Death and the primal fear of non-existence

I think I know what you mean… I’ve had experiences like this every now and then, basically my whole life. As a kid I had problems sleeping because of this, and then paralyzed by the though of non-existance I would wake my sleeping parents up to have them comfort me. Most of the time we refer to death as something abstract, as a noun, and that never gets too disturbing really. It’s different when you look at it as a process that sort of continues even after we’ve died physically… And so as a kid I used to ponder on how long I would continue to be dead, realizing that it wouldn’t be only for a year, not only two years, but more like a million years and more; for all eternity. It’s like seeing yourself free falling through time without anything to hold on to. Unsettling, to say the least.

Brian,
May I suggest reading Bernadette Roberts.
http://www.firedocs.com/carey/roberts.html
She outlines this journey beyond the self as a three-stage trip, and maintains that the standard Christian contemplative literature only describes the first stage, known in the mystic trade as the unitive state, (which in her case lasted some 20 years). In this state, one apprehends God as residing in the centre of being, even during those periods of spiritual sterility, usually called “the Dark Night of the Spirit.” Roberts contends, from her own experience, that there are two more stages after this unitive state. The first of these other stages is a period she describes as “the Passageway”, which is characterised by “the falling away of the self and a coming upon of ‘that’ which remains when it is gone.” (5)
It was a time of utter terror for her as the self fell away: “Now I cannot convey what it is like to stare at some invisible horror when you don’t know what it is. Just knowing what it is may be all the defense you need; but when you’ve gone through your list of name-calling and it does no good, you just have to resign yourself to not knowing and face it anyway. This thing I had to stare down was simply a composite of every connotation we have of ‘terror,’ ‘dread,’ ‘fear,’ ‘insanity,’ and things of this order.” (6) She gradually realised that “it was now obvious that fear – the mother of all inventions – was the core around which the self was built and upon which its life so depended that self and fear were here, all but indistinguishable.” (7) The Passageway, then, was a time after this encounter during which she just coped with the loss of self.
Roberts remarks that “This journey [through the Passageway], then, is nothing more, yet nothing less than a period of acclimating to a new way of seeing, a time of transition and revelation as it gradually comes upon ‘that’ which remains when there is no self. This is not a journey for those who expect love and bliss, rather, it is for the hardy who have been tried in fire and have come to rest in a tough, immovable trust in ‘that’ which lies beyond the known, beyond the self, beyond union, and even beyond love and trust itself.” (8)
The final stage in Roberts’ journey began when she finally came to terms “with the nothingness and emptiness of existence which, for me, seemed to be the equivalent of living out my life without God – or any such substitute. Only when this came about, only when the acclimation to a life without an ultimate reality was complete; when there was no hope, no trust remaining; only when I had finally to accept what is, did I suddenly realise that what is, is truth itself, and all that Is. I had to discover it was only when every single, subtle, experience and idea – conscious and unconscious – has come to an end, a complete end, that it is possible for the Truth to reveal itself.” (9)

I know what you are describing. When I first thought about not existing it was indeed, as you describe, a primal fear. Then, this fear yielded to curiosity. What does it mean that this “I” will no longer exist? It is something to think about and I do try to touch this question often. Why? I’m not sure, but it sees that asking and wondering about “not being” is just as important somehow as breathing and thinking. It seems like the compliment to life. Thinking about this always makes me appreciate every moment of my life.
Sometimes though the fear of “not being” takes over and I long for the times when I was a satsangi and had faith that my master was in control, and the thought of “non existance” never was considered. But that only lasts for so long, because I find that as long as I think I need the intervention of someone more perfect and stronger that I, then I am somehow lessened, and it is like my world goes a bit gray and the beauty of this creation dims. (Not sure I can really describe this well…)
I now think about my dying as a process of disolving. All the elements that make up “me” now will one day disperse and will become parts of everything else. I may be part of the rain that makes a flower grow. I may be part of that flower. Parts of me may be part of others yet to be born. When I think about this I am in awe, because when I think of all the parts of me…all the atoms, all the elements, all the air, and so forth, I come to a great realization that “I” am really ONE with all. I finally have begun to understand the “wave” and the “ocean” metaphor.
I apologize if I have rambled on about this, but this is not a topic that I find too many other willing to talk about.
Thank you.

Hi Brian,
I saw you and your wife speak at Healing Springs in Ashland – a clue to my philosophy ;)))
As a therapist, I just want to add that the high proportion of negative content NDEs is underaccentuated and reported among New Agers, who like to give the impression it’s all about the Light and good feelings. Great for the ones it is warm and fuzzy for, but not all.
Neurotheology research is beginning to teach us the brain mechanisms involved with right and left amygdala activation…A source of angelic or demonic imagery, along with temporal lobe transients. Certain parts of the brain turn off when the void is experienced, which is not to reduce it to that alone. Then, there are voids and Voids – the lesser void is one of great alienation, difficult to navigate without spiritual support.
In my youth two people close to me drank juiced poison hemlock wrongly believing it was a marijuana analog – they wound up toe tagged, but woke up after a terrifying experience that haunted them both for life.
Even bliss, however, can be a block to looking or venturing further into the the depths of the Great Unknown. If the Abyss smiles back, it is pure luck. Fortunate are those who have a companion or guide for their journey.
Iona

My experience was similar but I came at it from the opposite direction.
I was eleven years old and I was contemplating eternity. Such a horrible fear welled up in me. How could anyone stand to live forever and ever and ever? To go on and on and on without end would eventually lead to madness, wouldn’t it?
Right then and there Heaven and Hell become equal to me. Regardless of what happened in either place eventually you would have to deal with the issue of continuing to exist.
What do you DO after a few million years of harp playing? For that matter you’d probably get used to the flames and torture too.
The true horror and torture in my mind at the time was running out of things to do… eternal boredom… existing for the sake of existing.
It was then that I did an unconscious 180% and looked straight into ‘Not-being’.. It was even scarier to me.
How could one ‘NOT-BE’ after having ‘BEEN’? It would be MUCH, MUCH better to have never been at all…then to NOT BE after having been. And that’s a selfish thought. lol

Iv had a very similar experience, an experience that is definatly the most horrifying one I can ever imagine, Iv always been a deep thinker and one evening i guess everything had combined itself into this intense realization.An overwhelming sense of “nothingness”took complete controll of my mind I felt as though existence had no pupouse or real meaning I felt undescribably alone and this threat of being torn from my life and into this empty helplessness sent me into screaming histarics(litterally)in this nothingness i felt no connection to the sence i instinctivly had found in reality it was gone and i was left feeling that everything i thought was futile like there was no place for anything and any reassurance was impossible,this really is undescribable.Now I am obsessivly afraid to die because of the dread that I may spend eternity in this state.I wish there was a reason for this that maby i have some issues with control or abandonment but the fear is definatly more powerful than the hope since iv actually experienced what it’s like. I feel like i see what reality really is and its really scarey and if i had one wish i wish that im wrong. in so many ways this seems “crazy” but in other ways it seems intensly sane.the question i ask myself is:
if we are here to live life and experience emotions and survive then why, all of a sudden be placed in yhis nothingness where none of that is possible?how does this make sense?
and, why do people who have had near death experiences report such good things, that they saw god and experienced true understandings and calmness.
and lastly why have i experienced this nothingness!!????

I have tried to contemplate eternity in several ways. One easy way to do it is to go out in a clear night sky where it is dark and feel your nothingness in comparison to the universe.
Another way is to empty your mind of all concepts and desires and to try and achieve a state of stillness. This is actually a meditative technique common to Christian monasticism (especially the Desert tradition) and also Buddhism. Another way is to close your eyes and contemplate the blackness inside, looking within.
Another way to contemplate nothingness is to contemplate on the state of your existence before birth, or during an anesthetic operation. (Meister Eckhart encourages you to meditate on your existence before birth to gain insight into God’s beingless Being).
There is also the dark night of the soul, a painful purgative experience described by John of the Cross.
I’ve found the most painful experiences of nothingness are losing someone you love. Whether they leave you or are removed by some other cause, this form of nothingness is certainly deeply stressing and painful. Probably the reason is attachment to a particular object, and losing an object of your affection causes great pain depending on the attachment.
However sometimes contemplating the void for me has been a positive experience, especially after studying mysticism. I think a major problem is in Western thought we are conditioned to think of evil as an abscence of Being. We associate good with Being. This comes from Plato and Aristotle and Greek Philosophy in general, and while in my view very positive in some ways, it distorts our view of existence because nothingness is also turning out to be very important to many new scientific views of the universe and also increasingly in religion and philosophy.
To die or to experience nothingness is not evil, it is a natural part of our human existence and condition. Nothingness is also a central reality in our universe, from which all particles come into existence and then dissapear back. The universe itself according to big bang cosmology, emerged from nothing. Physical scientists have been re-examining the void and space and emptiness are far more interesting and dynamic than were thought to be (as general relativity and quantum mechanics show).
We also need a philosophical and a religious re-appraisal of nothingness in our Western tradition and I think Eastern thought, which contains a very rich metaphysics of the void and of emptiness, will help us deal a lot better with things and aspects of our being which are not unnatural or intrinsically evil but simply as given as birth and life. There is something unhealthy in my view with our obsession in the West with trying to avoid death and suffering as if they are the worst evils in existence, rather than accepting them with calm and peace through our lives.

Someone please respond.
I was diagnosed with OCD 11 years ago. I’ve just recently started to realize that all of my fears and obsessions come from an underlying discomfort in the fact that I DO exist and I do not know the ‘whys.’ It makes me feel as if I could cease to exist at any moment…
It’s my inability to comprehend something coming from nothing.
I love my life and I long for a time when I can look at life through the eyes of peace and excitement.
I’m scared, honestly.
– Brad

Brad, my friend, we share a fear of death. You’re not crazy. You sound wonderfully sane. You’re simply looking at life openly and clearly. That’s great. Congratulations.
I’ve written some about death and overcoming the fear of it on this here blog. See:
https://churchofthechurchless.com/deathrebirth/index
If you haven’t already, take a look at the Body Worlds post, second from the top. It’s not the whole answer (what could be?), but the philosophical quotes in there intuitively speak to me.
You want to enjoy life. So do I. So do we all. To be afraid of not living while we’re still living — that’s like worrying that you’ll be hungry after you’ve just eaten a wonderful meal.
One thing at a time. And the best thing about death is that if we really don’t exist after we die, there’s nobody around to know that!
Whereas, when my stomach is empty, I do know it, and can contrast my hunger with a previous fullness. However death can never be experienced. So in that sense it isn’t real.
Rather, when it’s real it doesn’t matter to us, since we’re gone.
Regarding why there’s something rather than nothing, it’s sort of the same thing. You and I are something. If there was nothing, we wouldn’t be wondering about being something.
I used to spend a lot of time pondering the “why is there something instead of nothing?” question. Now I’m pretty much convinced that the question is meaningless, a product of human logic and anthropomorphism.
“Why” is for brains that ask why. Likely it has nothing to do with nature, with reality. That just is. End (and beginning) of story.
Jump into life. Drink it to the last drop. Live every moment as happily and fully as you can. I suspect that if we try to do this, at the end we’ll die peacefully. Maybe even with a smile.

Brad, if you need add to Brian’s approach, there is The Linden Method.

I look at it this way, just think of it as it was BEFORE you were born. Thousands of years passed — people were born, grew up, had babies, got old and died. Thousands more years passed and it was only 1600. You and I weren’t around and we didn’t know it. Then, one day, you realized that YOU were alive. But, I know what you mean about “the return to nothingness.” It’s scary. If only we had a garuantee that we’d come back one day, even if it was as another person. Life is so wonderful. Everytime I sit down to a fantastic meal, I’m overjoyed that I can enjoy it. When I see an amazine sunset, I take it all in. Often, I think of my friends and family that are no longer here and I gaze at myself in the mirror and say, “I’m here…I’m still alive! Maybe, just maybe, I’ll live forever…”
I’ve told my loved ones, that before I die, I want an incredibly cold glass of water, with plenty of ice. To me, that is the best feeling one can have…ice cold water flowing through your body.
A plate of bar b que “ain’t” bad or a thick butterscotch malt with a hamburger with all the trimmings isn’t anything to take lightly.
Boy, do I miss my friends. They were sooooo wonderful. Sometimes I look at a chair that they once sat in or a bed they’ve lain on, but now, they are gone. It’s a very sad feeling.
That’s probably where religion comes in. People need it to reassure them that there really is something planned for us after we’ve gone. It softens the fear of death, because after we go, we’ll see mom, dad, our friends and relatives again…
It would be nice…but the inevitability of returning to “nothingness” and non-existence always looms in the back of our minds…

This site has been really inciteful with much of the questions my mind constantly relays upon me. The thing is i am relatively young in my teenage years so have percieved life (or rather death and non-existing) in two different perspectives. When i was younger i didnt fear it, i felt that just by being me i always would be me even if i died i would simply be me in a new life somewhere just with a knew knowledge of who I am. It gave me comfort whether i knew it or not at the time, so i believed it.
Then during a smoking session this past year i went on too much of a ‘trip’ i would say. A typical pot smoker thinking too far back with the question ‘why?’ on my mind. It kept on going until i realised something, there was no why. It was like hitting a brick wall for me. At that time paranoia took over, i thought i was seeing death in whatever deptiction it was. Anyways yeah it freaked me out even though i didn really comprehend what had just happened. I had tears in my eyes and actually fainted at one point cause my mind was so trapped in the concept of nothingness. Then i thought about those types of people who never come out of ‘trips’ and wondered if it was because of this reason. Not good. That only freaked me out more.
To cut a long story short – cause this is a really long story for me. I have never been the same since that point, i stopped smokin pot, although i have tried a few times since. Unfortunately each time led me back into the same thought pattern, each time it gets worse and more absurd – ie placing the universe and time with a lifespan etc, etc. But i guess its just a question everyone has to deal with in some way; “why?” I think i’m learning to cope, not always but most of the time. And if ur thinkin man this guy is messed up i can tell u that if u met me im one of the last people u would expect to be in posession of such thoughts.
Anyways, yeah, im glad i expressed some of the feelings that make me feel like i am a bit messsed up. Whoever said it above was right, not everyone wants to hear this type of crap. So to be able to say this and see others discussing similar topics, it holds for me relief that i can accept in whatever small way.

Hey Sheve,
I can relate to what you have said.
When I was a teenager, I smoked a lot of pot. Basically, I was in a cloud of smoke for several years. One time, while very stoned, I perceived life in a way that caused a complete change in my mental structure. A fear set in that lasted for a long time and influenced my behavior at a critical time in my life.
To generalize, I have found that there are two types of people who react to cannibis differently. One, “externalizes” the effects of the drug. They find pot relaxing and it gives them a quirky perspective they find entertaining and amusing. This effect is superficial and does not effect them profoundly in a life-changing way, at least in the short term.
The second group “internalizes” the effect, making them introspective in a very intense way. Through this they may gain insight that is helpful, but this increased introspection is dangerous and can lead to paranoia. They become overly sensitized and self-conscious in a way that is weakening and destructive to their sense of well-being. This effect and be sudden and insidious in the long term. Beware!
I am sure you are in the second group, and you are wise to avoid the drug. It will only serve to exacerbate the negative effects you have already experienced. I advise you to associate with people who don’t use it. This is very important for the long-term quality of your life.
The realization you had, however, that there is no “why” and all is nothingness is valid in the sense that you were perceiving the untruth and illusion of the individual ego. This can be terrifying and this fear can override or prevent you from settling into the realization. In the uncontrolled mental state induced by cannibis, you were unable to relax with this feeling and see that in the loss of your individual self, what remained was what you really are. You may have been able to see that in the absence of self, is the presence of what really is. You may have seen that this ‘void’ is empty only in the sense that ‘you’ are not there but that whatever appears is ‘you’…rather than our usual sense of: “I” exist and everything else is external to that, but not “me”. There are philosophies and traditions that can help you understand what you perceived. This will help you to settle down and regain some peace of mind. I suggest you study them without the assistance of psychotropic substances.
Suggested reading:
If you are intellectual, read well, and don’t mind a bit of wordiness, Try, “The Book,(on the taboo against knowing who you really are).” by Alan Watts.
On the lighter side is “The Upside Down Circle” by Zen Master Gilbert
Another one: “Awakening to the Dream” by Leo Hartong
There are many many good writings, both ancient and modern. These just popped into mind.
Best wishes

This has become a recent anxiety for me, and one that I am having a lot of trouble dealing with.
The idea of not retaining myself — my identity — really bothers me (and obviously many others). I try to remind myself that there was a (long) period of time in which I did not exist, or at least I did not know that I existed, so it will be okay if I return to this state… but I can never quite convince myself of it.
This train of thought has led me to the fear of what I call “losing time.” I feel like every instant I am losing more and more time… time that I can never get back. So often it seems as if time is moving slowly, but then I realize that one day I will be old and I will look back and wonder where my life went.
I yearn for the epiphony so many of my friends seem to have had: some moment where they had an experience that comforted them into the belief of existence after death. Either a near-death experience or the ‘touch’ of a dead loved-one.
I simply don’t know where to look for comfort. I do not think that I can cope with the idea of one day Not Existing. I want to retain my identity… even after death. I feel that I can face death if only I am certain that there is more for me to experience. My only hope is that over the course of my life I will find something to convince me of an “after life” – something that will wash away this horrible terror.

