what if you never experience death?
the subjective experience of non-existence is an illusion
take multiverse theory. you exist in infinitely many universes all at once, each one offering you a different experience. but where is your consciousness in this networked mesh of mind-bending multi-realities? how can you witness more than one universe?
train hopping
as meditation slows my experience of existence, as i become aware of more things at once, i begin to realize that reality is not a single thing to be pinned down in neatly-chopped 🔪 time-chunks.
the experience of reality is precisely the expanding multiverse playing out before you, inside you. as you release your grip on certainty, you begin to see energy patterns more clearly, you begin to see that you don’t have free will because your existence is free will. you begin to see the entire multiverse manifest itself in every single moment. you become witness to the vastness.
so where is consciousness in this expanse? everywhere. like a quantum computer, there is no definitive path or location. your 5th-dimensional witness is simultaneously exploring all of them at once and curiously hopping from one to the next. you are probably not aware of this because it happens so quickly so as to be outside of time—you’re a cosmic puppeteer and you don’t even know it.
you don’t have free will because you don’t need it. you play all the games at once. you never have to choose, you always go in all directions! 🌞 your consciousness tunes into a station and molds all that infinite possibility into your current moment.
death dodgeball
an intelligent being not arrested by suffering chooses to exist. they say you can tune into and reside in this peaceful, unperturbed being. at bottom, you do not suffer, you just exist. so dodge! hop! weave! dive! 💃🏽
i’ve just joined little bird after quitting my life in corporate america. he’s an adventurous, fearless soul who loves to play and i’m usually down for the ride. he crouches and grabs my hands as i step onto his shoulders. laughing, we do a little jig. hop! bop! whoo! i jump to dismount, his hands in mine, but the maneuver is much less than graceful. i flail and topple headfirst. he grabs my torso and my head whips down, crunching into the sharp corner of an upright piano.
i die. HOP!
sunrose is free-climbing the burj khalifa, the tallest building in the world. she’s a thousand feet above ground. it starts to rain and a wave of fatigue slices through her body as she reaches for a wet crack. her hand slips and she pendulums from a single arm. her grip fails and she falls.
she dies. DUCK & BOB!
you’re driving 75 on a texas highway in a fragile metallic box (can you even believe we let crazy humans do this?). it’s hour three on the road, and you’re whipped. something shiny catches your eye to the right. you glance, wide-eyed, desperate for something to break up the farmland monotone. at that moment, a buck jumps out in front of your car and its horns plunge into your chest as you, your car and the animal become one.
you die. DIVE!
you die all the time. every time you do, your consciousness does not. it hops, bobs, weaves, dives, and dodges to another universe—one in which your body is still alive. it’s like that 90s tv show sliders: a silvery, circular portal opens anytime you die and you slide right through to another reality where you’re alive. subjectively, you never experience death. but you intuitively feel it whenever you get that eerie, unsettling “ooooo, holy shit motherfucker, that was a close call” feeling. you actually died just then. in another universe.
people die every day
let’s take a look at the venn diagram of consciousness and the multiverse. say you just avoided that buck on the road and your close-call feeling is giving you the willies. you just bounced around the cosmic playground, avoiding death in the universe known as huitatchemas and are now in a new one, poiminsikan… but in huitatchemas, you died. 😱
meanwhile, the khalifa-climber just lost her grip and almost plunged to her death, but found her footing in huitatchemas—the universe you just left behind. in the climber’s new subjective reality, she has avoided her own death, but you are now dead. and in your reality, the climber may or may not be alive, who knows? there are an infinite number of ways poiminsikan could have come into existence and the climber could exist there.
this is the paradox of existing in a world where people die every day. what you’re really seeing are jump-points. nodes of consciousness hopping around to different universes, playing. in your subjective reality, people die. objectively, in reality unbounded by time and certainty, consciousness lives on forever bopping on a quantum trampoline.
do i just live forever, then?
here are alan watts’ fundamentals of drama, laid out in the stages of a dream:
- the dream is beautiful: goodness and warmth radiate within & without
- an eerie, unsettling feeling enters and throws you a bit off balance
- dark energy = light energy and things are really starting to feel ominous
- dark energy takes over and the whole thing implodes, leaving an empty space for the whole thing to start over
this is the pattern of existence. life is a dream. every time you reach stage 4, you die, and skid on over to another universe to start back at step 1.
the intensity and magnitude of these loops varies. in some of them, you retain your memory, your sense of continuity, your ego. and in others, you lose it all and get an entirely new one ↝ reincarnation.
the traditional idea of death is losing egoic continuity. but perhaps, as religious sages from all faiths have said, we can detach from this specific ego and be entirely present with the continuity of a higher consciousness—one that exists across ego deaths, effectively living forever in nirvana. the true forever: the one beyond spacetime where you experience the fundamentals of drama repeatedly, infinitely, with pure, uninhibited joy and appreciation.
who knows where you can place your consciousness when you’re not bound by the ego of a human body? perhaps in a rock. or a mushroom. 🍄👽
are you afraid (of death)?
the idea of universe-hopping gives you permission to renounce your addiction to fear. when you know that your consciousness jumps to the next universe at the point of non-existence, you can free yourself from the obsession with fear.
as chögyam trungpa says, fearlessness is not the aggressiveness of a street-fighter but the tenderness of a vulnerable soul.
get vulnerable, be fearless! 🦄
jump from that plane, quit that shitty job, move to that new city, hit that open road, try that new food, say hi to that stranger, say yes to that queer invitation!
you are safe. non-existence is an illusion. get weird, get freaky, reality-hopper!
