He is only thirty-two, but already, he cannot get the thought of death out of his mind. It isn’t that he is afraid of it or is in any way suicidal. It is mostly just curiosity.
His line of thought goes like this: How exactly does one die? How would one transition from life to death? He sees (in a sort of feverish vision) a wall of fog and, beyond that, men and women who had suffered but had exited life gracefully.
The brain has to shut down first. Freddie tries to imagine what that would be like. Throughout life, the brain is shaped by learning and memories. It ceaselessly incorporates new experiences to help us navigate the world. When it finally shuts down, will we hear the last chirp of birds or see a flash of the last sunset?
And then there will be nothing.
But there also won’t be anything to register that nothing. Nothing at all will be or can be missed. There will be no pain or pining. Nor will there be any fear. It's just a radio turned off, if you will.
Yet he can’t help but think that something will still walk away from the dead radio.
There is a part of him that has always stayed unmoved throughout his life, and he suspects his eventual transition will have something to do with that. It may mean that when everything has been wiped clean, he can walk quietly away, at least partially. He wouldn’t call it spirit because he does not know what that is. As far as he can tell, it has stood apart and stayed unconnected: a quiet observer, as it were, who keeps an eye on things but does not participate.
He thought it had to do with his upbringing, something that could be traced back to a turbulent childhood. But it isn’t that. It is just the nature of things. There is a part of him that is unaffected by the whirlwind of activities around him. Is that how his awareness will slip away at death? By way of a natural callousness?
Freddie cannot quite put it in words. But he knows deep down that the point isn’t about what one sees but who or what is seeing it. The nerves and even the brain are mere conduits.
Can the nerves that convey the signals for a sunset also create the mind that sees it? Can you prepare a meal and have the food eat itself? In the end, something will walk away from the tangle of dead brain and nerves. He is almost certain of it.
(Excerpted from A Manual for Dissolution in The Natural Trajectory of Human Consciousness)
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