I can relate to many of the fears expressed above. My primal fear comes up when I imagine existing in some form or another for all of eternity. The endless forward arrow for all time brings up a dread that I have never feel regarding other issues. My wife tried to comfort me by telling me to imagine time more like a spiral staircase, constantly weaving upwards, and I have argued with myself by telling me that such a fear is generated by an ego that understands, falsely, time as linear. But such arguments do not usually overcome the momentary sting of fear.
What is soothing is to take my attention into my body and feel that right now I am vibrating with energy. And then to analyze my mind and realize that whatever my conscious self is at the moment is based on my personal history, and that this conscious self, with all of its experiences is playing itself out in this field of vibration I can feel in my body, and that it is this field of vibration, which is closer to the real me, that is more lasting than my thoughts and constantly changing “personal identity.”

Komposer wrote: “My primal fear comes up when I imagine existing in some form or another for all of eternity.”
–What we really are has no form. Many, deemed wise, have said it before me.
“…this conscious self, with all of its experiences is playing itself out in this field of vibration I can feel in my body, and that it is this field of vibration, which is closer to the real me,..”
–No conscious ‘self’, just conscious. Some like to call IT the Self, but that implies a ‘self’ and when there is a ‘self’ there is ‘other’ to know it, to objectify it, and thus there would be duality and not ONE.
Dear Adgee,
I think there are very few people who do not at sometime face their mortality and the fear of eternal non-existnce. For some, this realization is terrifying. People mask this fear with religion, metaphysics, work, sex, their legacy, acomplishments, family, friends, alcohol, and the list goes on.
I think it was Freud who thought the libido was the motivating force behind our actions, but I think fear of death is more commonly the great motivator. No doubt if we thought we would never die we would go about life differently…”Oh, I think I’ll party and get stoned for a few millenia, then maybe I’ll get around to going to college”.
Think of this. If you are going to be nothing for eternity after you die, you must have been nothing for eternity before you were born. How could your moment to exist have ever arrived if you didn’t exist for eternity before that? How does eternal nothing become something for awile and then eternal nothing again? Either there is eternally nothing, or eternally something.
Since our ISNESS is, it would follow by the logic above that we must eternally be. But what is that eternal being or something?
This something is no-THING, but not nothing. You see, what you really are is THIS awareness now. Not the content of awareness, but the awareness which IS appearance, which IS the universe. Your body, your thoughts, your perceptions, all conceptual sequentiality, all pass as the functioning of THIS awareness. But THIS awareness is no thing in itself. THIS has no form, color or name. THIS is unborn, undying, unknowable and timeless. THIS is what you were before you were born and what you will be after death. THIS is here now and can never be anyplace else.
With the dissolution of the body is the dissolution of apppearance, the universe, but THIS always is.
THIS is the primordial luminous ‘Void’ spoken of by sages since time immemorial. At death THIS will remain and what THIS will do is anybody’s guess. Maybe a new universe will appear and THIS is sure to be there.

Tucson,
Thank you for your response. I try to take comfort in these ideas: if I exist now, I must always exist. However, I have not found a way to convince myself. I have, for a long time now, claimed agnosticism, and I think this is the great problem. I see nothing but infinite possibilities, and many of these frighten me. There is the possibility of a life after death, and this is the one I prefer. To believe that I will retain some semse of Adgee-ness (I have no better term) would be true contentment. However, I know of far too many other choices: reincarnation (in which I lose my current self in order to become a new self), non-existence, or some other outcome that I have no name and no imagination for. I want to believe in something — any ONE thing — so that I can get on with my life without these worries… Truthfully, it has gotten to the point where it does not matter if this belief is Truth or not… as long as I, personally, can believe it is Truth. I want that same bandage so many others have found so that I can cope with the idea of eventual death.

For Adgee —
This will likely help and bring the clarity and resolution that you desire:
http://www.sagewisdom.org/groundzero.html
http://www.sagewisdom.org/thinkingclearly.html
http://www.sagewisdom.org/experiencess3.html
http://www.sagewisdom.org/experiencehome.html
Experiences Index: http://www.sagewisdom.org/experiences.html
Main Home: http://www.sagewisdom.org
Note: You must be sure to research thoroughly and become well informed and educated via this site before proceeding.

Dear Adgee,
Komposer said: “..whatever my conscious self is at the moment is based on my personal history,..”
–What we think we are is just an assemblege of memories, ideas, bodily sensations, feelings, mnemonic impressions and concepts which form a personal history that we take as an identity. But not one of these is what we are. They are just passing, ever-changing phenomena.
Indian sages Ramana Maharshi and Nisargadatta often recommended self inquiry: Who Am I? This meant to strip away the ideas, sensations and memories like layers of an onion until you get to the core of what you really are. What you find when all these conceptual layers are stripped away is not a solid core, but space, boundless space, infinite and ever present, substantive without substance, effulgent.
This is what you really are now, and now is always.
Let your fear fall away as one of these layers. Just take a deep breath and let fear float away and just be, pure and simple as you are. See the embodiment of fear just fly away like a bird down a canyon gradually disappearing. Relax in the peacefulness of Presence. Keep breathing slowly, deeply into right now.
Once, I took a psychotropic substance. As the full effect of the drug hit me “I” began to break apart. All the thoughts that composed “me” lost their cohesiveness and broke into a thousand pieces swirling in consciousness. Panic set in as I lost control of the assembledge point for these thoughts as they spun away, out of control. I fought to maintain this assemblege point I thought was me. Finally, the panic itself spun away like foreign debris and I “emptied” into a peacefulness I can’t describe. There was presence but no identity experiencing it. There was no structure or boundary to what remained. Objects and people were no longer separate or other from what remained. What remained was part and parcel of those objects and people. I only knew myself as what appeared as that, but as what I was, I wasn’t.
I was, but there was no me. Words fail here. It is an intuition, not a thought process.
One could think this was a drug induced hallucination, but all it did was take me out of my habitual way of perception. I saw that I was conditioned to accept these things that spun away as a ‘body’ that I thought was me. A self-imposed body that trapped the beneficence that now radiated to/in/from all things. I was the moon and the stars, and the barking dog next door, but ‘I’ was no more. I was free because I saw there was no one present to be otherwise.
This was dying while living and all that dying is, the dissolution of a temporary structure into radiant vastness full of wonder.

Tucson,
You say that you had this experience under drug influence. But has the experience repeated itself under sober conditions. Or in other words, have you ever experienced the feeling of “nothingness and everythingness” in your sober state. R u really nothing? Or is it just another advaita lecture. I am from South India – the focal point of dwaita-adwaita debate. I know a number of brahmins who parrot advaitc lines without knowing anything. I hope u r not one.

Dear Tucson [Bob, I still presume],
Haven’t any of your intuitions ever been wrong?
Robert Paul Howard

Ego illusion, ego, ego, ego. Warning! If there is a sense of fear, there is only one source.
I may or may not have experienced non-existence, but of course, who would know/have known?
When I was afraid of not existing? All Ego, baby. As I have said before, your ego is your friend, just don’t be fooled: I and I don’t have to be driving the bus.
Ja love.

Deepak,
I haven’t taken psychotropic drugs for the better part of four decades. I try to describe or discuss what I actually experience which is often difficult to put into words. I could be a parrot, but it doesn’t matter. Someone can be telling you the truth from first-hand experience, but how can you know it? If my words are helpful and ring true, great, but take what I say with skepticism. Everyone must see for themselves.

RPH,
These intuitions are not like gut feelings or psychic impressions you get from reading tarot cards. They are experiential, plain as day to me, so I am confident in them. I am less confident in the terminology I use. That is where I could choose the wrong words or be misunderstood. This probably happens a lot. The same set of words can be understood a certain way by one person and completely differently by another especially when dealing with abstract concepts.
T.B.

MESSAGE FROM WAYNE
****************************
Hello,
For those of us who remain so spiritually backward that time and space still exist for us, another year is drawing to a close. It is an opportunity to stop for a moment and reflect on the miracle that is this Livingness. Within the Livingness are the polaric opposites…birth and death, joy and sorrow, pleasure and pain, inhalation and exhalation…and it is the continuous movement between the polarities that is the EXPERIENCE of being alive. Some people believe that death is the end of the Living, when in fact death is simply the end of a particular experience within the Livingness. The Livingness continues even after a particular point of experience is extinguished.
When birth and death are known for what they are — linked opposites within the Livingness — much of the fear and drama drain out of the process.
Sometimes this Living Teaching facilitates an extraordinary insight:
What you TRULY are is not limited to a particular point of experience. What you TRULY are is the Livingness itself.
Happy New Year to ALL!
With much love,
Wayne

Wayne,
Beautifully stated. You made me feel uplifted reading your comment.
Happy new year to you (and everyone else) too.

To Wayne:
For those like YOU who “remain so spiritually backward” (as you said) that you have to rely on mere platitudes and posturing, another year has been wasted.
But don’t dismay, for it is an opportunity to stop for a moment and reflect on how little you really know or understand.
For instance, you said: “Some people believe that death is the end of the Living, when in fact death is simply the end of a particular experience within the Livingness.”
— But you do NOT know that because you are not dead… yet. So don’t speak with certainty and false authority when you have no such knowledge or proof. Example: You said “in fact death is simply the end of a particular experience”. Be more honest and admit that you DO NOT know. Don’t act as if you have the last word. By doing so, you only show what a fool you are.
You also said: “The Livingness continues even after a particular point of experience is extinguished.”
— That only applies when one is alive and conscious. You don’t know anything beyond that. To assume that you do is ignorance and folly.
You said: “When birth and death are known for what they are — linked opposites within the Livingness — much of the fear and drama drain out of the process.”
— Sorry, but you simpy DO NOT KNOW what birth and death are. You do not know what anything is. So don’t be so damn sure that you do.
You said: “Sometimes this Living Teaching facilitates an extraordinary insight”
— And don’t come here posing and pretending to be a teacher or a guru either. By doing so, you make a fool of yourself.
You said: “What you TRULY are is not limited to a particular point of experience. What you TRULY are is the Livingness itself.”
— That is nothing but empty words and ideas. The more you define as you have been doing, the less you “TRULY” understand. Guys like you are a dime a dozen. You think and presume that you know what it’s all about… but the truth is, you don’t. The sooner you understand that, the wiser and more spiritually mature you will be.
Happy NO Year.

tAo,
Here’s what I liked about Wayne’s comment.
–Within the Livingness are the polaric opposites…birth and death, joy and sorrow, pleasure and pain, inhalation and exhalation…and it is the continuous movement between the polarities that is the EXPERIENCE of being alive.
This is true in my subjective experience. A flow between emotions, sensations, feelings and perceptions characterizes my reality most of the time. What I believe Wayne is saying, is that when one accepts this flow as the experience of life, and doesn’t always want to be having some other experience, life feels better.
–When birth and death are known for what they are — linked opposites within the Livingness — much of the fear and drama drain out of the process.
I am afraid of death at times, and I find Wayne’s perspective allows me to look at things without so much emotional investment in a result. As in, “of course death is coming, what is born dies.”
In short, you criticize Wayne for trying to define reality. I like Wayne’s comments because they point towards an attitude to life that makes everything feel a little lighter. And what else are words good for? Since they can’t contain the truth anyway, lightening things up seems to be a pretty good use for them…

Yes, as indicated by Tao’s reaction, words can never approach or accurately convey the wholeness of truth to anyone’s satisfaction. Although some at least appreciate an honest attempt. Perhaps it would be best to say nothing at all.
😉

Komposer,
I don’t have any arguement with your point about “lighter”, but I tend not to view arbitrary presumptions of reality as being helpful or positive. Much of religion is full of those kind of fantasies and myths presented as truth, and on the surface that kind of thing may appear to be “lighter” to some folks, but to others it is not at all illuminating but actually reinforcing nescience.
You said: “In short, you criticize Wayne for trying to define reality.”
— No, not really… it was not so much because he was “trying to define”, but rather because he was presenting his ideas as if he KNOWS for certain, and that what (he thinks) that he knows is the way that it IS. It’s not so much his ideas (which btw are not new or unique), but more the way that he presented them as being the truth.
———————————-
Wayne,
You said: “…words can never approach or accurately convey the wholeness of truth to anyone’s satisfaction. Although some at least appreciate an honest attempt. Perhaps it would be best to say nothing at all.”
It was not your “attempt” at conveying truth, but rather your presenting it as knowledge and certainty, and as THE truth. That’s why I pointed out that unless you can prove it to the satisfaction of all, you do not really know anything is the truth. Do you not see that? All kinds of people claim all sorts of knowledge and say this or that is the truth, but that does not make it the truth. Do you understand that?

Tao,
Yes, I understand that. Everyone must awaken to truth for themselves. I can’t prove truth to anyone or serve it up on a platter, but I am confident in the truth of what I said as far as my words can convey it. However, I admit that since words cannot possibly convey the absolute truth or totality of being, what I said was true only in a limited way. It would be like saying to someone who has never seen one, that a house has walls, a roof, windows and doors, but that would give them no clear vision of what the house actually looked like.
However, there are people who would like to know what a house looks like, so I try to tell them what it looks like to me. Still, that is no substitute for seeing it for themselves.
Once having seen the house, they may describe it differently. Instead of saying it has windows, doors, walls and a roof, they may say it has a floor, chimney, shutters, and a driveway. No one is wrong, but no one is absolutely complete in their description.

