LOVE AND DEATH

Birth is separation from the body of the mother but even conception is a beginning, although not perhaps the very first beginning, of separation from the all. Growth and experience continue our separation and collection into the self. Finally, we remerge with the all.

Remergence with the all begins with our first separation, at conception or before. We do so in our awareness; we pull at the all and we are pulled back towards the all by awareness. Eventually we will combine entirely with the all. This may occur as soon as or even before physical death or it may be further delayed.

Individual existence is like a wave on the surface of the all. While the wave is formed, it is an entity, a shape of energy in coherent motion; whose self identical being is correctly and individually determined. Eventually the wave disappears in admixture with other waves and in intrinsic dissolution. The wave was not; it is now, and then it will be gone, but the water is saved and the surface continues to form other waves.

The analogy between the wave and the individual may be pursued a little further. Geometric and energy structures of a physical wave may be mathematically decomposed (by Fourier analysis) into a combination of simple forms, such as sine waves. Different physical waves can be seen as various combinations of the same elementary forms, in fact, of the same individual form as far as the quality of shape is concerned, differing only in intensity and duration (amplitude and wavelength). Neighboring waves can share and trade these forms, they can even combine, separate and recombine. It is similarly reasonable to imagine that people also share many of the same elementary perceptions, such as colors, forms, sounds, tastes, smells and emotions, which are combined in varying assortments in different individuals, and at different times. It is harder to see how different people combine and separate like waves, but we can see that they share and trade elementary, and perhaps not so elementary, forms of experience and being, through communication and cobeing.

But the wave story also fails, in other respects, to describe human life and destiny. Whenever the separate awareness residing in our self does emerge into full connection of the all, opening to complete convergence with unitary awareness, we need expect no real loss but rather gain. The experiences of our individual existence are part of the all and part of the all they remain, because the all is not defined by clock time; the nonexistence of the past is not true in the all, but only, and only partially, in the realm of separation. Time is part of the all, but the all is not contained in time. Thus, even though we may no longer be in the realm of separation, we still are, in the all.

We are and always remain part of the all, even when we are separate. Before, beneath, beyond separation we are all of the all. When we return to whence we came, we complete a circuit. Endlessly ever present.

There are those to whom personal identity and separation are most precious. While loving our connections with the others around us, we also prefer to spend much of our time in private contemplation and silent action. Perhaps we act as wells, whose rocky walls provide the seeker with access to pure water of being.

Convergence collects time and events. Sound does not converge as noise only, but as music. Beyond brilliant white, sight converges as beauty. We bring our hearts and minds into unitary convergence with the all. While still residing in and valuing our separate destinies as individual entities and consciousnesses, we can open our perceptions toward convergence with the union of all. Our separation and aloneness is finite and limited; it is a fine and private reality wherein to practice our self identical belonging, to converse with ourselves in the lightning of immediate encounter, to be and become our selves. Yet it is better to know that beyond these personal ends resides the all and that we are a finitely distinguished part of the all and that our destiny is a return to the all bearing those gifts we have fathomed in our personal solitudes.

If life is a restriction into separation from the all, then it follows that death permits release and reconnection with the all. Death would then be the ultimate pleasure, the end of pain. However, the route between the end of habitation of the physical body and eventual absorption into the all, may not always be short or straight. There is, for most of us, much uncertainty in the passage, even though we can face the eventual outcome with confidence. It is an old wisdom to expect the quality of the transition to be affected, for better or worse, by the state of the self as it proceeds the change, and that that state in turn is much the result of the quality of our actions and thoughts during our time of individual being.

While our eventual fate is intrinsically hopeful, we are duty bound to explore and develop our life of separation while it lasts, and to keep on going on as long as we can. First, because while leaving the physical presence may be liberating for those of us who go, our absence can be a great suffering for those who love us, who are abandoned to greater loss and solitude by our departure, who ache in sorrow without us. Then also for ourselves, as we have come into identity through individuation and separation, it is just and meet that we explore such being as deeply and fully as we can. In so doing we both give ourselves our proper due and fulfill the gift of personal identity which we have received for the enrichment of the all.

Separation is intrinsically limited and limiting. Separation is limited by the very boundaries which mark off the separated from the all. The present extent of awareness in an individual is finite, due to the boundaries which define the separation. The individual has a choice, to remain bounded behind walls of separation or to transcend separation, opening awareness into convergence with the all. This is not an all or nothing choice. Each of us, as long as we remain separated, retain private rooms of personal being, as well as open doorways and windows through which we are connected with the all. Alone, we are finite, but beyond the finite, all awaits us.

Between the state of separation, of self identity, and the eventual union with the all, there is, at least from the point of view of separation, a process, an experience undergone, a bridge of transformation. And, from the beginning in separation, that side of the bridge is experienced in time. Change and transformation, at least in its earlier stages, is experienced by the self. The quality and content of that experience may well be determined by the condition and experience of the self as it crosses the bridge. It would seem likely that, as most religions do teach, the quality of the crossing will be influenced by events and actions with which the individual has been engaged during separation.

The crossing does not necessarily, or even commonly, begin with that event defined as physiological death, but has always begun, at least since bodily birth. As far back as we would name the separation of time, the crossing has begun. Thus the crossing goes on while events and interactions of separation still unfold. In the timeless all, there is no contradiction here. In time, we come from the all, become separate, endure for a while, and return to the all. In the timeless all, we are always part of the all, indeed, even all of the all.

