The End Of Consciousness And Death

[Steven]

When I was about five, I remember not being able to fall asleep one night. Something was bothering me. For the first time, my five year old mind was grasping the concept of finality, the end of life, death. I still remember the inner feeling I had that night. At first it started off as a mild anxiety, kind of when you lose a job, and the economy is in a bad shape, and there is this fear of the unknown and all the problems lurking if a job doesn’t  come up soon. 

Except, my fears were more ‘serious and real’, and multiplying, and kept growing every minute. Soon, I was in agony. Questions kept arising -‘ How will it feel when I’m dying?  How will they know that I’m dead? What if I look dead to everyone but I’m still alive?’ Then the inner voice would provide the answer –‘Relax, you are only five! There is plenty to go. Humans live a hundred years.’ But then another less assuring thought would pop up – ‘Even after 1000 years the day will come.’ My mum was asleep, and I was afraid to wake her up. She would get pissed if I woke her up. She had to go to work early. ‘She probably wouldn’t understand’- I thought. I could not sleep. I don’t remember

That was my worst fear/agony I have experienced while growing up. In fact after this night, I know I changed. I don’t think I smiled for weeks. I remember being so worried. I remember going on the weekend with mum to visit grandma on her farm, on the outskirts of a small town. She had a cow, chickens and cats. I remember looking at the cow, about 100 meters from the house, carelessly grazing in the field, swinging the tail, probably swatting at flies. Then I’d go alone to see the kittens, a few weeks old. They looked careless even more. I remember my tears welling up, watching those kittens playing in a cardboard box. I was worried that someone would see me cry. In those days, I was afraid of being seen crying. I don’t know why, maybe I was worried that I would be punished, but I don’t remember. I had this rule to make sure it stayed secret. I could not handle it, I was about to cry. I remember putting my head in the shallow box with the kittens, and my tears started flowing. Confused kittens were moving around in the box, while their tiny warm fluffy bodies were wiping my tears. I felt better after this cry with the kittens, but milder emotions about my own end  followed me for quite some time.

I know that a lot of us go through very similar stages when growing up. The fact is that I could not grasp the end of consciousness. It was not a simple fear of death. It was a combination of fear that consciousnesses can not die, but also fear of process of dying, or basically facing death.

I’m wondering if anyone had a similar experience? If so, how long did it last? What did you do?

[Ayla]

@Steven

Might help you to search for this 

Ramana Maharshi

[Prabhaker]

On 3/2/2016 at 10:06 PM, Steven said:

I could not grasp the end of consciousness.

When you are dying, it is not only fear that makes you unconscious; you already have too much unconsciousness – fear only takes away the thin layer of consciousness and you are drowned in your own unconsciousness. 

In meditation, when you are witnessing, you are by and by, without your knowing it, dispelling unconsciousness. You are becoming more and more conscious and a moment comes when your whole being is full of consciousness. This is witnessing. So when death comes, you witness death. When life was there, you witnessed life.

Meditation is a kind of metaphysical dying. Through our becoming familiar with that inner passage, we can relax when it extends into our physical dying. In meditating as in dying we close our eyes (generally); we drop the effort to control and instead relax. In doing that we are leave the outer world for the interior one. We leave the world of ‘the other’ for a state of aloneness.

Our identity as a body, a persona – created by the various positions we may have held, the relationships we are in, by what we have achieved and so on – becomes irrelevant when we move into our inner world.

So meditating provides a natural and a simple way to consciously ‘die before you die’ – to rehearse dying. And of course the more familiar you are with entering meditation the easier it will become and the deeper will be the effect. 

On 3/2/2016 at 10:06 PM, Steven said:

fear of process of dying, or basically facing death.

The fear has reasons. The fear arises because it is always somebody else who dies. You always see death from the outside, and death is an experience of the innermost being. It is just like watching love from the outside. You may watch for years, but you will not come to know anything of what love is. You may come to know the manifestations of love, but not love itself. We know the same about death. Just the manifestations on the surface – the breathing has stopped, the heart has stopped, the man as he used to talk and walk is no more there: just a corpse is lying there instead of a living body.

These are only outer symptoms. Death is the transfer of the soul from one body to another body, or in cases when a man is fully awakened, from one body to the body of the whole universe. It is a great journey, but you cannot know it from the outside. From outside, only symptoms are available; and those symptoms have made people afraid. 

Death happens to you involuntarily: you do not want to die but you have to die. That is why death is a sorrow, a pain, an anguish. And the pain of death is so intense that the only way to bear it is to become unconscious.

A meditator can die consciously. A man who has been going deeper into meditation passes the door of death many times. 

[philosogi]

@Steven Amazing the clarity of your memory at such a young age as well as your self control. Did you continue to have similar thoughts as you got older? 