Wayne
You stated, “Everyone must awaken to truth for themselves.”
How do you define, “awaken?” Is this something that everyone must do?
Thanks,
Roger

Roger,
By “awaken” I mean to recognise truth or one’s true nature. By “must” I do not mean it in the imperative sense. It is just a manner of speaking as was the use of the word “everyone”. No one must do anything.
Wayne

Wayne,
Thanks for your reply. You stated, “No one must do anything.” Why the need to “awaken” to truth and one’s true nature?
What is the motivation or need to Awaken? Is this “truth” the same for everyone? Does this “truth” change from person to person?
What is the difference between someone who has this awakening and someone who has not?
Thanks,
Roger

Roger,
For some reason my name is appearing as “posted by” after your posts. Maybe I’ll sign this post as “Posted by: Roger” to add to the confusion!! Just for giggles and grins. Actually, what you have done serves to make my point better than most things I could say. You have provided the answer to your questions, perhaps intentionally?
The motivation to “awaken” is there because the ego wants to solve the mystery of life and death. However, there is no need to awaken or any real ego to do it. “True Nature” is always there anyway, so really there is no awakening. It is just a concept pointing to something non-conceptual. Some people are on this spiritual quest, always searching, and some of them appreciate this little reminder, but it doesn’t matter. Everything is fine as it is. There is no difference between someone who has this awakening and one who does not. It is always present. Maybe “recognition” is a better term than “awakening”
Wayne

Wayne,
Thanks again for your reply. I must have inadvertantly typed your name when I was preparing my above comment.
You stated, “True Nature is there anyway.”
How do you define, “True Nature?” Is this True Nature a product of ones Ego?
Is ones Ego the only thing one can use to recognize ones true nature?
Thanks again.
Roger

Roger,
No definition. Just this now and no ego to know it.
Wayne

do you need a reason to live ? only when you do not need a reason or purpose in your life for living then you can truly live. It is like being in aggreement with life and death at the same time knowing that you are but a piece of something as opposed to being the whole part of nothing. You cannot expect to live until you are no longer afraid of dying or exsisting. When these mean nothing to you then you are only left to live now today and to love all unconditionally

Iam relieved to find like minded intelligent people who have experienced this fear of non existance.
I always thought I was just afraid of death until i visited the Void one day and freaked out. I was driving at the time and the sudden realisation that after death was an eternity of non existance i lost the plot and had what can only be described as a panic attack!
I never knew my fear had a name and after discussing my fear with others, I didnt seem to be able to put it into words to convey the fear I had. On the surface everyone is afraid of dying. But I am not afraid to die. I am afraid of the not being. I couldnt comprehend that I would cease to be. I couldnt imagine not being me or having a conciousness. I tried to think about the fact that I didnt exist before I was born, but that wasnt right because before you exist you have existing to look forward to (so to speak LOL) but after you die you have nothing to “look forward to”. Then I thought about the possibility of be concious as another person ie reincarnation and that made me sadder because I realised that I would exist but my parents and children would all be gone and I began to mourn for them (even though they are all alive still) so that was no comfort at all.
Then you start to think about your birth and conception. What if my mother had had a headache the night I was conceived? I would not exist now would i so then things in my head got really complicated thinking about unborn children and their conciousnesses and existances. About abortion and still born babies who existed before conciousness. Will they exist again? will I exist again?
I’m so confused. There are so many questions and no answers and no body I know seems to ever worry about or obsess about this like I do.
Thanks for this website, at least I know i am not alone in this fear and it has a name. Not that i thought i invented this fear but you know how lonly the fear of death etc is. The scariest part is knowing that is something you do alone and no matter who is with you when it happens, you litterally are alone in the profound sense of the word.

Laurianna,
You have definitely discovered and come to the right place! And we are glad that you are here with us. And I am sure your comment will start a most interesting discussion.
Yes, we are each alone, but we all face the same mystery. I have some unique insights to share with you which you probably have not considered yet, and so I will do so soon in a subsequent comment. I am sure others do too. Until then, despite your existential apprehensions, just enjoy the always ever-present moment of the wonderous happening of your unique life.

Dear Laurianna:
Here is a quote from the book “Creating consciousness”
http://www.amazon.com/Creating-Consciousness-Study-Creativity-Violence/dp/1883991390/ref=pd_bbs_sr_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1203388319&sr=8-3
by Albert Low
The author writes on page 10 of the book
“During my life I had been prey to bouts of horror, moments when I felt as though I were being swallowed by a nothingness. These feelings started early in childhood and sometimes were more than I coul bear.”
I could write here that may be you could read the book since, in part, it contextualizes your and his experiences. However, the book is about much more than that and a very though though read. The author was a businessman/manager for most of his life and now a Zen teacher in Montreal.
Regarding the advice from the previous post “just enjoy the always ever-present moment of the wonderous happening of your unique life.” I would say go for it if you can!:) What the heck do I know!? I guess you have never thought about or heard it before! What an advice and revelation! So many wishes it but somehow very few seem to “enjoy the always ever-present moment of the wonderous happening of your unique life.” … The sweet nector of Oneness in the blink of an eye! So sweet … so funny … (disclaimer: I am being sarcastic about the previous post).

Isn’t it just our very human habit of fearing our insignificance that is to blame for our terrifying existential crises? Once you realise that humans are only as significant as we believe them to be, you’re free to live and die without any worries at all. We mean nothing; it all means nothing; and yet, strangely, we’re here and it means everything.
I would suggest putting every ounce of what you have into trying to FEEL how a human being should feel, whatever that is. Find a good psychotherapist if necessary (there is such a thing as an existential therapist – and they don’t sound at all crazy to me). Nature/the universe/reality will do the rest. We don’t control anything, really. We’re pissing in the wind – the entire history of humanity is as significant as an atom in an endless universe: hopelessly tiny and yet an essential part of something infinite.
Listen to life. You are a part of it. It wants you to live and then it will decide when and how you die, as all the billions of people and animals who’ve gone before you would testify if they were able to. You don’t need to worry about time, death/the end of experience, or infinite life. Everything is as it should be. This is the only faith you need.

What Tim says above is fine as far as it goes, but recognizing one’s insignificance is hardly a comfort if they are afraid of eternal non-existence. Such a person would say:
“OK, my life in the overall scheme of things means unimaginably less than one billionth of the tiniest grain of sand among all the grains of sand in a universe of trillions of sandy planets, but to me it is a big deal. I am alive and I don’t want to die regardless of whatever plans the universe has and my utter helplessness in controlling that. True, there’s nothing I can do about the inevitability of it, so it makes logical sense to not worry, be happy, and just BE HERE NOW, but that doesn’t change the fact that I will not exist forever. This is a frightening realization, not to mention the immeasurably grim reality that if I live long enough, my health will deteriorate to the point where living is intolerable and the only alternative is the horrifying endless abyss of eternal non-existence.”
Everybody all cheered-up now?

I’m 29 and I too was recently hit with this realization that will cease to be. Somehow I managed to live in a lovely imaginary reality for 29 years where what it meant to die never hit me.
I’ve been searching for wisdom and truth about this for weeks.
We should be thankful that we live when we do. Never before in human history have we had so much influence over nature as we do now. Advancements in medicine have extended our life expectancy from age 30 in 1800 to 78 today – that’s an increase of 2.6 times in just 200 years. And now, we stand poised on the brink of amazing breakthroughs in stem cells, genetics, nanotechnology, which will very likely mean the end to most diseases and possibly the disease of aging itself.
So the truth that I’ve come away with here is that I have two options: 1) To lament, obsess, fear, and be miserable as I question the why I’m here, why I’m me, what happens after I die, whether or not anything I do even matters, etc, or 2) To live, to soak it all in, to eat right and exercise, and to be happy, while still not taking crazy unnecessary risks with my life. By choosing option 2, I lower my stress level and increase the odds that I will live long enough to benefit from the technological breakthroughs that may extend my life indefinitely and if not, then I might live long enough to see Cryonics (alcor.org) become a reliable, proven, mainstream means to live well into the future.

One thing I wanted to add: some philosopher once said that we should not fear nor contemplate that which we will never experience. When we die, we won’t be around to experience it. We only know life. Time, for us, began when we were born and ends when we die. Nothing else matters. It doesn’t matter that the universe will go on without us because to us, when we die, all time ends. That also means that to us, we are immortal, because we exist for all time since “all time” is defined as our lifespan.
Of course, the problem is that to us, time is sequential, and we can see death as the end point. That makes us fear it, because we see other people die and we can forecast it.
For some reason, I don’t fear non-existance if suddenly the whole earth got sucked into a black hole. I could accept that, and I’m fine with it. “Oh well”, I think to myself. For some reason, I’m more disturbed by thinking that I won’t exist while others will exist, and that if I had been born 100-200 years later, I might have had a chance at living indefinitely, and that’s what depresses me the most.

I was having this feeling 10 minutes ago, I get paralyzied, I can’t move the utter thought of non exsistance is so powerfull I can’t move and I even tear. I’ve tried countering this feeling with positive things, like my atoms will exsist and make something eles, or maybe there is a god, but all forms of comfort were destroyed 1 day while watching the history ch. They had a show about space, and that 1 day EVERYTHING regardless will be “ripped apart”, it it called the “big rip” every atom partical destroyed. When I think of that I get over this fear but then think, how can something not exsist, then how CAN anything exsist? If god exsist, why? How was he created? Like how can he just be? Then its a cycle that lasts for the night until I fall asleep

It was a few years from now that my wife and myself were traveling by a manual rickshaw in India and my mobile phone slipped out of my pocket. I came to know of it quite late. Finally my phone was lost. It was quite costly during those days. My wife began to weep. I asked her as to why you were weeping for it. She replied that we had a facility and we will have it no more. I said it is absolutely correct.
Next moment, I told my wife to think of that moment of time when we have leave behind every damn thing that we possess and leave even our body. How painful would it be then? She wiped her tears and agreed.
I myself realized then possessiveness is a bane but it is human nature. I wonder how even God will react if He has to leave this world.

Tito et al,
Of course I have no final answers to the big questions for others. For myself, I know that what I really am is unborn and undying. I neither am nor am not. This is not something I can convey to anyone intellectually, It is just a “space” that I get into and I “see” it. Yes, this entity known here as “tucson” will evaporate, but as what I am, what really is, just is as it is in this eternal instant and this instant always is. If all there is is here..this, where could it go upon the evaporation of an appearance?
Think of this. If it is true that we will be eternally non-existent, then we must have been eternally non-existent prior to our birth. How could our moment to exist have ever arrived? How could what was never born die? It is all shifting appearance in NOW. THIS is always it.
I say this not because I expect anyone to “get it” or intellectually understand. No one will be satisfied just hearing this. I am just trying to stimulate your own natural seeing into the reality of this moment as being all there is or ever could be. It is so simple and obvious that it is overlooked and yet it is not an any sort of object that can be overlooked. Formless non-objectivity is not something caught or held on to, or even known or identified in any way. Yet, here it is (n’t). The sea is always present as it is, but ripples and waves endlessly appear, shift and disappear upon its surface.

Hi I completely understand the overwhelming feeling that this “fear” brings to people. I have had bouts of it most of my life. It’s a total completely paralysing realisation that if there is no afterlife we simply cease to exist. its not just the loss of the body thats the issue, its the loss of the consciousness. I can handle the loss of the physical as long as my conciousness continues to exist but what if it doesn’t???? that’s it dead end, full stop, all over. Everytime it hits me it’s generally at night when i’m alert and mulling things over. I get an almighty adrenaline rush from the fear and then the contemplation begins, analysing the possiblities, sifting the logical from the illogical and arriving at no conclusion. This has been going on for years now, it has lessened recently as i have more in my life to focus on, baby daughter, however, it is still there lurking, like the reaper is at my shoulder waiting for my guard to drop! i’m glad i’m not the only one, it makes me feel less alone. I don’t like discussing it with anyone not only because they may think i’m crazy but also to protect them because if they don’t think this way i din’t want to be the catalyst that causes them to think this way.

Nick, as you know, you’re not crazy. You’re just in touch with a fear that most people won’t admit to, or repress.
We all have to come to grips with it in our own way. But for what it’s worth, here’s a passage from a book I’m reading, “The Dream Weaver.”
——————-
“Ever since I was born, I have been getting closer to death. So by definition I am dying. Right? There’s really no way around it.”
She nodded cautiously, almost as if she’d heard this before.
“Tell me, Ian. When you walk into a store an hour after they have opened, would you say they are closing?” She continued without my answering.
“Of course not. But if you walk in five minutes before closing time, and the shopkeeper is sweeping up the store, locking the back door, and organizing the shelves, you would say he’s closing, right? It’s much more a state of mind — they’re not closing until they start getting ready to close.”
I nodded, grinning. She had done it. Solved the unsolvable, and in a very uplifting way.
“So, are you dying?” she asked.
I shook my head, smiling still. “Not until I decide I am.”

Once in a while i start thinking about my life. Then the scariest thing ever happens when I realize my consciencesness and my ability to think will end. It seems like it will be a long time until I reach old age, but when i do it will fill like my life just started and then i will realize it is about to end. I’ve had panic attacks and started punching the walls just thinking that i’ll lose my ability to be alive. It is impossible for me to imagine what it would be like to be dead and not be able to have a conscience mind.

*It is impossible for me to imagine what it would be like to be dead and not be able to have a conscience mind.*
I think the nearest I could imagine is that it would be like a dreamless sleep. I don’t fear dreamless sleep.

I have this too, I’m only 15 and it scares the living daylights out of me.
I would just rather not be alone. I mean the end of conciousness is what fears me most but then eternal conciousness would be just as scary, don’t you think?
Obviously there must be a higher being or we wouldn’t be here at all. Something that never existed would never get the chance to exist, so either we do exist or we never did at all.
I go through this fear and worry every day of my life.
When I do die, I worry about the feeling of lonliness or not being with the ones I love. I would never want to forget then and I would always want my boyfriend there, right beside me.

Obviously I do not know what happens at death. But I have observed different states of mind while alive. I know the difference, for example, between feeling lonely and alone, and becoming aware of not having been aware of self. If I am absorbed in an activity (anything at all) or asleep without dreaming, there is no awareness of self. Fear only arises when the belief arises that there is a separate self that can be harmed or destroyed. But what is this self? It comes and it goes. Cannot it be real? Is there really anything to lose?

Thanks to some of your excellent descriptions, I am convinced that this is the same terrifying perception that I have confronted, off and on, since about the age of ten. Most of the time life seems to keep it at bay, particularly enjoyable events but when it has me – that moment of realisation – its absolutely overwhelming.
I desperately want to confront this is some way but, sitting here right now trying to conjure it, just doesn’t work. Yet at another time it’ll just find me, and terrorise me, when I’m not ready. I will continue to explore this curse of life and see if I can find some benefit from it.
Thank you for sharing your experiences.

I am 45 years old now and ever since I can remember have been obsessed with death. At roughly the age of 11 I started to experience the sheer,absolute horror and panics of non-existence. my life really went downhill when these attacks started and they became more frequent as I grew older. I found alcohol stopped them fo a while but as time went on I needed more and more alcohol to keep the attacks at bay, after many years alcohol didn’t keep the attacks away and |I would still have them after huge amounts of alcohol. i ended up losing my job, losing my driving licence and verging on the suicidal. in desperation i went to my doctor but even then I couldn’t bring myself to say what was really wrong, instead I claimed severe depression, I did not want to say the truth to the doctor as i was afraid he had never really thought about it and I didn’t want to be responsible for him then going through the nightmare I was, anyway, he proscribed me seroxat(paroxetine, )this was approximately 15 years ago and I haven’t had an attack since. I still faer death and non-existence but the seroxat seems to keep the all-encompassing fear, terror and panic attacks away. i definitely would not be around today if i had not been put on seroxat and I guess I’m really lucky they help as I wasn’t honest with the doctor about what was wrong with me.
I genuinely thought i was the only person in the world who had these feeling as I never witnessed anyone else having the same attacks as I did.
thank you

Im only 14,and ever since i was 12 i’ve been getting a strange thing like this all the time and now since i’ve read this im glad im not going crazy or something and that others get this too.I’ve already accepted the possibility of non-existence and i dont worry anymore.It’s like knowing that nothing really matters in the end when there is nothing after.Its made me more relaxed and care free and i hope to experience this for the rest of my life.If it wasn’t for this i still would have been narrow minded and ignorant and i cant explain it all…there is more but im tired and im going to sleep now

Marcus, you seem to be wise beyond your years. Congratulations. You’ve already learned that life and death have to be faced directly, not peeked at out of the corner of our mental eye through the lens of religion or wishful thinking.
Keep on seeing reality as it is, and no doubt you’re going to have a deeply satisfying life.

