Death is very interesting. It's seems like the worst possible fate to befall us, like the ultimate evil in a way. Why does there have to be death? Why couldn't we live forever?
Indeed, there are many philosophies and religions that promise life after death. In some of them, if we've been "good" we get to go to some heavenly realm after death and stay there for eternity. In others, we reincarnate after death and get to stick around that way.
But human history is replete with pleasant and consoling notions that turned out not to be true.
We thought for a while that our planet was the center of the universe—that's how important humans were. It turns out that we're orbiting a rather ordinary star which is located out in the rural hinterland of the galaxy, and that our galaxy itself is one of innumerable others. So much for that theory.
Another consoling notion is that we were uniquely created by God, across a bright dividing line from the rest of creation. It turns out we and the apes had a common ancestor, and that we evolved out of the primordial goo just like everything else.
It was thought that we humans could uniquely think. But computers are becoming more and more adept every day at manipulating symbols (which is all that thinking is), and the day can be foreseen when they think more clearly and at a greater depth than we do.
Most of our consoling notions seem to have something to do with how important we are. And one by one they're turning out to be false.
So maybe we're not as important as we thought, and maybe when we die we just die. At first that seems depressing, but whether something seems depressing has nothing to do with whether it's so or not.
When we step on an anthill we don't ask ourselves what heaven the ants go to. They're just ants; they go out of existence, and that's that. But somehow we're supposed to be different; when we die we can't just go out of existence. No, we're too important to the universe; we have to go on existing somehow.
But perhaps the most obvious thing is the truest: Maybe when we die we simply go out of existence, like everything else. Perhaps death doesn't lead to something else, some other life somewhere, but simply to non-existence, like the ants.
Maybe, maybe not, but it's certainly a possibility.
And if it's so, that we simply go out of existence when we die, then death seems even more to be feared. Now this is it, just this one brief life, and then the light goes out.
Or does it? There's another possibility, the one people talk about who have woken up. When people wake up, they realize that they don't exist as this separate somebody, and never did. They realize that the whole "personal life" is a fiction built out of and solidified by continual self-thought.
Wake-up is also experienced as a death, because who we thought we were dies. The whole notion of a separate somebody with a separate life is seen to be inherently empty of meaning. It's the last and most fundamental consoling notion, and it also turns out not to be true.
Realizing this is indeed a death; it's the death of everything. The death of this supposed somebody and all of his or her consoling notions. Death. Non-existence.
But the interesting part is that this death happens before the physical body dies. The physical body-mind goes on existing just as before, functioning and doing things just as before. Then we see that we were never doing our actions either, and we were never making any choices either, because there was nobody around to make them. That all of our actions were "being done" through us.
More death, more non-existence. The death of the chooser, the decider, the controller of one's personal destiny and all that.
All ideas whatsoever, all notions whatsoever, simply go out the window. And it's not that they're replaced by other ideas. All ideas, stories, beliefs whatsoever are seen to be inherently empty, and devoid of meaning except for whatever meaning we choose to invest into them.
So the awakened person has "died" in some profound sense, and yet they go on living. Things go on happening. Life goes on as before.
But something has transformed too, and that is the basic perspective about life. Seen from the perspective of the non-locatable, life becomes magic. It's this magical phenomenon that keeps happening.
Without the investment and attachment into the thought-stream, the present moment in all its ordinariness becomes paramount. The smallest thing becomes awesome. As Blake put it, "to hold infinity in the palm of your hand."
To someone who has awakened, death is no longer an enemy because who they thought they were has already died, and what's left in that vacuum is the presence of the non-locatable.
And the non-locatable loves itself with a love that doesn't distinguish between this and that; it loves itself everywhere equally. How can it love one face of itself more than another? It can't; it's all the same. It's all one substance, one energy, one unfathomable mystery, doing everything.
And the non-locatable isn't trying to get something because it's already everything; consequently its love is non-addressed and non-conditional. As Jesus put it, it "makes its sun to shine upon the just and the unjust, and sends its rain to saint and sinner alike."
And that is "you." The infinite shows up through you.
When you weep because of injustice, that is the infinite weeping. And when you care for someone who is ill, that is the infinite caring for them. When you take action to make life better for somone else, that is the infinite acting for itself.
And death is seen as the ultimate friend, because the knowledge that the infinite can only appreciate itself through this particular circuitry for a little while longer lends a peculiar poinancy to every moment.
If we can receive it, that is death's gift to "us" in this eternal moment.
—jim sloman, 2/20/01 for Feb 20
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