[Zane]

Honestly, I feel like recently, I've been preparing to die at peace!! I spend time every day making sure to appreciate the day and to truly savor the moment before I die. The weather's been beautiful recently and i'm stopping to immerse myself in the beauty of nature and detach more from success and material gain. I'm making it my highest priority to die happy and with no regrets! 

[Wind]

I'm not sure. I think I knew what death is and that I will die one day, but it didn't seem scary as I was raised as catholic lol.

But what I remember really well is that I would regularly have this deep existential wonder and confusion (usually just before falling asleep) of trying to grasp who I am, how can I exist without ever existed before, how can first person perspective even exist and why I am who I am and not somebody else. These have been really powerful, sad and beautiful experiences. And I think they were related to being afraid of death on some level.

It's funny, now when I remember my childhood, I realize that I was so much closer to enlightenment that I'm now

Edited October 21, 2016 by Wind

[Truth]

I remember when I first became aware that I was going to eventually die, I think 5-6 sounds about right, I had the same experience pretty closely as you. In the middle of the night, except I sat in my hallway crying, I remember that night so vividly, not so much my thoughts but my emotions and thoughts about death.  

[Emerald]

On March 1, 2016 at 11:36 AM, Steven said:

When I was about five, I remember not being able to fall asleep one night. Something was bothering me. For the first time, my five year old mind was grasping the concept of finality, the end of life, death. I still remember the inner feeling I had that night. At first it started off as a mild anxiety, kind of when you lose a job, and the economy is in a bad shape, and there is this fear of the unknown and all the problems lurking if a job doesn’t  come up soon. 

Except, my fears were more ‘serious and real’, and multiplying, and kept growing every minute. Soon, I was in agony. Questions kept arising -‘ How will it feel when I’m dying?  How will they know that I’m dead? What if I look dead to everyone but I’m still alive?’ Then the inner voice would provide the answer –‘Relax, you are only five! There is plenty to go. Humans live a hundred years.’ But then another less assuring thought would pop up – ‘Even after 1000 years the day will come.’ My mum was asleep, and I was afraid to wake her up. She would get pissed if I woke her up. She had to go to work early. ‘She probably wouldn’t understand’- I thought. I could not sleep. I don’t remember

That was my worst fear/agony I have experienced while growing up. In fact after this night, I know I changed. I don’t think I smiled for weeks. I remember being so worried. I remember going on the weekend with mum to visit grandma on her farm, on the outskirts of a small town. She had a cow, chickens and cats. I remember looking at the cow, about 100 meters from the house, carelessly grazing in the field, swinging the tail, probably swatting at flies. Then I’d go alone to see the kittens, a few weeks old. They looked careless even more. I remember my tears welling up, watching those kittens playing in a cardboard box. I was worried that someone would see me cry. In those days, I was afraid of being seen crying. I don’t know why, maybe I was worried that I would be punished, but I don’t remember. I had this rule to make sure it stayed secret. I could not handle it, I was about to cry. I remember putting my head in the shallow box with the kittens, and my tears started flowing. Confused kittens were moving around in the box, while their tiny warm fluffy bodies were wiping my tears. I felt better after this cry with the kittens, but milder emotions about my own end  followed me for quite some time.

I know that a lot of us go through very similar stages when growing up. The fact is that I could not grasp the end of consciousness. It was not a simple fear of death. It was a combination of fear that consciousnesses can not die, but also fear of process of dying, or basically facing death.

I’m wondering if anyone had a similar experience? If so, how long did it last? What did you do?

I learned about the permanence of death when I was three and smashed a small frog. I thought that resurrection was possible since I had seen shows where people had been resuscitated from drowning, so I was really shocked and upset when my mom told me that we couldn't bring the frog back to life. But my first really memorable anxiety about death was when I was 4 or 5. My sister and I had gone to a youth group at a church in my hometown. I felt weird there the whole time as I wasn't used to going to church, despite the fact that we were only doing arts and crafts and things like that. I disliked it being there very much because I didn't like the feel of it. So, at some point during the week there was also a congregation where the youth pastor would talk to us about things. And one story really disturbed me. He said that- paraphrased from memory- "you have to make sure that you let Jesus into your heart when he knocks. You never know if you're going to wake up the next morning. So, if Jesus knocks on your heart in the night and it's time to go, before you die, let him in." So, I didn't sleep well that night. I wondered what it would feel like if Jesus knocked on my heart and if that would kill me. Then, what if I went to hell because I didn't know how to let Jesus into my heart, as I imagined this scenario literally and not figuratively. What if I wasn't good enough to go to heaven and I had to be with the devil for all of eternity? What if I mix things up? I was terrified that Jesus would come in the night. But I think I was already scared of death before this.