The angst of existensialism is spurned and kept ablaze by FEAR. One poster wrote how he worried and worried till he finally fell asleep. I will guess that in deep sleep states he experienced nothing more than the contented wholeness of that state.
There is a substratum or field if you wanna call it that that exists beyond the scope of time and space that our minds operate from, and unto which it fades into, as in deep states of sleep, perhaps death too, or in moments of absorbtion. This substrata or field I assume is the great nothingness for lack of a better word existing beyond the constructs or influence of time and thus beyond mental conception. You can never fathom it, but you are one with it,the beingness part of you which has nothing as its experiencer.
Your existential angst come from your natural need to know and have certainty, but understand that It is YOU pondering your projected nonexistence and freaking out,the same You who is calm in deep sleep.
The same you that always is but not always as the you that you know yourself to be.
Despite all I have written, I still occassionaly experience existential angst. Im learning through it currently that the distressed state of angst is noting but FEAR. and FEAR is not real. find what is real and unshakable within you and merge in it.

The mind could never fathom IT (The source). You didnt exist as mind till you were born into the space time continium . when you die or in deep sleep you go back into that void again, only that its not really a void as IT has no frame of reference for the mind. Religion and deity worship was not an invention out of a need for assuaging mans primal fears but rather out of the discovery by man of an intuitive or subconscious stratas beyond his mind where possibly time and space is distorted or doesnt exist as we know it in the conscious realm. Man in all cultures called this presence lurking in the shadow of the manifest GOD, or void or presence. The mind fully manifest in consciousness could never grasp this pure essence from which it self was fashioned just as a child could never be older than his parents if I could use that analogy. Science postulates that the universe of time and space possibly emanated from an unimaginable field which consumes it again and repeats the process over and over again. our mind is a product of time and hence can never grasp the concept of no time which spurned it.
Timelessness is a misnomar as you contemplate it, time passes. get it?.
The closest you will ever come to knowing timelessness is by attempting to kill time (mind). funny thing is that if you succeed there s no one to applaud you.

I know exactly what you mean.
I’m 19. It started a few months ago.
And in the past 4 days, I thought about it atleast once a day. It used to happen to me, only before I fell asleep. Now it happens randomaly during the day.
When it happens, I feel… like my brain cannot process that information, like it’s shutting down…
And I simply can’t accept that fate. I won’t
I’m desperately looking for a shred of hope, a proof, that I will remain conscious after death.
My only hope, for now, is that no matter how corny, or far fetched a theory is, untill proven otherwise, anything is possible.
Anyway, if there is afterlife, I’ll just have to stay alive.
Keep me posted

Ron:
Think of this: How long were you unborn before your life? Forever?
If so, how could your moment to exist have ever arrived?
Could it be that what you really are has always been and therefore always will be?
Since there is no time.

Tucson:
Thank you for your comment, at first it made me feel better.
But consider this:
1) It is possible, that there was a begining. Hence, not FOREVER, but since the creation of our time-space.
2) Time, or some other effect that projects our preception of time on us, must exist.
Otherwise, we would have no destinction between past and future.
3) Trying to understand the boundary effects of space and time (i.e begining/end)
Is futlie, for now.
To conclude, I meant an empirical proof, that all human beings, have, for lack of better words, an immortal soul. Because, we are very far, from producing a theory, about our space-time, that will confidently predict the fate of the dead.

Ron, I just responded to an email from someone else on this subject. In part, I said:
“I also ponder such things as:
–gratitude for existing at all. I could not have been. Yet, I am. For that I’m grateful. Don’t know to whom or what; probably never will know. But it’s better to have lived and died than never to have lived at all, isn’t it? (though Woody Allen might disagree)
–the uncertainty of what lies beyond death. Yes, it’s probable that death leads to personal non-existence. But this can’t be known for sure. We could be pleasantly surprised after our last breath. Or unpleasantly, if the Christian hell exists. Regardless, a surprise could await.
–living life fully. If this life is the only one we’ll have, it makes sense to not waste it through worry. Marcus Aurelius’ “Meditations” (Stoic philosophy) are a wonderful commentary on this notion. Every moment is precious. To fear death is to dilute the quality of life.”
I can’t say that I’ve overcome a fear of death. But I’ve learned how to deal with it better.

Ron,
Then try this:
The past is a memory, the future is a supposition, and the present is past before we apprehend it.
In other words, by the time the sensory input reaches our brain, the phenomena that caused it is “past” because the process of perception and conception are complicated and require a lapse of time for their completion.
The only “present” therefore is PRESENCE and must necessarily be what we are. Such PRESENCE, then, is inevitably outside of time and must be intemporal.
This intemporality never was any ‘where’ or at any ‘time’ but here and now, and Here and Now it will be forever.

I think I understand.
You mean, each of is an eternal being (or part of an eternal being), and we tap into this space-time, using our bodies.
That’s the “spark of life”, what differs us from machines.
Did I get it right?

Ron,
Not quite.
How about this:
We “tap into” space and time via our minds. They exist as concepts only, not absolutely.
What we are is this immediate consciousness which is looking, hearing, feeling, but can’t see or know itself as an object in the same way an eye can’t see itself.
An eye can only see itself in a mirror and the mirror is what is seen, heard and touched.

oh…ok
Where does this leave us? the real us?
What happens after the mind dies? Do we become conscious to our absolute self?

Ron,
You asked, “Do we become conscious TO our absolute self?”
–We become conscious AS absolute self which may seem like mincing words but there is a profound difference. There is no entity, no ‘we’, outside of absolute to know it. Absolute can’t see itself as an object, it can only BE whatever it is.
There really is no mystery in this, only our conditioned inability to perceive the obvious.
The difficuly we have is due to the objective inexistence of pure non-objectivity which is our eternal nature.
This nature is devoid of even one atom of objectivity. Yet it is pure presence, autonomous and spontaneous.
It is This which is looking for Itself when we look for It, and we can’t find It because It is This which we are.
Objectively It is not here and at the same time It is everywhere and apart from which nothing else is.
**Keep in mind that dualistic language does not permit us to express these things without the use of objective terms such as ‘it’. One must ‘sense’ uninterrupted subjectivity.

Well said Tucson.

right.
Will one remain aware of his existence, and former ‘life’?
I sense confidence in your words. where does it come from? do you think that is the ‘afterlife’, or do you KNOW that’s the ‘afterlife’?
And most importantly:
what happens to the dead?
yes, I know:
“We become conscious AS absolute self”
What does that mean?
—
Also:
“There is no entity, no ‘we’, outside of absolute to know it. Absolute can’t see itself as an object, it can only BE whatever it is.”
So there is no sensing, or awarness of self existence? that’s just like non-existence…
—
How are we different from a pc/calculator/car?
They sense, they are taught how to respond to various stimulants. Machines understand only ‘yes’ and ‘no’, the current is X amp, or Y amp, open/close. They only lack the notion of “maybe”, abstract thinking. Intelligence, means having the ability to artifically complete given ‘corrupted’ data.
—-

Ron asks,
“Will one remain aware of his existence, and former ‘life’?”
–There is only consciousness. No former life, no after life. Don’t take my word for it. It won’t do any good. Find out for yourself.
“I sense confidence in your words. where does it come from?”
–It’s just my writing style. Some find it irritating.
“what happens to the dead?”
–Find out who/what it is that dies. Then you will know what happens to the dead.
“We become conscious AS absolute self”
What does that mean?”
–When you find out who/what it is that dies, then you won’t ask that question.
“So there is no sensing, or awarness of self existence? that’s just like non-existence…”
–No, there is just no ‘thing’ that senses or is aware. The sensing and being aware is what we are. Objective existence is only a notion.
As I have said before, we are conditioned to think that what we are is the presence of what is present, which is the absence of what is absent, but when we perceive what we are we find that what we are is the absence of what is present and the presence of what is absent.
How are we different from a pc/calculator/car?
–Whatever is, we are…we, who are not.

This is for you Ron.Enjoy and dont worry
I was entirely in the present. There was neither past nor future. No expectations, no judgments of my situation. I was aware that I was dying but there was no sense of regret, for there was no sense, as I said , of past (to regret) or future (to despair for). I just existed, and it was beautiful. As I was, in pain, and suffocating, but none of it mattered, for I was transcending eternity and in the void and I was the void and the void was me… and I would be in this place where I was forever.. and if forever were to be an instant or a thousand years was immaterial and irrelevant. I felt, “Abide with me, here, now, for I am at peace, and we are one”. I felt a oneness with whoever was in the room with me, and whoever was unconscious with me, and I was dying, and it was good. It was just that — good. Nothing fabulous, or miraculous, or brilliant. Just “good”. Perfectly, clearly, good. I could have spent a trillion years right there, with that presence, whatever it was. But the hard thing to explain is that there was no “trillion years”. There was just NOW. I had no sense of future. It’s only now that I am alive that I know that I could have been content with an eternity like that. At the time, any concept of “eternity” was beyond my experience, for “time” was beyond my experience. The glorious euphoric peace, the presence, the empty, falling, now-ness with no past or future — I can’t recapture it, and it has changed my life, and I need to talk to others about it, and as a scientist I know that it was probably “just anoxia” — but there is so much more to it that cannot be explained — and yes, it has changed my life. Not what I saw, or heard, but what I felt. My priorities lined up, my values came into focus, everything in that void where one would think “Nothing” existed – the only reason it is called “Nothing”, I believe, is that there is no Time, and existence is purely Being. That was my experience. Perhaps this is what the existentialist philosophers tried so hard to communicate, this “being-in-the moment”, this awareness of self… what they stated was paltry compared to this. What I felt was powerful and intense and life-changing. It transcended any mere “moment”. When I die, if this is what I will feel for all eternity, I await it. But with this experience, I know (and I don’t know how) that I can’t force it, or rush it. But I know. This is how it will be, and it is the truth. This pure, perfect psychological state, that I achieved by accident and can only recapture in memory, is real, an a genuine capability of the human mind. Would that we could figure a way to capture this as a daily state, even for five minutes. The world would be at peace. I do not refer to “world peace”, but to inner peace. I was in physical agony, alone, desperate, scared — and such was this peace, this contentment, this timelessness, that I would willingly do it all again, tenfold. I believe. I need to talk about it. I did a bad job, just now, of communicating what happened. I made it seem trivial.

@Obed:
I wish it was that easy, but my brain tends to go with a more ‘mudane’ explenation for you experience:hallucination.
@Tucson:
“Don’t take my word for it. It won’t do any good. Find out for yourself.”
–How?
“Find out who/what it is that dies. Then you will know what happens to the dead.
”
–How?
“No, there is just no ‘thing’ that senses or is aware. The sensing and being aware is what we are.”
–hmm…maybe…the vacuum’s energy, kasimir effect, zero point energy etc. is what we become a part of…
(the above are all related, through the empiric evidence, that the vacuum is not so empty as we thought..or more precisely, the SPACE itself, the 3D space that allows 3D creatures to move in it, although empty of what we define as matter, is something, and not nothing.)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vacuum_energy

Ron asks, “–How?”
–Well, you could pick up one of the many books on meditation or find an advisor, teacher or guru.
But a good teacher can only show you that there is no ‘way’ or practice. A ‘way’ leads from here to there. From here to here there can be no ‘way’.
Conceptualisation conceals what we are. Catch the moment between the thoughts. Then one might recognise oneself.
My best advice would be to pack your bags, go to the airport without them, catch the plane, and leave your self behind.
Then the kashmir effect becomes moot.

“From here to here there can be no ‘way’.
”
“Catch the moment between the thoughts. Then one might recognise oneself.
”
Catching the moment between the thoughts, IS a practice, or a way. However, the two above sentences, are not contradictal, because the first “here” and the second “here”, are not the same.
“kashmir effect”
The correct term is Kasimir or Casimir effect, named after Hendrik B. G. Casimir.
“Then the kashmir effect becomes moot.”
How come?
—-
Will all of us become absolute?

Hello all,
Im 19 and i have recently been experiencing these things. I can relate to many of the things posted. I had like 3 terrible days some weeks ago, constant depression and a lot of tears…I am now trying to overcome this. Whenever im going through this, i usually try to find websites like these and read similar stories. The non-existing thing freaks me out.
If anybody feels like talking about this, please send me a mail or add me to MSN Messenger. I cant find any of my friends to talk about this who is going through the same. Please only atheists, i dont want any religious BS.
Reach me at: talkinghead89 at hotmail.com
Best,
Santiago

@Santiago:
1)You can add me to messenger… I’m still not over this.
2)Religion is not BS, and it is disrespectfull to call it that. A religion, is a set of belifes, rituals and morals.
The belifes and rituals, give many people comfort. (about life after death, creation of all, meaning of life) They are the wrapper of the real idea:
Morals. Modern riligions, focus on setting the morals of men and women, on the right track.

All your fears and angsts are within it. You can faint while colluding in to the deep chasms of your fear of non existence or existence, but soon you will awaken again to the field which is beyond your ego and which always is. Good thing is that you will not always remain who you are and the thoughts of uncertainty that make your present life a living hell. Its like a dream, you dream different persornalities but upon awakenning you have no strong desires to go back and assume the dream life. That also explains why a new brain is required for each successive life, so one can cherish the illussion of being born anew instead of tangled in an unending infinity. The field or being that spurn you is bigger than your worries. you and every thought rise and faden back in it, and nothing can change this. rejoice and cherish the gift.

Hi Ron
Sorry, i cant see your email; you add me if you want.
Regarding my comment on religion, i said that because it gets on my nerves when im having these thoughts that people come to me and tell me all that stuff of God and so on. I dont buy that, so they shouldnt come to me. Im very rational and scientific.
African,
I didnt get your comment 100%. Are you a believer of afterlife /re birth?

santiago,
sorry, have not been here recently.
As regards your question if I believe in after life or rebirth. I ponder that occassionaly, and would say that my time initiated mind and brain has a bit of fun with that since it is its nature to project and ponder, but something profound in me tells me that my source or witness reality is beyond time and its rigors as imposed upon the mind, as such I try often to identify with this pure unimaginable essence of timelesness within me which simple is. I believe that with practice the intensity of the projecting mind is lessened to such an extent that your wonderious contented inner nature becomes more prevailent. Im not there yet, but I know this to be truth. I guess what I am saying is that the only reality is the pure unmitigated moment without thought. that thou art.

I think African is onto something.
If one imagines that the individual self is real, then one might in some way persist after death and eventually find a new bodily expression. However, once this limiting tendency of the mind is transcended the issues of death and reincarnation are no longer applicable. They just become irrelevant like Palin’s qualifications to be vice-president if Obama wins.
Perhaps one just remains eternally, timelessly as This very moment free of concepts and thought.

Thanks, African.
I just believe in human potential and nothing else. We come to this world to just help keeping the ball rolling, and then, we are gone. The best thing that you could be given is recognition and therefore achieve somekind of immortality.
Thanks…

Santiago wrote: “The best thing that you could be given is recognition and therefore achieve somekind of immortality.”
–So you write a great book, compose great music, errect tall buildings, sire many children. It all will be dust, then molecules, and finally atomic particles one day. Not even a memory to anyone. What kind of immortality is that?
Immortality is perhaps recognizing who you really are as that timeless “essence” African is talking about.
Also, in light of being that essence, Radiohead’s comment is applicable:
https://churchofthechurchless.com/2008/10/death-cant-be-i#comment-136847487

Im not saying that inmortality could be remembered by everyone, but i think i’ll be happy with at least one thinking of what i was.
Anyway, radiohead’s comments are spot on.

Hello all. I 24 and I have been experiencing this on and off for a few years now. Recently it has come to the point of being very depressing, where I think of every passing moment as a piece of my life slipping away into nothingness.
I see this deep dark fissure when the thought strikes and I’m paralyzed with fear, where I gasp for breath.
What set this all off is that my 24th birthday is going to be in less then a week and within the last few weeks I’ve been obsessing about becoming older and counting the years of my (and my loved ones) potential life span.
I have a very high IQ and I fear that it has led me to constantly question higher-beings and have a lack of faith as I gain knowledge. This fear of non-existence is starting to be beyond my ability to control.
I know one day that this fear will fade some and I’ll be able to carry on, but at the moment it’s just too much.