Our return to the all from the separation of personal being may have multiple possibilities. In some theologies the individual has an unending soul, while personal identity may thereby never be lost in time, we may expect a broadening connection and envelopment within the all. Others think the self dissolves at the end of bodily life, which would seem to imply a more complete mingling of individual consciousness in the far fields of everything. There are intermediate beliefs wherein the self has an extended being, part of whose destiny is a multiple return to earth and biological being, alternating between a greater degree of separation, perhaps, and a greater immersion in the all.

There may be an interchange of souls. When an individual returns to the all, part, at least of the finite structure created during their separation, is also contributed to the all. These forms become available to other separating entities. This would appear more naturally as partial interchange of form, a new self of awareness growing its forms of finitude and separation, can avail itself of those forms which have gone before. Perhaps sometimes the whole form of a previous entity, which would seem to correspond to rebirth But I think, due to my own experience, that we may be unique individuals, self sufficient in our own right, but using models also derived from the experience of others, for our greater growth and configuration.

Even though, in time, we eventually remerge with the all, our experience during life can never become not. It always continues to be part of the all, for the all is timeless and cannot not be. Each act and each perception endures forever, for forever is just the timeless present in the all. Every kindness and cruelty is there for always. On the other hand, it always was, even before we, as individuals, have the power to chose our actions. What this power to chose will eventually do is always present in the all, but is still freedom in our own selves. There is no contradiction here, although it did seem so, and was a point of contention between the Calvinists and the Catholics. The real case is both ways, sort of like the wave particle duality of quantum mechanics. It is only a limited understanding that makes it seem a problem.

It may be that we need to continue aspects of our separation, our selfhood, beyond physical death. There are several possibilities which are well known by the adherents of the various religions. We may become part of a group of Christians, Jews and Moslems in their heaven, or in the other place. We may be reborn on Earth or somewhere else. We may exist as circlets of glowing lights, memories of life, and while thus we may communicate via awareness with each other and the all. It may be something else entirely and it may be different for each of us.

The promise and threat of death always lies in the background of our lives, except when it comes to the fore. It is always there as a fixed point of reference, although often of unknown location. It is something we expect, that we know is coming to us and others. That certainty, and the silence that sounds so loud from the other side, can be a steady ticking or a deafening roar.

In the commonality of experience and conversation, at least among many of us, death is an odd interception more at the background than the foreground of our attention. Sometimes we speak of it to each other, questioning, wondering, perhaps fearing. Yet not very often, as is appropriate, for what we are doing is mostly living rather than dying. We are busy working and playing in the sun, sheltering from the rain, and watching the all covering snow. And it is right and true that we should live life intrinsically involved, abandoned in work and play, taking what is for what is, rather than dwell too much upon what is not. Still and again, that universal notness surrounds the roots of being with a deep broad soil; it weighs down the other side of the scale upon which life is measured, thus lifting life higher in our estimation; and the brightness of our lives is enhanced by the shadow side. And for these reasons we should also look sometimes more directly towards the other side, to try to understand its meaning and our destiny. For the sake both of the darkness and for release from the hold of darkness, we should sometimes look more directly at death. If we do so what we see shall illuminate and comfort us, even while it further shadows the beauty of our being.

I can well recall this concern, sometimes felt as fear or deep sadness. It can be a heavy burden...the endless blank...nothingness...one might as well never have been. And perhaps it would have been better never to have been and thus avoid the anguish of extinction.

But now, being older and of experience, these fears have come more or less to naught. On the one hand I have lived a life - whether it is large or small in the world - which is complete and whole for me - is what it is - and what it has been. I have also experienced personal being as part of the all, even if only a cell at the tip of God's little finger. And that is all right.

But also education and reason defy the endless not. Both physics and philosophy, which are rather one than two, show the continuance of being - or at least its nondisappearance.

If we were to disappear from time, in time, how can that be? We experience the death of others because we endure time outside of them, our time is ours rather than theirs. But we cannot experience our own death, not in the sense of transition to nothingness, for in nothingness there is no experience. Consider time. Expectation of nothingness after death requires an external use of time. But the time that matters to us is the time that we experience. Time is in us as much as we are in time.

Our time, the time of our personal being, is the time that we have not the time that we do not have. It is we, each of us, who experience time, who are in time, who contain time, who are time. We do not belong to time. Time belongs to us. Time is part of our experience, not its boundary.

If we had an end it would be as mysterious and unexperienced as our beginning.

Time wraps around us.

We need not and should not wait for death to encounter the all. We are always part of the all, which knowledge follows necessarily from the concept of the all. And each of our separations from the all is also a connection with the all, in the all. Especially when we quiet the brain noise by relaxation or meditation we can rest back into closer union with the all. This is the comfort of the darkness and of the silent peace of light gliding along the branches of morning and afternoon.

When we allow our consciousness close encounter with the all we are strengthened and encouraged. It is like a deep draught in the back of the mind. It envelopes us and softens our hard rigidities. It expands and connects us with calm and rich wonder. The all unbounds us; it brings us to our selves, floating, like the Earth, with no better place to go than where we are.

Late last night the old moon hung gibbous above the eastern horizon while Jupiter glowed at the zenith; shining black sky navigated by cloud shreds sailing the wind. Watching lonely archipelagoes shift and mingle with the emptiness beyond, a connection was entered between my sleepy self and the vast spaces of the upper atmosphere. When we observe the sublime, we also merge with it and this experience is actually an identification, a union of the self with the tremendous, the beautiful, the awesome and the infinite