Some considerations on Death
This text was written as a comment to Bernardo Kastrup’s video: “On death: a conversation with Simona Zemaityte”. For an enhanced comprehension of the concepts described below I recommend viewing the video first.
Feb 10, 2023
After watching this video I remained with some ideas in my mind, that I felt to explore and put on paper. I’ve wrote the following text, which became a bit large, so I decided to divide it in 2 parts.
[Part 1]
Through years of self observation I’ve currently reached a certain perspective about death.
First of all, I think the human mind might be afraid of death not as an event that will happen sometimes in the future, but as a reality that is happening right now. I think we are dead, right now. I think this dream world that we are calling reality is similar to a journey in the underworld.
I think we are in the world of the dead right now.
And I think what scares us might be this exact realisation. Death might scare us not because it is a supposed event that will happen sometime in the future, but because it is something that happens to us right now. I think fear always relates to a reality that already is true, but that we fear to realise it. So I think we can only fear the truth, in a way.
This is why I think our human mind fears the idea of death, because the human mind fears to realise it is actually – right now – experiencing death. We are dying each second of each day. Even from a physiological perspective we can see that each second of each day our body decays a bit more. It seems like we are approaching death since the moment we are born.
This might have something to do with the cognitive dissonance Bernardo mentioned about, as our human mind has been taught that our current experience here is one of life. Our human mind thinks it is alive, hence.. hearing about death might trigger a certain unconscious instinct, that spikes the human mind with the memory of the death that is happening, right here, right now.
There could be a cognitive dissonance, but it could be on the other way around: the human mind might think it is alive, when it fact it is actually dead.
And I think we could see some possible evidences for this if we look at one of the most ancient Egyptian myths: that of Osiris. Osiris was killed and fragmented to pieces and he began living in the underworld. Now, if we are to couple this with the fragmentation or dissociation – as in Bernardo’s terms – of the ‘mind at large’, then all localised minds might actually be one of the parts of Osiris. That consciousness might now experience itself as fragmented and living in the “underworld” of its being. A sort of sleep or death.
Hence, every little mind – the dissociated personal self – might actually be a dead figure within the dream realm of the higher mind.
We might be in the underworld, right here, right now.
And I think one reason for why we are here is to put the puzzle of ourselves together, to ‘remember’ who and what we are. ‘Re-member’ – putting the members back together. Becoming whole once again.
This remembrance I think is deeply personal, and involves different processes and stages, and I think one of the key aspects of truly becoming whole once again, might involve being able to use the whole of our brain, the left and right side of the brain, holistically. That, I think, is what becoming whole might practically involve for us. Managing to create a holistic brain experience, where the left and right hemispheres start working together, as one. That’s when logic and feeling come together, transforming into a sort of higher sense of intellect and perception. The True Mind. This is when matter and consciousness could potentially start being seen as “one”. A single substance which differentiates itself and crystallises itself, becoming matter. Or integrates itself, and melts itself, becoming consciousness or energy. Similar to how water can crystallise into ice, or melt into water, or even ascend into vapour.
So this is one thing about death. I think we are dead right now, and a deeper part of us knows it. And we are afraid of death because that might mean there is work to be done, from our side. And I think not all souls are at the same point in their journey in this underworld, and not all of them have finished their experience here in order to start working to “fly” out of it. This is why realising the state of death one is in, and instinctively knowing one is not yet having all the tools to deal with that, could feel instinctually scary. And this is why we sometimes need more time. More time on this human plane to develop ourselves, our intellect, our mind, body and feelings – generally to develop our meta cognition. Through experience we develop our meta cognition. We gather the inner tools necessary to start our preparation to make that journey out of the underworld. But until we have those tools with us, death can still feel scary.
Another way to put this is to say that.. until we have actually fulfilled our Life’s purpose, until we have actually lived our “destiny” – sort to speak, there might always be a fear of death. Similar to how Bernardo put it: a person who has truly lived can arrive at its death bed and might be able to think “i’ve done pretty good”. Hence, the fear of death could potentially be alleviated by a correctly lived life. A correctly lived life which would mean a life aligned – not with what society, or science, or religion, or even morals might tell us it is right or wrong – but a life aligned with an inner code of conduct and purpose, inscribed into that particular soul. An inner purpose or destiny which only that particular soul knows deeply within itself.