Raith,
Relax Dude… and get over it. Your’re ONLY age 24 for christsake!!! Are you frickin crazy, or stupid, or what? You’ve got many decades to go before you need to give any thought, much less frett and worry, about this stuff.
Just live your life NOW. Enjoy your life NOW. Every moment of your life that you spend fretting and fearing and worrying, is a moment that you have foolishly WASTED… not a moment that you have LIVED and enjoyed and appreciated. All you can do is live each passing moment. Everything is transitory, so get used to it, and don’t frett about it. Just enjoy it while you can.
I myself am over 60 years old. And when I was your young age, I was definitely enjoying my life to the very MAX. I didn’t give a tiny shit about getting older or about death. I just LIVED for TODAY. My generation was called the “NOW” generation. We lived our fleeting lives to the fullest. And I still am.
So I suggest that you wake-up out of your worrying and paranoia, and do the same and quit obsessing about something (old age & death) that is way far beyond your control or your concern.
YOUR LIFE is happening RIGHT NOW. So LIVE IT NOW, and ENJOY IT NOW. This is all you have, and it’s the best that you (or anyone) can ever do.
Don’t worry, Be Happy…. while you CAN.

Raith, I hear you. I don’t know exactly how you feel, but I’ve had similar feelings — not as strong as yours, but in the ballpark.
tAo offers some good advice. The best way to challenge death is to live life as fully as possible. Embrace life with gusto so long as you can. You don’t know how long that will be.
Yes, non-existence after death is a strong possibility. But not a certainty. So why not leave the question of what happens after you die unresolved, as a big fat ????
Uncertainty can be uncomfortable. But it also can be exciting and energizing. Each moment can lead…anywhere. We don’t know what will happen next, not really.
Wanting to know what will happen after death is understandable. However, no one knows. Including you. What you do know is what your experience, your life, your awareness is right at this moment. That’s real. The future and past isn’t.
Keep on living, happily. I’m confident your feelings about death will change. You may never be able to laugh away death. Smiling though — a real possibility.

Very well said Brian.
This is one of your all-time best comments. You expressed it far better than I did. Thanks.
And I also hope Raith returns and reads (and contemplates upon) what you’ve said here.

Hi again guys.
Im much more better that i was when i posted for the first time here. I kinda managed to get over it. Still, i get the chills now and then, but not as strong as the first days.
The best way to overcome this, in my experience, is thinking “you can’t do anything about it (death)” and that “I wont realize when i die”. This, plus living to do a good thing for humanity, like i said earlier, keep me away from the thoughts.
The funny thing is that…EVERY day when i wake up, i think “huhu, im still here” hahaha.
What i know is that, when a relative or someone close dies, that will be a total downtime, taking into account what i believe, that there is nothing after death and that they wont be coming back again. Anyway, i hope that doesnt happen soon.
Take care…
Santiago.

Thank you! Thank you! Thank you ALL – is all that I can say. I have never responded or posted on a blog before But I feel compelled to say I know this feeling all too well. Like so many others, I too, felt so alone all of the time with these overwhelming thoughts that seemed to take over my mind – especially during that late hours of night. Funny thing is that the first time this happened to me I was 5 years old. My mind would race thinking about life after death (not my life) but the world or universe. I would contemplate infinite blackness or nothingness. Just reading this and talking about it the feeling takes over every inch of my body and my entire being feels warm and cool at the same time.. it scares my beyond explanation. Being raised catholic the alternative is heaven and the thought of existing forever in heaven scares me as much as nothingness. These thought make me so uncomfortable I want to crawl out of my skin. It is so good to read about others with similar thoughts… still the fear is there and I want it to go away and make peace with the unknown so I can leave in peace with the known. Thank you all so much
-nicole

nicole, your honest self-awareness will take you far. Lots of people deny that they’re afraid of death. You’re in touch with your fear. That’s great.
I’m reading a book by Julian Barnes, “Nothing To Be Frightened Of.” He’s a novelist and terrific writer. He’s also afraid of death, notwithstanding the title of his book.
I love how Barnes is so open and direct about how feels toward death. There aren’t answers in this book (what’s the answer to death? not dying; good luck with getting that answer). But you might enjoy Barnes’ style and attitude. See:
http://www.amazon.com/Nothing-Be-Frightened-Julian-Barnes/dp/0307269639/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1229922404&sr=8-1
When I finish the book I’ll probably write a blog post about it. If you click on the “death/rebirth” category in the sidebar to the left you’ll find other musings on the subject.
Main thing: you’re not alone. We’re all together in this thing: death.

I know this is almost 3 years after the original post and I have never been to this website, but today I typed in “fear of non-existence” into google and I got here. And your description of what you feel drove me crazy because for more than TEN years now, I have been feeling the EXACT thing you have described and I’ve searched online before but never found a description of the “feeling” that compares in any way to mine. So, even though I have never posted a comment in response to anything online ever, I really felt compelled to do this because I could not believe the description. I have just read it to my husband over the phone and he knows that I have described “it” in nearly the same exact words, but probably less articulate on my part. When I do “feel it” I spin into a panic I suppose that I can’t control and I consider it also the worst feeling, but at the same time I feel like I see something that no one else does…. and now I know that someone else might. I could go on more about this, but I won’t here.

Karla, I feel good that you’ve resonated with the description of what I felt. It doesn’t change death, or our reaction to it, but it’s good to know we’re not alone.
I believe it was C.S. Lewis who said, “We read to know we are not alone.” So true. Books. Blogs. Whatever.
Reading about other people’s experiences shows us that while we’re all different, in another sense we’re all one.
And maybe this is the key to opening the door that leads to not fearing death so much: oneness. Sounds like a New Age platitude, But it just might be the reality of our universe.

I just tried leaving a comment, but I don’t think it posted. I just wanted to say that I have experienced exactly the same experience and was amazed to find it worded so exactly the way I have tried to describe it to my husband. I am 24 and I have experienced “it” for about 10 years now and honestly thought I was alone in feeling this peek into non-existence. It just felt good to see others having experienced it too. Thank you.

Sorry I just noticed the first comment was posted. Thank you again.

It’s been since November since I’ve first posted and I just wanted to say that I’ve been here a few times to check-up on postings. I’m feeling better about it by leaps and bounds since I’ve first posted and through more research (and a bit of soul-searching) I’ve done I’m slowly starting to believe in God and religion again. Not because it gives me something to hold on to (though its a nice feeling sometimes), but because the more I think about the Universe, God and the very nature of life and how the Universe is wired to create life… I feel that there is a stronger and stronger possibility that there is a life after death of sorts.
I still don’t like the idea of dieing… I intend to do great things one day, but it is something I’ve come more and more to terms with.

Doing the Greatest Thing:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xO0DtbaIeAM
“This transcendental sound vibration — the chanting of Hare Krsna, Hare Krsna, Krsna Krsna, Hare Hare / Hare Rama, Hare Rama, Rama Rama, Hare Hare — is the sublime method for reviving our Krsna consciousness.
As living spiritual souls we are all originally Krsna conscious entities, but due to our association with matter since time immemorial, our consciousness is now polluted by the material atmosphere.
In this polluted concept of life, we are all trying to exploit the resources of material nature, but actually we are becoming more and more entangled in its complexities.
This illusion is called maya, or the hard struggle for existence over the stringent laws of material nature. This illusory struggle against the material nature can at once be stopped by revival of our Krsna consciousness.
Krsna consciousness is not an artificial imposition upon the mind. This consciousness is the original energy of the living entity.
When we hear the transcendental vibration, this consciousness is revived. And the process is recommended by authorities for this Age.
By practical experience also, we can perceive that by chanting this maha-mantra, or the Great Chanting for Deliverance, one can at once feel transcendental ecstasy from the spiritual stratum.
When one is factually on the plane of spiritual understanding, surpassing the stages of sense, mind, and intelligence – one is situated on the transcendental plane.
This chanting of Hare Krsna, Hare Krsna, Krsna Krsna, Hare Hare / Hare Rama, Hare Rama, Rama Rama, Hare Hare, is directly enacted from the spiritual platform, surpassing all lower states of consciousness–namely sensual, mental, and intellectual.
There is no need of understanding the language of the mantra, nor is there any need of mental speculation, nor any intellectual adjustment for chanting this maha-mantra.
It springs automatically from the spiritual platform, and as such, anyone can take part in this transcendental sound vibration, without any previous qualification, and dance in ecstasy.
We have seen it practically. Even a child can take part in the chanting, or even a dog can take part in it. The chanting should be heard, however, from the lips of a pure devotee of the Lord, so that immediate effect can be achieved.
As far as possible, chanting from the lips of a non-devotee should be avoided, as much as milk touched by the lips of a serpent causes poisonous effect.
The word Hara is a form of addressing the energy of the Lord. Both Krsna and Rama are forms of addressing directly the Lord, and they mean “the highest pleasure, eternal”. Hara is the supreme pleasure potency of the Lord. This potency, when addressed as “Hare”, helps us in reaching the Supreme Lord.
The material energy, called as maya, is also one of the multi-potencies of the Lord, as much as we are also the marginal potency of the Lord.
The living entities are described as superior energy to matter. When the superior energy is in contact with inferior energy, it becomes an incompatible situation.
But when the supreme marginal potency is in contact with the spiritual potency Hara, it becomes the happy, normal condition of the living entity.
The three words: namely Hara, Krsna, and Rama, are transcendental seeds of the maha-mantra, and the chanting is a spiritual call for the Lord and His internal energy Hara, for giving protection to the conditioned soul.
The chanting is exactly like the genuine cry of the child for the mother. Mother Hara helps in achieving the grace of the supreme father Hari, or Krsna, and the Lord reveals Himself to such a sincere devotee.
No other means therefore, of spiritual realization is as effective in this age, as chanting the maha-mantra: Hare Krsna, Hare Krsna, Krsna Krsna, Hare Hare / Hare Rama, Hare Rama, Rama Rama, Hare Hare.”
— His Divine Grace A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada

tAo,
How does Dzogchen compare or “fit in” with chanting Hare Ksna and Krsna Consciousness?

Thanks for your stories everyone, it’s really great to hear other people’s honest accounts. The trouble with experiences like these is that most people don’t understand what you are saying and will just wave it away as a hallucination, or refuse to talk about it because of their own fear.
I’ve had several experiences of this nature, although there are two forms for me. The ‘Void’ experience happens during nighttime/waking from sleep, an indescribable nothingness and sense of raw terror and unavoidable panic. This is aligned with a feeling of absolute aloneness, as if I am the only sentient awareness in the universe.
The second type of experience is a loss of normal self boundaries, as if the confines of my body suddenly opened and my self flooded, like water out into everything. Everywhere I look, all I can see is myself and that is terrifying.
I worry sometimes that these experiences may have been brought on my taking LSD, and that I have brought to awareness a fear that puts me in jeopardy of insanity. But I am careful not to build too much theory around these experiences, as they are normally brief and difficult to comprehend.
I guess my understanding for now is that there is a dimension of existence (or non-existence) that I do not fully experience or fathom at the moment. I am influenced by Buddhist ideas and think that this confrontation with non-existence has more to do with a shift in the perspective of existence, not its annihilation. But speaking honestly, the void still feels terrifying and like the annihilation of everything I feel myself to be.
I respect the Buddhist teaching of interbeing but often it feels to me like it is asking me to be a tiny drop of water consumed and helpless in the raging and brutal torrent of existence.
Don’t worry, I’m not bumming out too bad 😉 But I still find it somewhat incomprehensible that some people can find the strength and honesty to face this terror directly. For now I must cling to my raft.
Just ranting to get it all out of my head and in the open. If anyone has anything to say to me, then drop me a line at d0z at hotmail dot com

Hi doz,
Thanks for sharing.
I don’t know that there is hard evidence that this took place but it is my understanding that many of the ancient philosophers visited the eleusian well where they were perhaps given a specially prepared barley brew by the priest that may have included a halucinogenic fungus.
I’m not advocating the use of LSD, but perhaps the entire Western civilization was created out of the corresponding hallucinations 🙂

I googled fear of non existance and this page came up.
I have this deep and seething sense of impending doom. I honestly didnt think anyone felt or understood what I am feeling. If I continue to think along this thought process I have massive anxiety attacks where I feel as though I am sinking into the earth. The first time I realised what death was I was about 12 and watching Moulin Rouge strangely enough. I am now 17 and cannot deal with what I am feeling and thinking. I would sell my “soul” to avoid what is inevitable.
This realisation has lead me to see the world for how beautiful it really is and made me want to hold a tree so tightly and hope that the world wont swallow me up.
I am so scared.

Dear Jess,
When I was 17 I had a similar anxiety attack about death. It was overwhelming and changed my outlook on life. At first my solution was to party with no thought of tomorrow. Surf, chicks and dope was all I cared about, but the search for “understanding” was also born at that moment and continued for many years.
As a result of the survival instinct, the one who believes it will die experiences fear. There’s nothing wrong with this. However, at the moment of death, when the fight for survival ceases, there’s only clarity. Struggle and fear come to an end. In the absence of forms and ideas, everything is simple and clear.
Until this moment, struggle, fear, and resistance have every possibility of manifesting. But when the final, the ultimate, dawns, there is nobody left who can fight: there’s simply emptiness by itself. In it this awareness, which is here now but seems to be concealed, is denuded of desires, ideas, and concepts. This emptiness is complete existence. It’s completely clear and pure.
As the greatest advisor in your life, death confronts you with the mortality of your body, mind and soul. Death means the end of all you believed yourself to be. In the face of death, you have to question the belief that this concept of an “I” really exists. I advise you to question it now.
Look deep within yourself and see what this “I” is and if it really exists. You may find that clarity is all you really are, that ideas of what you are, are merely fleeting thoughts and images passing through this clarity which is pure presence, unborn and thus undying and is what you really are.
I have come to this understanding.
Our buddy tAo provided this link to something that may help you to understand what I mean. Choose a time when you have ten quiet mimutes to absorb yourself into it. Relax and enjoy:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0e2FpwPs0oc
May you find the peace that is within you.

Jess, I like Tucson’s response. A lot to ponder about in what he wrote. Which is, naturally, reflected in teachings such as Buddhism, Taoism, Vedanta/Advaita, and such.
Like I said in my original post, I’ve had many of the same feelings you have. So not only are you normal, hey, you’re cool! Like non-egolossed me.
Don’t know if there’s any wisdom in this anecdote, but it just came to mind, so I might as well share it.
Today I had to have a colonoscopy. Never had a “real” one before (I had a virtual CT one a few years ago). I’d gotten through the uncomfortable prep period and found myself lying on a stretcher, waiting to be wheeled into the procedure room — where something would happen that I’d never experienced before, and wasn’t looking forward to.
A bit like death (except I’ve never heard of anyone dying from a colonoscopy). How to handle the waiting period?
At first I took the uplifting spiritual route. I figured that I’d relax on the stretcher in the curtained waiting room, and repeat a mantra that I use in meditation.
But after a while I still felt tense, because I was aware that I was putting quite a bit of effort into trying to relax. And the more I tried not to think about what the colonoscopy entailed (having stuff put up my butt isn’t high on my list of fun things), the more I thought about it.
So the next time the nurse came in and asked if I needed anything, I said “Yes, give me back the pack that’s under the stretcher.”
Which contained, among other things, my iPhone that I’d gotten a few weeks ago. That very morning, before we drove to the Portland suburbs for the procedure, I’d downloaded an application that streams live TV (via wi-fi) on the iPhone.
Perfect for inauguration day. So I changed waiting gears and watched CNN on the stretcher, enjoying the scenes of new president Obama and his family.
Soon the nurse came for me and wheeled me across the hall. In a few minutes, after an IV was hooked up to my arm, I fell instantly asleep.
And didn’t wake up until it was all over. Never felt a thing.
A bit (or a lot) like death. Except maybe (probably? surely?) for the waking up part. Regardless, my point is that sometimes (most of the time?) it works better to just get on with life and not try to figure out how to get on with life — like by repeating a mantra that is supposed to take away anxiety and fear.
Not thinking about something is another way. If death is right in front of you, be aware of it. If it isn’t, don’t imagine that it’s there.
I realize that sometimes a fear of nothingness comes on its own. In that case, embrace it until it leaves. But if you’re trying to make it leave, that might have an opposite effect, like me trying not to think about the colonoscopy.
Focusing on something more interesting…that worked for me this morning. So enjoy life, and I bet you won’t fear death.

