What If “Death” Is Not an Event, But a State of Consciousness?

[Vladimir]

I want to share something from direct experience that I’m still integrating and working on fully understanding.

This isn’t about physical death, not the end of the body, but something that can happen within life itself.

I’ve experienced two very different states of being. And I don’t mean slightly better or worse moods...

I mean something much more fundamental.

In one state, everything was collapsed:

• I couldn’t rest, even for a moment
• Sleep was either impossible or filled with intense nightmares
• There was constant fear and paranoia
• My perception felt distorted, even ordinary sounds felt threatening
• I felt completely disconnected from myself and from others
• There was no sense of love, joy, or peace at all
• I fell into destructive habits and couldn’t function in any stable way
• It felt like being trapped in a condition where everything was tense, hostile, and fragmented. 
• I couldn't stop the negative steam of thoughts, negative inner talk
• I hated myself and everything 
• And I remained in that state for a long time.

In contrast, where I am now:

• I can rest and sleep normally
• I feel at peace with myself 
• I feel calm and grounded
• I am deeply in touch with my feelings and my sense of self 
• I can process my emotions and alchemized the suffering into love and joy 
• I feel joy, self-respect, and compassion toward others
• I feel connected, to people and to life itself
• I’m creative, productive, and engaged with what I’m doing
• My mind and imagination works great
• My dreams are good
• My life is full of meaning and purpose 
• I love myself and the entire world 
• There’s a sense of coherence, grace and ease

What stands out to me is that the difference between these two states doesn’t feel like “better vs worse.”

It feels more like:

being alive vs being dead

one state feels like Life - openness, connection, joy, peace - what I would call love

the other feels like something closer to “death” - contraction, fear, disconnection, suffering 

Also, it doesn’t seem like people are simply “alive” or “dead” in this sense.

It feels more like a spectrum.

At any given moment, a person can be more open or more contracted, more connected or more disconnected, more dead or alive moving somewhere between those two poles.

What’s interesting is that people already describe their experience this way naturally:

“I feel alive.”

"She is full of light"

“There’s a light in her eyes.”

These two statements pointing to the connection between Life and Light - makes a lot of sense given that Sun Light is the source of all life on Earth. There are many other examples...

And these two:

“I feel dead inside.”

"His light went out."

“Dark night of the soul." 

Pointing to the connection between death and darkness or absence of light. 

The more I look at it, the more it seems like this isn’t abstract. It’s something that’s happening all the time: People are moving on the spectrum of Life and Death - states of consciousness. 

[Mellowmarsh]

Interesting! 🧐 

Here goes my two pence….
To be conscious of being alive is to simultaneously be conscious of being dead.

 

Because that which lives, never died, and that which died, never lived. 
 

To be conscious of…requires a duality of subject and object, inseparably one and the other both, yet neither. 😵‍💫