Living according with that true purpose, true “destiny” let’s call it, could potentially – through my intuition – even reveal the truth of our existence, waking us up to the true nature of ourselves. In a way, I think each of us can remember itself and “fly” out of the underworld of its own being, if deciding to correctly follow its innermost instincts, intuitions and voice. Its inner path.
[Part 2]
The second thing about death is that.. I think we need to make the distinction between our observation of what death is and what death could actually be. When we observe death from the outside of the experience, we can see a person becoming inanimate and a body disappearing. Yet this same experience could appear much more different in nature, for the one inside the experience. Hence, even though from the outside death might appear as the disappearing of someone, from the inside death might be experienced as something completely different. Because of this, it might come natural to assume that dying on this physical plane could be similar to waking up from a dream, as Bernardo mentioned in the video. We see our characters in our dreams at night disappearing as we awaken in the morning. Hence we might assume that that character in our dream has died. Which in fact, might not be so at all.
The difference here would be that in the dream there is no experience of death that the dream character is actually going through. One second we are doing something in the dream, the next second we could be suddenly awaken in bed. By this fact the dream character has not gone through any process or experience of death. Only our consciousness, let’s say, has moved from the dream world to the reality of our bed.
By seeing our dream character disappear we could make the association with the dream character dying, because we have seen that in this reality people that die disappear from sight. Yet unlike the character in our dream, when people from this reality die they are going through an internal experience of death. And it seems to be the anticipation or imagination of this internal experience the one that creates the fear of death in humans. From the outside we only see the human body disappearing, it might sound sane to assume that consciousness has just moved from this realm to another realm. But we don’t know what happens from the inside of that experience, in order for us to fully be able to explain death through this analogy.
The difference here would be as that of saying that because a plane is able to fly it is similar to a bird. Well no. Even though they appear to undergo similar phenomenas, their inner experience of that phenomena can be quite different. And this is similar to the experience a certain character in our dream can have versus the experience a real human can have at death.
Although I too instinctively feel that death is like waking up from a dream.
For me, it happened that I dreamed about dying once. It was a war and I was killed on the street. While I was dying in the dream, I’ve experienced all the fear associated with it, the betrayal of feeling myself killed by those people, the fear for my family and what would happen to them and all of these. While I was experiencing myself dying in the dream, with the full internal experience, my consciousness started opening up to this realm where I was sleeping in bed. For some time I could experience myself in 2 places at once: dying on the street in the dream and sleeping in bed in this reality. And even though I started to understand I was in bed and I fully managed to remember myself from this reality, I could still feel the fear of dying in that dream. I remember I even asked myself why am I afraid if I already know I am here in bed.
And with this I realised that.. the experience of something holds its own “experiential script” sort to speak. An experience comes with the full spectrum of thoughts, emotions, feelings, perceptions embedded in it, like a 100D movie of sorts. So this might be true for the experience of death as well. Even if from the outside death might mainly appear like a disappearing, from the inside that experience could feel completely full in feelings and phenomenas, that even if we can say with our minds “Oh, I will just pop out on the other side”, being able to intellectually think this might not evade us from the full internal experience at the moment of death. Knowing something about an experience doesn’t seem to diminish that experience, when that experience happens. For example: knowing what falling in love looks like doesn’t seem to alter or diminish the experience of falling in love, once it happens. On the contrary: once we fall in love for the first time we almost forget everything we heard and thought about falling in love, as we become completely immersed in the experience.
It’s like.. if this life on earth would be similar to a movie or a video game, each experience seems to come with its own “script”. An “experiential script” in which that experience unfolds with full feelings and phenomenas that can only be understood while inside that experience. This is why I personally feel that death can feel scary. Because death might be meant to feel scary. Death might be meant to remind us of the death we are currently in, right here, right now. And remind us of the path and “destiny” we might be here to walk and accomplish.
For the individual that has not truly lived its own destiny, let’s say, death might feel scary. While living as aligned with our destiny as we can, might create a trusting and alleviated feeling about dying. Ultimately, as I mentioned before, I think living our destiny might actually be able to transform the process of dying into something different altogether. Like living our destiny would naturally unfold our true awareness of self, remembering our true self (“the one that sleeps in bed”) before the actual process of physical death occurs.
The difference here would be that dying unconsciously of one’s true self might appear scary. This would be the unconscious death.
Yet living one’s destiny might gradually unfold one’s true self awareness. This would be the conscious or aware death, in which we already know what we are and where our consciousness is going, before the actual experience of physical death occurs. And this conscious death might actually feel orgasmic or completely different than the unconscious death – and this, I think, might hold a great secret about death.