To the original post
i don’t think this is a fear of death, it’s more than dying it the idea that you will no longer live again and the fear strikes to the core of you, i know it because i experience everyonce in a while and its the most terrifying thing ive experience, i avoid deep thought on the subject now because it causes such fear.
The concept of your conscious self never again, in any length of time existing; your not sleeping, your not going to wake up, its not a dream that will end in a billion years, no restart to the game, its just over, forever, that is scary
for of the stuff about enjoying life in the moment, loving life blah blah, that doesn’t mean anything in comparison to the concept of not existing, nothing in this life that you do or appreciate will matter if for the rest of eternity you don’t exist, so i really don’t think you people fully appreciated this fear

Huckaby, I can only speak for myself: I do appreciate your fear, because I’ve felt something very similar myself. Yes, it is scary. And oh so real.
As I’ve noted before, I think you should consider yourself fortunate, in a way, to have this feeling. It could lead to a more vivid appreciation of life, which, after all, is the best way to “cheat” death — by living as fully as possible while alive.

Wow. I’ve had indescribable shocks of fear like this since I was around eleven or twelve years old. I’m eighteen now and I haven’t fallen into this feeling consistently for a few years or even in such great volumes as I experienced tonight. Mostly it would happen before trying to fall asleep (which is why I’m here, of course) but I recall a time in my life when I was around thirteen or so and I would suddenly fall into these panics exactly of what you have described and when I would look to my parents for comfort they took it for a while and tried to help but without being able to understand fully they just began calling me selfish and talking about all the poor children in third world countries and how fortunate I am etc.
I would often cry out with a, “NOOOO!!!” and in tonight’s case I found myself repeating, “It just can’t be true, it just can’t be true, it just can’t be true…” It’s like this sudden immobilizing feeling that sends my head spinning and at the same time I’m making all these sudden movements with each “jolt” of fear the idea gives me.
I’ve also however experienced the flip side a few have mentioned here (The one about living forever). If I had to say, I would say I’d rather die in that case. But it’s still so complicated that deep down I don’t really know… To live forever or not to live forever, that is the question, I suppose…
Also, at the same time that I hate the feeling, it fascinates me so much! It’s as if I tryyyy to feel it as much as I can when it occurs to try and grasp what it really is all about.
I am an Atheist now, by the way. I’ve gone back and forth from Agnosticism to Atheism and back many times but I’ve recently decided. Sometimes I’ve even felt it was liberating in the sense that one day everything I ever did wouldn’t matter, though I would technically have to say that everything is pretty fixed, causal, and what not.
Whatever happens though, if my views change, I’ll always remember all of these times when I’ve gone absolutely MAD, trembling and running around wanting to call up everyone I know even at odd hours like these in the night how much I care for them and how my foes and I should forgive each other because the possibility that we just won’t be there to wrap our heads around not being there is very real.

Malva, thanks for sharing such honest feelings in such a clear way. Beautiful.
I realize that your feelings are disturbing, because I’ve had similar “Oh, no!!!” sensations myself. But there’s also something wonderful about facing reality head-on, whether it be inside or outside our head.
Your commitment to what is real is going to serve you well in life, I’m confident of that. Your view of life and death will keep on changing as you do. Flow with it.
Telling it like it is, to yourself and others, should serve you well. Religion offers up false answers. You’re facing in the direction of truth.

Brian,
Here is an example, my attempt to open the comment by the Malva person. I can go no further than your comment, dated May 6, 2008.
Clicking several times, for more comments, doesn’t bring me to the Malva comment.
Thanks,
Roger

Brian,
It is working properly now.
Thanks,
Roger

Thanks for posting this, no one I’ve talked to seems to understand either, normally because they do believe in some type of after, but I know exactly what you mean and you described it perfectly.. It is way more than fear.. It’s the worst feeling in the world…. I know what you mean….

I will tell you my long story short.
When i was little i asked myself a question who am i? And a fear of death took me over. And to not fell down i lied to myself and made a pact with the “evil” so i lost myself in the game of life not knowing who truly am i “the i who isnt there”
Since then i tried lsd and that got me to that question again and for a time i was lost in a storm of thoughts and in paranoia i still can go to that state of mind everyone can but the truth sets me free and when my attchments are let go off i will merge with what is and the there will be there nothing eternal peace true peace true love true .

It has been three years since your post. You are the only person I have EVER heard describe exactly what i feel. I dont just “kinda get it”, I FULLY understand and experience EXACTLY what you described and I have never been able to describe it like you have. Contact me if you ever get the chance. I would love to know ways you get through it. I have these attacks on a nightly basis, almost every day, and I feel like im gonna go NUTS!

[Adam also emailed me. Here’s what I said to him, in reply.]
I don’t have the quasi panic attacks about not existing the way I used to. The idea of dying and never existing again doesn’t thrill me (to say the least), but it seems that my psyche has come to some sort of accommodation with this aspect of reality.
Here’s how I approach the problem of dying, Adam. These aren’t original ideas (read Marcus Aurelius’ “Meditations” for a better take on the Stoic side). They’re just how I talk to myself when my mind gets a bit, or a lot, overwrought with anxiety.
(1) While I’m alive, I should really live. Living is living. Dying is dying. No one knows what happens after we die. I know what living is like, because I’m alive now. If this is my only chance at living, I need to embrace life whole-heartedly now. Being fearful of dying prevents me from doing that. I can’t really cheat physical death. But I can in this sense: by living in such a fashion, that I can take my last breath with no regrets. Or at least, few, because I’ve lived life the way I wanted to while alive.
(2) We can’t be sure what will happen to us after we die. Yes, almost all of the evidence points to death being the end of an individual’s existence. However, most (if not all) of the world’s religious traditions point to some sort of continuing form of consciousness.
Buddhism, for example, says that probably a “soul” doesn’t carry on, but our consciousness takes on another form that lives again in another body. So there is a possibility that fear of death is misplaced, in that we’ll die and find that some aspect of us continues to exist. I can’t accept a firm religious belief in this. But I can embrace a not-knowing that says, “Only death will reveal the answer, so I won’t fret about knowing the answer now.”
(3) We’re all in the same boat: that of living and dying. I’d like to be special. For many years, when I was a true believer in an Eastern religious faith, I considered that I’d be taken of after death by my guru and/or God in a fashion that wasn’t available to people of other faiths.
Now, I figure that whatever happens to me is going to happen to other people at death, and vice versa. This is comforting in a way. I don’t worry any more about following commandments that will ensure my salvation. I feel a kinship with everyone who is alive, because we’re all going to face death in the same way.
(4) My dog is wiser than me in some respects. As are other animals. She doesn’t fret about the future (though she nags me to go for a walk most afternoons). Now, I wouldn’t want to give up my human capacity to be self-aware. Still, unnecessary or excessive self-awareness isn’t productive. Sometimes an unexamined life is well worth living.
For most of my life I’ve spent a lot of time pondering the Big Questions of Life, including “what does it mean if death is the final end of my existence?” As I get older, though, I’ve done less of this. Maybe my dog is teaching me something. When she’s happy, she’s happy. When tired, tired. And so on. We love animals because they are so in the moment (by and large; our dog does have a fear of thunder and fireworks caused by a close lightning strike). This is related to (1) above, of course.
(5) Fear of non-existence is, really, non-existent. Why? Because we can only have that fear while we’re existing. Some Greek philosophers I quoted in this post (Seneca and Epicurus) made this point better than I can. See:
https://churchofthechurchless.com/2007/06/body-worlds-3-h
This relates to (2). I feel anxious about not-existing while I’m alive. When I’m dead, if I’m really dead and gone, there won’t be anybody around to know it. And if I’m still alive after death, I’ll be feeling good about that fact — unless I’m cast into hellfire, or something, which I consider to be exceedingly doubtful.
(6) When I worry about going crazy from my worrying, getting crazier isn’t a bad way of dealing with the situation. Now, I’m not recommending this to you. It’s just another option to consider. I was around in the ’60s and did a lot of psychedelic drugs back then. I’m considerably less wild and crazy now.
But I’m not completely sane and sober either. For a long time I didn’t drink alcohol at all. Now I have a glass of red wine most evenings. It relaxes me. When I occasionally drink two glasses, I’m relaxed even more. I’m not suggesting that alcohol or other drugs are a solution to life’s philosophical or existential problems. However, altering one’s consciousness and finding that the problems either don’t exist any more or don’t seem as serious, shows that the real problem is with our own psyche.
Hope this helps, or at least is of some interest to you. As I may have said on a blog post, people like you who have this realization of life’s finitude should be grateful, really. The same feeling that makes you and me anxious about death also can make us much more appreciative of life.
Here we are, alive, right here and now! And we won’t always be. Perhaps for eternity. This makes every moment of life infinitely precious. We need to suck every possible bit of living from each moment of life.

Brian said:
“Here we are, alive, right here and now!”
“This makes every moment of life infinitely precious.”
“We need to suck every possible bit of living from each moment of life.”
— Yes, this is very true.
“A man of knowledge chooses a path with Heart and follows it; and then he looks and rejoices and laughs; and then he sees and knows. He knows that his life will be over altogether too soon; he knows that he, as well as everybody else, is not going anywhere; he knows, because he sees, that nothing is more important than anything else.
In other words, a man of knowledge has no honor, no dignity, no family, no name, no country, but ONLY LIFE TO BE LIVED, and under these circumstances his only tie to his fellow men is his controlled folly.
Thus a man of knowledge endeavors, and sweats, and puffs, and if one looks at him he is just like any ordinary man, except that the folly of his life is under control. Nothing being more important than anything else, a man of knowledge chooses any act, and acts it out as if it matters to him.”
”
— by Don Juan Matus, as told in Dr. Carlos Casteneda’s book “A Separate Reality”.

+@o
Thanks for reminding me of “controlled folly”. I have read Castaneda’s books many times and found them to be very empowering. For those who wish to find a path with heart instead of living in fear here are some sayings:
The Wisdom of don Juan:
http://peacefulrivers.homestead.com/donJuan.html

Jen,
You are most welcome, and thanks to you too.
“A man [or a woman] of knowledge chooses a path with Heart, and follows it”
“He [or she] knows that his [or her] life will be over altogether too soon”
“a man of knowledge has […] only life to be lived”
“if one looks at him [or her] he [or she] is just like any ordinary man [or woman, except that…”
“a man [or a woman] of knowledge chooses any act, and acts it out as if it matters to him [or her].”

These quotes are nothing more but nuggets of super-market wisdom … give me a break
No need of a Don Juan to formulate this kind of commonalities …
I was quite entertained when I red Castenada’s book years ago but we need to come to a term that the stories are just stories that a guy ultimately made up – however inspired they might have been from second-hand accounts …
If Brian feels entitled to undermine the obvious delusions and fantasies of some religions, the same applies to less organized sources of bullshit.
“In the The Power and the Allegory, De Mille compared The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui way of Knowledge with Castenada’s library stack requests at the University of California. The stack requests documented that he was sitting in the library when his journal said he was squatting in don Juan’s hut. One of the most memorable discoveries that De Mille made in his examination of the stack requests was that when Castañeda said he was participating in the traditional peyote ceremony — the least fantastic episode of drug use — he was not only sitting in the library, but he was reading someone else’s description of his experience of the peyote ceremony.”
From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlos_Castaneda
But I guess some people don’t have any problem with stories involving conflicting and elusive timelines …

the elephant,
Sorcerers can be tricksters, that’s the name of the game. And I don’t have a problem with stories involving conflicting and elusive timelines, especially as I understood that Castaneda was taught to be secretive and eliminate his own personal history and of course he wasn’t going to let anyone know of Don Juan’s whereabouts. We will never know if the character of Don Juan was compiled from numerous sources, but I certainly enjoyed the books, it brought shamanism and non-ordinary realities into the mainstream consciousness at the time. Other copycat new-age type books that have appeared since then are absolutely tame and boring in comparison and btw I wasn’t impressed with deMille’s book, didn’t manage to convince me in any way. As to delusions and fantasy, what makes you so sure you’re always right?

Dear “the elephant,”
Thanks for your attention to actual facts.
Robert Paul Howard

…but just how do you know for certain as to what the “facts” were? were you there? can you prove it? DeMille didn’t, because he wasn’t, and so he couldn’t.
But of then course, that didn’t matter, as no doubt DeMille was still able to SELL a FEW of his books to a few suckers.
And then, one copy finally ended up in some thrift-store dumpster… where I happened to find it, read it, and then carefully return it to its rightful home in the dumpster. Such is the nature of folly. LOL

Jen: “As to delusions and fantasy, what makes you so sure you’re always right?”
You question is too general … It depends on the nature of what we can call ‘delusions’ and ‘fantasies’–which may vary depending of the context.
Regarding Castenada, I can’t be sure (I was not even born after all) in the same way as I can’t never be sure that I will never be hit by a car when I cross the street, and yet I cross the street. Even though library records are more credible than what looks like ex post and convenient excuses, it is only in the broader context and accumulated inconsistencies that I attach little credibility to Castenada’s work–although I red with fascination and joy his reeditions when I was a teenager. And those are only small pieces in the overall rational web that convinces me of the factual improbability of Castaneda’s tales. Call it a judgement call. One that i have no doubt I will never be deceived by holding it living my life. And if it happens that I would ever be then so be it …
I prefer accounts that are without fantastic occurences, and for which the authors did not benefit from the sharing of their wisdom but instead were persecuted for daring to do so — like Spinoza and Meister Eckhart.

Elephant wrote:
“These quotes are nothing more but nuggets of super-market wisdom … give me a break
No need of a Don Juan to formulate this kind of commonalities …”
–Well then, offer up something better instead of just bitching.
I saw Castaneda at UCLA once by chance. He was fat and drove an expensive car. Not at all the image of a shaman, but what should a shaman look like? What kind of car should he drive?
I always suspected that Castaneda made up most of his stuff. Surely the dialogues couldn’t have been accurate word for word, but it didn’t matter to me, even the personal dirt on him I’ve heard in various accounts. His writing helped create a sense of enchanted wonder when I am out in the wilderness that has stayed with me to this day. He helped “open the doors of perception” for many people. Thanks to him for that whether he was a fake or not.

the elephant,
So many people talk about actual facts and so-called reality. Isn’t every person’s reality according to his or her own experiences? I loved Castaneda’s sense of humour in the way he portrayed himself as a fool when confronted with separate realities, exactly like so many programmed and conditioned people from the west would behave when experiencing the shamanic way of seeing the world.
Why do people think that if someone enjoys something that means they have bought into it hook, line and sinker? I’ll never be an extremist, just experiencing life, being unknowing and at the same time observing and learning from everything that comes my way.
You use a pseudonym and don’t reveal your personal history so you are a bit of a trickster and yet I can see your agenda here on this blog so I don’t think I am naïve but rather use a different way of seeing and understanding people. I’m glad I’m not as smart as intellectuals because sometimes I can see how stuck they are and not very open minded at all when they cling to their cleverness.
Yes, I also love the enchanted wonder that is all around, and the world can be magical when we open ourselves to it (better than living in fear and terror of death).

