Last night, I woke up with a start and found myself standing next to my bed. I was momentarily confused, and my breathing had become labored. I was battling dizziness. To not fall, I quickly sat down. Yet, my heart would not stop racing. I wondered to myself, “Am I dying?”
Intellectually, I knew that it could happen to anyone, and it could damn well happen to me right there and then—a heart attack or stroke. But I wasn't particularly afraid. Instead, I began to feel what a waste it had been. Not that I didn’t do this or that thing in my life or was having regret. But rather, this death that I was about to slip into, this nothingness, I hardly knew it. It was as though I was about to enter a strange country when it should feel like home.
Something is off. Way off. Have I lived my life so that I am misled to the point that I do not know what I am and what my native terrain is? It seemed absurd and pitiful. I didn’t die last night, so I still have a chance to address it.
But how?
I cannot imagine death while living. Nor can I see what will come after death: the nothingness or emptiness that they talk about. When I try to peer into death, I see objects. A chair here and there. Maybe some hair on the floor. A bird sitting on a fence, not looking at me. But not nothingness.
I believe that nothing will be left of me or, more precisely, my ego. My body will be ashes; my mind a puff of air. All that I have achieved in this life will have vaporized. It will be as though I have never existed.
Annihilated.
It seems painful, but maybe it isn’t like that.
Have I not always coexisted with this nothingness, even if I cannot clearly picture it? Didn't I always have a feeling of that?
There is always stillness in me, that immovable something that I feel most acutely when I am exhausted or in a state of hopelessness.
Is that stillness the universal consciousness they talk about? It could be, though I have no way to be sure.
Consciousness, being the witness, is necessarily without opinion or judgment. Leaning into the stillness within, am I also beyond judgment?
Consciousness or stillness may go on forever, but, sad to say, it has nothing to do with me.
Am I a mere trespasser in the widespread consciousness? A squatter?
Why am I so ill-prepared for annihilation? I have lived so many years, you would think that I would be mentally prepared and not be caught off-guard.
If I am conscious and aware, when can’t I be aware of the nothingness that reigns in death’s own country?
It is plain that life, such as it is, has no lasting meaning despite the constant stream of nonessentials and distractions. Such admonitions as get high, get low, feel life, get rich, embroil in romance, endless earfuls of what you need to do, which you know as well as I do that they are just distractions, are pointless.
Even as a kid, I knew that there would be nothing in the end. So why can’t I just turn around and see nothingness or emptiness, like seeing the familiar face of an old friend?
Writer Carlos Casteneda once said death was our adviser, and it sat on our left shoulder.
But I can’t see death on my shoulder. It seems a lot closer. I may not see it like the face of an old friend, but it is there in me, my constant companion.
It sometimes feels as though the faster the world spins, particularly in an uneasy direction, the calmer I am.
When my son was very young, I was out on a hilltop with him, looking down over a ravine, and I thought to myself how that would be a good place to die.
I am still lacking in understanding.
Last night would have been just as good a time to die as any.
It would have been unceremonious, anti-climatic, and fitting for the end of dreams.
What is death-the-adviser telling me right now, and do I hear?
Very softly, it whispers in my ear: “You are a squatter.”
If I am my ego, then my ego is a squatter.
Here is a series of five related questions:
What comes after the ego?
Is there no death other than ego death?
Will what is left, post-death, illuminate the inexpressible terrain? But who or what will see it?
Will nothingness becomes no longer nothingness following ego death?
Is our ego the source of both blindness and illusion?
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