John, an old friend and work colleague, died the other day. Only he knows what death is, and what is beyond our death, because he has joined the millions before him who have made that journey. For us, death is the greatest mystery: it takes away someone who had been a son or daughter, a husband or wife, with all the experiences of their life, and the quirkiness of their personality, their traits, habits, their ways and demeanour, their little kindnesses. All gone, in the twinkling of an eye.
So what has happened? We know that the body and form we identified as ‘John’ has died, and with it has gone the personality that was associated with the body. What more can we say with any certainty? Surprisingly little.
We can’t say, for example, that consciousness dies with the body. There have been so many documented and proven examples of our consciousness existing outside of the body, such as in cases of near-death experiences (NDEs), remote viewing, telepathy, and so on.
The only way to understand these phenomena, that transcend space or time, or both, is by seeing that ‘we’ are inside consciousness, and not the other way round. Consciousness is not a by-product of the brain, as most assume.
So why doesn’t it feel like that? As we live and have experiences, we increasingly see things from the perspective of our body, and this starts to build an energy centre that creates a sense of a ‘you’ in the process.
As children, we are closer to this timeless, disembodied consciousness, but the shift begins when we have traumatic and unpleasant experiences that are body-centred.
Understanding this, we can also begin to glimpse what ends when we die.
Goodbye John.