>”Why do people think that if someone enjoys something that means they have bought into it hook, line and sinker?”
I don’t think they all do. You can enjoy a story without believing in it.
>”yet I can see your agenda here on this blog so I don’t think I am naïve but rather use a different way of seeing and understanding people. ”
>”I’m glad I’m not as smart as intellectuals because sometimes I can see how stuck they are and not very open minded at all when they cling to their cleverness.”
Is this comment directed at me?
Smartness and cleverness are ultimately contingent manifestations. I do not entertain any role for them beside those I have seen and experienced. Prajna (in Zen) or intuitive knowledge according to Spinoza should not be confused with intellectualities, discursive thinking, cleverness, etc. It seems that perhaps because you don’t fully understand what I have only partially expresssed (and I bear most of the responsability for that situation) you somehow and perhaps are yourself ‘stucking’ others into rigidities which do not really bind them …
Your moments and perhaps more lasting expereinces of enchantment and wonder fill a compensatory function and play the role of buffers — as you implicitly and probably unintentionally remark — against a profound existential dynamic (anguish is not really adequate word but there is no obvious better alternative) that the Zen tradition places well within your being at levels/dimensions well ‘upstream’ the little nut/knot of knowing that self-consciousness and intentionality represent, and calls it, depending on the emphasis, great doubt or great matter … And enchantment and wonder are at the end poor and pale substitutes …
From (Part Three, Ethics, Spinoza)
“Wonder is the conception (imaginatio) of anything, wherein the mind comes to a stand, because the particular concept in question has no connection with other concepts (cf. III. lii. and note).
Explanation.—In the note to II. xviii. we showed the reason, why the mind, from the contemplation of one thing, straightway falls to the contemplation of another thing, namely, because the images of the two things are so associated and arranged, that one follows the other. This state of association is impossible, if the image of the thing be new ; the mind will then be at a stand in the contemplation thereof, until it is determined by other causes to think of something else.
Thus the conception of a new object, considered in itself, is of the same nature as other conceptions ; hence, I do not include wonder among the emotions, nor do I see why I should so include it, inasmuch as this distraction of the mind arises from no positive cause drawing away the mind from other objects, but merely from the absence of a cause, which should determine the mind to pass from the contemplation of one object to the contemplation of another.”

the elephant,
Are you saying wonder is a concept or an emotion? Anyway, will exist in “the great doubt” for now…

Hey Santiago are you better?

Dear Brian,
After a very sleepless night last night (and literally making myself sick), I came into work this morning still trembling inside with my fear of non-existence. On a whim, I googled “fear of non-existence” and happened upon the “Church of the Churchless.”
I read this blog and the comments that followed and am somewhat relieved that there are others grappling with this same fear. It hits me at the oddest of times – morning, noon, or night – and it comes in cycles. I’ll go a few months without thinking about my fear of non-existence and then I’ll go months thinking about nothing but my fear of non-existence.
I was raised in a Christian church to believe that there’s a Heaven and a Hell, and to have faith and believe in God, therefore, I’ll be granted eternal life.
My hands are literally shaking as I write this because I guess I also fear that actually recogizing this fear makes it more real.
I have spoken to my husband about it, asking him what he thinks and he said that everyone has the same fate and that is death. I also talked to my parents about it and they were very comforting and even admitted that they also sometimes think about death/dying.
My husband and I were raised in different religious backgrounds, but after feeling like he was either let down or abandoned by God, his beliefs have changed and I guess he could be called agnostic (maybe). Coming from such a strong religious-based/Christian background, I not only fear my non-existence and question where I’ll spend eternity, but I worry about his soul and fear his non-existence and where he’ll spend eternity.
This fear is sometimes crippling, and I don’t know if it will ever truly go away, but I do have faith that this fear will subside and won’t be so debilitating.
I’m glad I found your website and feel like I’ve found some “friends” that share my fear.

I’m so glad I found your blog.
I’m 16 years old now and have spent a VERY long amount of time obsessing over not existing.
It’s the only thing I fear. I cannot come to terms with the fact that there is no consciousness because you become nothing. There is no ‘you’ to be aware of anything anymore, you simply cease to exist.
I’m thinking this way because of my brain and obviously when I die there will be nothing left to remain conscious of.
My mother is religious and she believes in an afterlife however I don’t. Even if a god exists and an afterlife exists, you won’t know it. Even if you are “reborn” as a human again or whatever, you won’t know and so this defeats the purpose of reincarnation. It’s a fruitless discussion.
The fact that you won’t know, that you won’t BE, scares me the most. Not death itself, but the fact that you’re not living anymore. I am only 16, maybe I will welcome death when I am older, or at least not fear it. It’s the most horrible feeling in the world. I can’t describe it in words. I have had hundreds of sleepless nights because of this fear. It’s like a whole new level of Thanatophobia. I guess it helps to know that I am not alone however.
Remembering that you’re never alone helps me through these feelings sometimes. No matter where you are, living or dying, you are not the only one, religious or non-religious.

religious or non religious makes zero difference to the state of things as they are.
they are as they are, you are as you are, universe is as it is.
life is life, death is death.
no matter what you believe and whatever you don’t believe makes no difference at all.
what is is what is, and what will be will be, ce sera sera.
ask universe to swallow you whole or spit you out, you have no say whatsoever, however you may think you might do.

Jason,
Please do not be disturbed by the insensitive comment by ‘smackeroo to infinity’. He is a troll who likes to visit here.
Your anxieties and concerns about death are natural and something that most people experience at one time or another. You are not alone in this feeling and you know that, but this is of little comfort to you. Sometimes it is hard to shake that fear and it keeps coming up. Well, you are alive now and now is all there is. Live now and live well. Don’t worry.
We fear our eternal non-existence into the future, but we never fear our eternal non-existence before we were born. Infinity goes both ways. How could your moment to exist have ever arrived if there was really time? You are Now and Now is always.

beautiful advice tucson. i second it.

Thanks a lot, Tuscon…
Realising that death inevitable makes me think that worrying about it is pointless, which helps.
I’ve been suffering from depression for a long while and I seem to have these thought patterns when I’m on a low…
Just have to make the most of now as vodafone would say haha.
Jason

Jason, since I wrote this post, I know how you feel. Not precisely, of course, because you are you and I am me. But I’ve had the same sorts of feelings, though not when I was your age. (I’m now 61.)
You strike me as an unusually sensitive and thoughtful person. Congratulations on that. Most people go through life without thinking much about the Big Questions, such as non-existence. I consider that it is as important to live life truthfully as happily, not that the two are incompatible.
Meaning, it’s possible to live a lie, to believe that Jesus or whoever will meet you when you die and take you to heaven, even though there is no convincing evidence this is true. Further, every religion, just about, has a similar notion. Since the notions contradict each other, they can’t all be true.
A couple of suggestions, from my perspective (the only one I have).
First, be open to all possibilities, but focus on probabilities. Hey, it’s possible that there is an afterlife. Each of us will find out when we die. I feel it’s more likely that everybody shares the same fate than that some people (Christians, Muslims, etc.) get a special post-death experience and others don’t.
So relax. We’re all in the same life/death boat. And like you said, there’s nothing we can do about it. Leave a bit of your mind open to the small possibility that death isn’t a final The End. Then live your life according to the much larger probability that it is.
In a book I just finished reading (“The Brain and the Meaning of Life”), Paul Thagard says: “If your pursuit of love and work have found some success, then you can reasonably hope that your life will have some enduring value even when it ends. Religions such as Christianity have provided a conceptual and emotional framework for dealing with death, but a better way to manage fear of nonexistence is simply to strive to ensure that by the time you die, you will have largely accomplished your goals and abandoned the unreasonable ones.”
This may not apply to you, and I’m not recommending this to you (especially if your mother or father read this comment), but I really enjoy riding my Burgman 650 maxi-scooter even though two-wheeled transportation is more dangerous than the four-wheeled variety.
Actually, I shouldn’t say “even though,” but “partly because.” I like the feeling of facing death more directly as I ride along. It makes me feel more alive. The same is true, I’m sure, of rock climbers, extreme skiers, base jumpers, and even skateboarders.
I’m not saying that we need to do something physically risky to live life fully. But some sort of risk — emotional, psychological, interpersonal, philosophical — is an inherent part of living. Sometimes running toward a fear is more effective than shying away from it. You seem to be facing your fear of non-existence head on by thinking about it, and writing about it.
Kudos to you. I meditate every morning for a while. Sometimes I simply say, “I am.” It’s kind of like giving the finger to death. I’m still alive. I can say “I am.” When I don’t hear myself saying it, when I’m not capable of saying it, or feeling it, “I am,” then I’ll be dead and gone.
Until then, I’m not. Pretty damn simple.

Racionaly, yes you die one day.
What does happen after that ?
Religious people – convinced into some story made by religion, really blessed people. No need to lough at them, choice of pills in matrix are not that that easy for anyone, and often wish to return to matrix 🙂 cool movie btw.! (just finished typing my post and re reading it, so i feel happy now for some reason hope you will to)
Nothing, you just cant belive all those religious stories about afterlifes
– primal fear of non existance if thinking to much about it, i think it happens when one is tired, often experianced it around time I should go rest, otherwise there was no such dread.
Well, you just cant accept both of this stuff, both religious explenation or the nothing story…. so you make your own religon that sounds … to simply put it “wise and smart”, hence droping down rate of thinking about it, or to not drop into that dread feeling when you start thinking about it.
Also, there are ideas now that are cool like : i perserve a body and hope science will fix the rest since its so evolving yy… giving you “hope” to not even have to “experiance” the truth(after death period) if that is experiancable at all.
Then we come upon this interesting thing called “hope” , funny little thing, as long as you eliminate the 100% certenty of reason of that fear… fear will fade proportionaly, but still be there.
LIKE ;Mb all this religious people or something are really right, this little group cant be smarter then majority… perhaps there really is something after death.
or;Well science gonna find immortality fix so i wont need to experiance this until space consumes us all , and by then we will learn how to become another lvl of being without flash so it wont matter!
“but they wont find the cure yet” that is fixed by, freeze onself or perserve something that could in future with tehnology revive and then you get the immortality “boost”.
— This hope is most interesting stuff, and science can really give it to us, and the ever evolving humans are obvious to see trough the past to the present, and it seams like its on some exponential curve, the evolution —
Then you get to be bit depresed why you born like few centuries 2 early , rats :P, but that is that hope of perserving ourselves as i said.
So my subjective ideas of coping with this is, well, just give yourself hope, no need to accept this state with 100% certenty.
Everyone who accepts it for sure without making some background illusion that makes him think he accepted which is in fact just his little religion he took from someone/modified/invented and upgrades it to suit him based on how his experiances or tries to deny mistakes in it.
Would need strong will to devert themselves from thinking about it, make barrier “i will think about it when im 80, or b4 death, postponing things, or take medications.
Anyway just deal with it people, permanently explaing what hapens after life with some story or reducting the fear factor with hope. I will try to do the same.
In mean while, do whatever those people said about enjoying life and stuff. However one may enjoy its life to fullest 😛 , but thats another topic.
Also when people have lot on their mind in rl, they sometimes forget about this anyway.
Cheers! MM from Croatia. Excuse me for my poor english typing skills… I am 2 lazy to fix it. Cheer up. OPTIMISM!

Hello all, I too have had many moments of panic starting at a young age when I would ponder the thought of non-existence. The feelings started at about the age of 10 and the panic increased at various stages in my life: during adolescence, in my 20’s and since then only after the death of a friend or loved one. I have explained it to my parents who completely didn’t understand, and to my husband who understood but who doesn’t share my fear. He fears suffering, but the thought of not existing is just fine with him. Going into the earth and becoming the earth, no problem.
I am here tonight after attending the wake of a friend who died of cancer at the age of 50, father of two young boys, one of whom is a friend of one of my children. Where is he tonight? My Christian beliefs are strong and I feel a bit of guilt for my unfaithfulness, yet in some way my love for God and awareness of His love for me assuages some of that guilt. I think tonight He wants me to deal with this struggle that has persisted my whole life, and allow Him to conquer it for once and for all. Once while I was a student at a Theological Seminary I ashamedly expressed my struggles with the uncertainty of the afterlife with one of my professors and he encouraged me to “continue to struggle.” He gave me no answers. I hated that then, and considered him somewhat faithless for not setting me “straight.” But tonight, 15 years later, I appreciate that. Still struggling, hoping to be solidified in my faith. Someday before I die.
I do love life. I can’t imagine Heaven being better than this although the Bible says it is somehow. I want to continue on so desperately, and of course with loved ones.
Wondering where everyone who has posted has gone…is this discussion over? I found Tucson’s sentiments and many others to be so close to mine. Has anyone had any new thoughts? I know this discussion began years ago.
I find it interesting, on a side note, that many of us have had these feelings starting at a young age, and the feelings are almost always accompanied by severe panic. Maybe it’s just a trait we’re born with. It’s torture!

Nikki, the guy who wrote this post is still here — me — as well as others who have posted comments. So you’re being read, and heard. Thanks for sharing such honest thoughts and feelings.
As I’ve noted before, I think we’re lucky in a way to have such an intense awareness of the distinct possibility, if not overwhelming likelihood, of dying and not existing as “us” anymore. I find that this awareness gives life a richness, a precious sense, that would be absent if I believed that earthly existence was merely a stepping stone to some place higher and better.
Hey, maybe it is. If so, I’ll be pleasantly surprised after I die, as will you. (Of course, since I’m not a Christian, or a Muslim, fundamentalists of those faiths would say that I’ve got a nasty afterlife waiting for me; I’m not losing sleep over that possibility, though.)
Nikki, here’s my current way of dealing with my fear of non-existence: I seem to be coming closer to an existential understanding that I’ve never existed, so not existing won’t be such a big change.
Tucson, one of our regular commenters here, could explain this better than I can. I look upon it in both a Buddhist and neuroscientific fashion. Both disciplines are unable to find a “self” within the human head, or body. There’s just stuff going on, inside and outside of us, in a marvelously interconnected way.
Yes, it sure seems like there is a “me” separate and distinct from all these goings-on. Yet there’s good reason to look upon this sense of i’ness as an illusion created by our complex brain/mind, which has evolved a powerful capability of self-awareness. Or at least, seeming self-awareness, since there doesn’t seem to be a “self” inside our cranium which is aware.
Didn’t the Beatles sing something like, “You are me, and I am you, and we are all together”?
If so, and I believe this is true, I’m not going to cease existing when I die, and neither are you. because we never really started to exist. We’re the product of all sorts of things — genetics, solar energy, culture, experiences, interactions with all sorts of people, etc. etc. All this has resulted in me thinking that I’m a “me.”
But our dog goes through life just fine by just living, without pondering the fact that she’s living life. We aren’t dogs; we’re self aware humans. However, a lot of wise people throughout the ages have urged us to simply live.
I seem to recall that Jesus said something about letting the day (or morrow?) take care of itself. Taoists certainly share that sentiment, as do Buddhists and those of many other faiths. We thoughtful people sometimes think too much. Thinking isn’t a bad thing — more good than bad, I’d say — but it can be overdone.
There are times when life seems so simply right that I feel, “It’d be OK to die right now.” Well, if it’s true then, why not at every moment?

