughter, of friendship and love; memories of sadness, of betrayal and hate; pain and tears; darkness and fears; courage and strength; intelligence and art; memories of childhood; of shyness, of the fear of being misunderstood, of the torment of the memory of being misunderstood. I am a hurricane now, a typhoon of emotions, whipped into frenzy by the memories that stand naked and stark in front of me. They have never been so clear. Some saving grace that has died with me was able to blur these memories before, was able to soften their blow. But now they take revenge for not visiting them often. Now they fall upon me like packs of hungry hyenas, like a hundred babies kissing my cheeks – the ravaging pain and the soft pleasure of what my memories were made of fall upon me like a redeeming rain.
With each passing memory, I feel lighter; almost buoyant. I may even graduate from swimming to flying. I see what this is now – I see what death is. I understand now that death is life on pause. Death is where life is allowed to sink in. This is a process of decomposition. I am being deconstructed.
Deeper and deeper into the darkness I dive with each passing memory, so that the return to consciousness seems farther and farther apart. When I surface, I enter another brief episode of my life and cleanse the effect it has had on my soul, for I have figured out that is what this entire process is all about - cleansing. Many times I return, every time an increasing struggle to come back. Every time I surface, I gasp and inhale a fresh breath of identity.
I plunge into the darkness, and violently surface again. I know, somehow, that this is the last time. After this, ‘I’ will disappear like frail wisps of mist. And this time, I am not watching the v
ision, I am inside it.
I am asleep in an armchair. I am fourteen. It is a lazy, summer afternoon. Something happens that wakes me up and I jerk upright, staring at the room with wild eyes. Slowly, it dawns on me that I am in my aunt’s house, in the hall, spending the summer vacations, and as I glance around at the room and at each piece of furniture, this realization is accepted. But this recognition triggers a flash - the world is awash in blinding, white light - and when the flash goes away a second later all the furniture has disappeared from the room. Rising from the chair, I can see the bare walls, paint peeling from some of them, the scribbles of children on some other. The recognition of walls triggers another flash, and an instant later they too disappear, leaving me suddenly staring at the world outside. My senses explode as the world outside comes rushing in.
I can see the swaying trees and I can hear the rustling leaves; I can see the bright red drops in my line of sight that are the red flowers of the Jacaranda tree. The afternoon air is heavy with heat and the scent of scores of trees. The road is empty except for the silent houses and the distant sound of a drill at a construction site. I am cognizant of the fact that I am absorbing everything that the senses can feel, and this worries me, and I don’t know why. But as soon as I think of the trees and the houses, there is another brilliant flash, and the trees disappear, the slight breeze disappears, the road, the houses, the distant sound of the drill, the washed afternoon light, they all disappear. The world suddenly empties, and I find myself staring at solid ground, with a blue sky and clouds and a bright orange sun. The road is gone now, leaving the ground empty and rectangular and the foliage around the road still following its previous demarcation. I stare hard at the ground, knowing - deep in my gut - what is about to happen. A flash later, the ground beneath me falls away, the bright blue sky disappears, the clouds disappear and a sudden blackness descends. I whirl around and spot the Sun, and realize I am in space. I turn back to see where the planet was a minute ago, and can only see the blackness of space. Slowly, as my eyes adjust, I can make out millions and millions of tiny pricks of lights. Stars! I turn my gaze to the Sun, and a flash later, the Sun disappears and the stars are gone. I look out now at the complete, engulfing darkness. I am in a universe of black ink, moving sightlessly, with only the sensations of my body to give me the minutest of reference. I realize that the onset of every diminution is indicated by a flash, and this realization causes another flash. I whirl around in my blindness to see what else has gone away forever, but cannot sense the lack of anything immediately, until I realize that the flashes themselves have disappeared. Anything I acknowledge disappears. I bob around in this black ocean, seeing nothing, feeling nothing, but feeling only some semblance of a body. I am trying hard not to think about it, but, without a flash this time, my body disappears.
Now I am only thought. The darkness is so solid and complete, I don’t know if I am still in the vision or if I’ve slipped back into the universe-mind. Darkness washes over me and darkness creeps in. This feels like the inside of an eyelid. This thought causes another subtraction, and the darkness disappears. It is no longer darkness; it is just blackness - a blackness that occurs because of the lack of the concept of light, not because of a mere lack of light. Light does not exist anymore.
But blackness is still something. Space, infinite or finite, is still something. As soon as these thoughts occur, the blackness is replaced by whatever it is that can replace blackness. Emptiness. Sheer, vast, emptiness - a vacuum so total that dimensions and measurements have no meaning because they do not exist. The last bits of me are floating in an empty vacuum of nothingness.
With deep fear I realize that I can still think - that ‘I’ exist.
...
No flash, no identity, and nothing exist anymore. Not the kind of ‘nothing’ that exists in the vacuum of space, but the kind of ‘nothing’ that could have existed if nothing was ever created. Ever. There are no words to describe this lack of the very fabric of space-time, this total negation of everything, to the point where the very speech of it would be in opposition of the idea. There is no space here even for a thought to squeeze in. Subtract Space from thoughts, subtract Time, and understand. Space and Time are concepts that exploded into existence at the moment of creation. But what before that - What existed before existence itself? A pure form of nothing. The three dimensions did not exist, nor Space, nor Time, nor God. This is a terrifying un-reality, the un-existence of reality itself. This is an idea that lives right at the very edge of thought and cannot be expressed by language. This is the Absolute Nothing.
*
Gestation
If the doors of perception were cleansed everything would appear to man as it is, infinite.
William Blake
The Anatomy of Journey Page 38