Nikki,
Your comment was very moving. You stated,
“My Christian beliefs are strong and I feel a bit of guilt for my unfaithfulness, yet in some way my love for God and awareness of His love for me assuages some of that guilt. I think tonight He wants me to deal with this struggle that has persisted my whole life, and allow Him to conquer it for once and for all.”
–Could you explain what you meant by unfaithfulness? Has some of your guilt originated from some church school teachings, you received at the age of 10?
I have never had these feelings of guilt or struggles regarding nonexistence. Is there a way to understand how these feelings came upon you?
Thanks,
Roger

Thank you Brian and Roger for your responses. I’ve never blogged before so thanks also for explaining how you’re still there.
Brian, you obviously think alot and are much more intelligent than I. Your comments go in and out of complex and simple, I think trying to be more simple because you tend to get so complex! I don’t have that problem because I can’t think as critically as do you (I might some day, when my 4 young children give me some time to think!!!). As I type my 4yr old daughter is talking to me, so sorry if this is not the most clearly-written blog. I am a miserable multi-tasker.
So you are now of the impression that you don’t exist? This being an other fascet to Tucson’s notion that we have always existed and therefore will continue to always exist? This stuff is too deep/analytical for me. I applaud you for being sane with minds that appear to work in overdrive. And you truly sound sane and balanced to me. And I can also fit much of my Christian beliefs in with what you say as well. If I had a minute to form the words…
Roger, what I meant by unfaithfulness was that I wasn’t “totally sure” where my friend who died was. I allowed a seed of doubt to exist. My children have been asking the hard questions about death and I feel this doubt the most when I explain the Christian answers to their questions. Naturally I want to be honest with them. I just wish my faith were stronger, so I could explain to them with more conviction. My goal is to be a stronger Christian, however, not to be convinced that there is no God. Believe it or not, that’s why I am here in this blog.
I have had teachings since I was 10 about faith, and yes my guilt stems from them. But to me that’s not a negative, just a fact. Faith is about stepping out blindly at some point, and I guess I am not very comfortable with that, hence my guilt about it. God is working slowly but steadily with me. By asking the questions I ask, I am getting close to the fire. But I know I don’t want to jump in to it so I am ok.
Roger, why are you not afraid of nonexistence? My husband is the same way. I can’t understand it. Sounds like you have great faith, to be ok with whatever happens to you, even if it means to cease to exist.
Thank you,
Nikki

Hi Nikki,
Thanks for your response. You are a very nice person.
—You stated that your guilt stems from your teachings received on faith, etc. at the age of 10. So, I’m guessing that someone(a church teacher) planted a seed of guilt within your mind at that time?
I don’t see that I have any special advantage, however, I have never allowed or been near such ‘teachings’ to obtain a seed of guilt. I’m human, and I can feel guilt, especially if I was involved in an activiity that truely hurt someone. I don’t have a problem with having a very simple belief in God. In addition, I simply don’t know what, after my death, will happen next. It is currently unknown to me. That said, I can see having a fear of a slow painful death. Again, I’m just human. Nothing special

I had the experience of non-existence twice. Last in 1976 when I was 46. I am 80 now. It is terrifying – absolute and certain. It is dreadful knowledge beyond all considerations of religion, reason or anything else. Then the moment passes – if it didn’t, you feel paradoxically that you would die – you could not withstand it – you would be over the top – crazy or something – and so it went – recurring frequently for about 6 months. I cannot improve upon the excellent description given at the top of this page. However, in fact, as phyisicts know – anatomically – we don’t exist, do we? All matter is an illusion created by electro-magnetic fields apparently. And of course, Buddhists would be quick to affirm that all life on earth is an illusion. And that doesn’t help us one little bit does it! Anyway, thanks for the chance to relate this experience – I often ponder the reality of things.

My congratulations to dolfgan for recommending :
Bernadette Roberts. http://www.firedocs.com/carey/roberts.htm
http://www.firedocs.com/carey/roberts.html
l
I have spent 40 years reading thousands of books and getting initiated by various masters.
Bernadette’s book, The Realization of No Self, is the greatest book I have ever read.
Bar none. The Supreme Super Classic.
It is absolutely mandatory reading. The only thing you ever need to read.
Why is this book, composed in simple language, the greatest classic ever writen ?
In Indian theology, the jnani is the highest. But, the jnani does not usually want anyone else to become enlightened.
Only the jnani is actually enlightened.
No other masters are actually enlightened.
This book is incredible because it is stripped of all Indian dogmas. Enlightenment
‘happened’ to this woman.
So, for a true jnani to have writen this book and published it, is quite astonishing.
Luckily she has writen in a style which is very erudite. It can be understood.
But, enlightenment seems to be something totally different from what we have been taught by masters.
If you actually want to know what enlightenement really is, read her book,
writen a few decades ago.
It will go against everything you ever thought you knew.
It is deadly accurate.
I am astonished there is someone smart enough here to recommend it.

Mike,
You stated,
“If you actually want to know what enlightenement really is, read her book,
writen a few decades ago. It will go against everything you ever thought you knew.”
—In duality, one can create a definition of ‘enlightenment’, and thus be trained in what that definition ‘really’ is. Nothing special about this. Where would this desire to ‘actually’ want, come from? Likewise, what will there be that goes against everything I ever thought? Why would I think I know, in the first place?

The guru, sucha s Tulsi, or Nanak, will
tell us to stop thought with Nada.
Saints will almost always tell us a method
to force thought away.
Seekers therefore never directly look at
thought.
I believe this is the entire problem.
We use thought constantly, try to supress
it, etc.
But, we never turn around and look directly
at thought.
Take any thought and look at it as a thing.
A thought is neutral in itself, not good or bad.
Then, what is the cause of our using thought
for bad deeds ?
Take the thought, ‘That is a House’.
The thought is not bad.
But, now take the thought, ‘I want the mansion on the hill, over looking the ocean’.
Do ‘you’ actually want the mansion on the hill, or does a seperate thought with the ‘I’ ? This ‘I’ containing a ‘self’ image
of ‘WHO’ you are.
Can an impersonal thought want the mansion
on the hill ? If the thought itself has no persona, no ‘WHO’, then where is this ‘WHO’
that wants the mansion ?
A thought can’t live in a mansion.
So, ‘WHO’ is in ‘your’ head that wants
the mansion ?
Thought may be the lead guitar, but the ‘WHO’ is always playing rythum guitar
in the backround.
Can you find ‘your’ ‘WHO’ ?
Can you see this ghost ?
Look directly at the ghost of the ‘WHO’
thought.

You know I got to say that when I read this word for word, it felt as if I was the one who wrote it. I couldn’t believe that someone else out there and as a matter of fact, “others” feel the same way I do about not existing.
I will say that taking sometime to read a good portion of the post here has shed some light and helped me change my thought process in a new way. It definitely has calmed me down a bit and surely put things in a better perspective for me.
I will from now on try to look on life more differently rather than the way I do now and before. Thank you to all who have posted in here a revealed a lot of information that I most likely would have not found anywhere so fast.

Edward, I appreciate your thanks. It’s always great to know that someone resonated with something I wrote. One of my favorite quotes is from C.S. Lewis: “We read to know that we are not alone.”
Really, we’re not as different as we seem to be when we look at people from the outside. This may not make our fears, anxieties, worries and such any easier to deal with, but there’s some comfort in company.

I’m so glad I found this post.. there have been many nights when I couldn’t sleep because this enormous terror of non-existence took hold of me.. I was terrified of not being, not feeling, of nothing after death, of having the universe go on without me and not even knowing that it does, or that it ever existed or that I ever existed..
& i found it impossible to reconcile myself to the fact that I didnt exist for the billions of years before my birth.. where was I? why dont i know? So why this brief life? what was the point of it other then to terrify us with the idea of it being taken away..
There is no answer, though it helped me to read all the comments. It’s just good to know there are others who have felt and understood the same..

This fear has been running my mind and spirit into the ground for the last several months.
I never even thought about death half as much as I do now.
It might be because I had quit my anti-depressant and then started re-taking it and am now going through some strange mental confusion?
I had always felt some connection to a “higher being” if you will.
Now since a few months back, I feel like the rug has been pulled from under me and now I even question if life is even worth living?
I mean, if we are reduced to nothingness then what was the point of life and everything we learned from it?
What makes me even more depressed is that everyone I love and care about will never be seen again.
But how can I say that is the definite end of things, who really knows?
These thoughts plague me day and night, and I have trouble sleeping because of it.
I mean, I had been disgnosed with severe depression and anxiety before these thoughts took hold, so this is really not helping me.
I am worried that these thoughts and feelings are going to never leave me alone so I can live my life.
I am in the same boat with Tucson, about feeling like I am losing time and wondering where my life went.
It does feel good to at least write this and sympathize with others about our common fears, and try to come to some level of understanding.
Reading the Bible has been a comfort to me, and also reading about supernatural things in general.
I have always believed in those things and never once did I second guess until now.
In the back of my mind I worry that I am going to die, everything is going to fade to black and then just nothing.
That scares me like nothing else in the world.
I understand that fear of death is normal because it is the fear of the ultimate unknown, but it’s not normal when the fear is robbing me of enjoying life itself.
I just want this fear to end, and I want these thoughts and feelings out of my mind.
I remember a time when I never worried about these kinds of things, and I wish I could go back to that.
I am not seeking ignorance, or even denial of an event which cannot be avoided.
I want some peace of mind that I will be okay and that when my time comes, I will not be alone in a void of nothing.
And yes, even if there is life after death, what will I do for a million years?
Guess I will find out when I get there.
But anyways, I know life has to have some kind of meaning, otherwise what is the point of all this?

PM and Jason, thanks for sharing your thoughts (and fears) so honestly. Facing the fear of non-existence head-on, or at least with a glancing blow, is the way to go. Otherwise your unconscious anxiety will do its own thing behind the scenes. It’s better to get stuff out into the open, where it can be dealt with.
But how? There’s no easy answer. All I can do is state, or restate, my personal approach to dealing with the fear of dying and possibly/likely never existing again. Here’s four approaches I use:
(1) Nothing is certain. Well, death is. But what happens after death isn’t. Sure, there is no solid evidence of life after death. Yet we’re free to believe in the possibility of continued conscious existence. This actually is a scientific approach, since nothing in science is 100% certain. 99.9999% maybe, but not 100%.
(2) Read Marcus Aurelius’ “Meditations.” Or other Stoic sorts of writings. Death happens. To everybody. We should face it with courage. Soldiers do this all the time. Many die young. We should feel fortunate if we’re able to live a fairly long life, and meet our eventual end boldly.
(3) Along this line, focus on how wonderful it is that you’ve been able to live, not how awful it is that you’ll die. Consider the 13.7 billion years since the big bang, all the things that had to happen in the cosmos, in our galaxy, in our solar system, and on Earth so that right now, right here, we’re alive. Even if we only live for 40, 60, or 80 years, that’s a heck of a lot better than zero. Say “thanks” to the cosmos.
(4) Read some Buddhist literature. And/or search for “self” and “Buddhism” in my posts (see Google search box in the right sidebar. There’s good reason, neuroscientific and philosophical, to argue that we aren’t who we feel ourselves to be. Namely, an individual self who is born, lives, and dies. Rather, we’re the entire universe in a way. So how can we be afraid of dying if “we” never really were born, or ever existed?
This last approach probably is my favorite. Zen and other sorts of meditation are aimed at loosening our sense of selfhood. In the process, this lessens our fear of dying, because we don’t feel so much like we’re a discrete entity who comes to exist, and then doesn’t.
The world goes on without us. The universe goes on without us. It’s possible that consciousness is a fundamental aspect of the cosmos, like space and time. (Which reminds me, you might want to search on “consciousness” in this blog also.) Our personal consciousness may no longer exist, but whatever holds the universe together will continue to be.
And who knows? That may be us. The real Us, something universal and everlasting.

Dear Brian,
Below is a review on The Unobstructed Universe(TUU)
from Amazon.If you can try and get a copy.Gutenberg in Australia have a free download.I am not sure if you are able to access the site.
This review is from: The Unobstructed Universe (Paperback)
There is no higher praise that I could bestow any OTHER book than to compare it favorably to The Unobstructed Universe. I read it in 1972 and have read it at least three times since then. It never fails to teach me SOMETHING of value.
The most fundamental measure of any philosophical system is if it is internally consistent, i.e., that its internal parts are in agreement, with no contradictions. TUU is completely, 100% internally consistent.
It is logical. It is thorough. It puts all its pieces together, into one consistent whole. Even the premise of the book is that THERE IS ONLY ONE UNIVERSE (TUU). The universe “over there”, on the “other side”, is the same universe as THIS ONE, the one we inhabit. To claim that there is only one universe must be backed up with discussions about HOW they are the same. With its spelling out of the trilogy (time, space, motion) that we live with, and comparing it to the “trilogia” (conductivity, receptivity, frequency) of the universe that interlaces with ours, it unfolds for us principles – ESSENCES – that once learned about stay with us forever.
Without creating a philosophy complete with followers and gurus, Betty and Stewart White lay out a framework that we can all use, in formulating our ideas about why we are here and how we fit into the universe. There is no church that has ever built up around this, no sect, no cult, no belief system. It is just crib notes for taking the universe seriously, while appreciating it all with wonder.
Reading this all those years ago, I was pretty new (and YOUNG!) and eager to learn all I could about reality and the universe. After reading it, I thought that there would be books like this every so often along the trail. Sadly, that has not ever been the case. Yes, some uncovered for us a few tidbits and others did other tidbits, but none has come up to the standard of TUU.
The closest one – THE only other one I highly, highly recommend to anyone searching this area of inquiry – is another book of Stewart White’s that was never actually published. It is titled “THE GAELIC MANUSCRIPTS” and is FREE for download at http://harmonhouse.net/fdl/gaelic.htm#contents. Like TUU, The Gaelic Manuscripts is an amazing book. Anyone reading White’s contributions to metaphysical study will be grateful to have found this unpublished book. It is challenging, enlightening, and opens up vistas about many subjects that ‘blow my head off’. It is NOT an easy read, and it is easy to read right past great passages that only make sense later on, and only when we come back to these points in a subsequent read does much of it hit home.
TUU is a foundational book, one that every searcher into the metaphysical would do well to read. And read again. And again. Gaelic, too.
On a scale of 1-5 stars, I rate The Unobstructed Universe a 15. And the funny thing is, I am not exaggerating. Gaelic might be a 20.
Regards
Stephen S Fine

Like a previous poster, i too found this site from googling ‘fear of non existence’.
I recognize a number of aspects in this fear from other posters.
1. A fear of death that originated in childhood (i remember crying to my father that i didn’t want to die). I didn’t believe in an afterlife so had an early (too early?) concept of non existence.
2. A fear that grips you especially at night-time. I guess bedtime is the time when we are most left alone with our thoughts. Darkness also reminds us that in a dead universe, all light ends.
My bedside light came back on at 3am last night!
3. An all encompassing fear that sits heavy in the soul causing lethargy, or/and, an adrenaline rush that gets one pacing the room with a feeling akin to a panic attack.
4. Some deep thought with much pondering as to whether we can ever return in some form (we came from nothing, so after an infinite amount of time, could this process ever be repeated?)
Although i have had similar ‘outbreaks’ in the past, my latest fear revival came after watching ‘Wonders of the Universe’ with professor Brian Cox.
He talked about an eventual heat death of the universe and everything in it.
I cling to a hope that another big bang could restart a life cycle. I want to be part of a continual process (no matter how long it takes to reoccur).
Instead i got more of a sense of eternal death. I try to picture eternity and that brings on a deep dread and fear. A place without hope.
I’d like to push these thought out of my head, but fear they will always return if never confronted.

Chris,
You are not alone in your feelings. Many pace the room at night with such anxieties.
You should read, if you haven’t already, the comments above on this topics. There are some good ones.
You said, “we came from nothing, so after an infinite amount of time, could this process ever be repeated?”
Think about this. With an infinite amount of time going into the past how could this process have ever started? The Big Bang was only an event in an endless line of time that went on eternally before it happened even though there were no watches. Time goes infinitely in both directions, conceptually. Duration is only an idea born of subject-object relation illusorily perceived.
Now always is. You are now. Now is what you eternally are. You are not your thoughts, your body or the apparent universe. Just now. That’s it.

Thanks for replying Meher.
I’m not sure if that makes me feel better.
I was hoping that life is a cycle. If time was infinite, that a process would have to be repeated?
Big bangs causing new universes in the course of the future.
If there is always matter and always time, should life always return in some form?
If life always returns, should our whole existence be repeated?
We (being composed of atoms) can be rebuilt given that time is infinite and there will always be matter.
I struggle with the concept of ‘time’. That it has no beginning nor end.
Very difficult to process that.
I understand i am a moment in time. What concerns me is that time may bring no change.
A heat death of the universe that ends with no chance of atoms coalescing. No change for eternity. No cycle. No life.
I did read that the big bang may have come from literally ‘nothing’. Although i don’t understand this, i do take some comfort in it.
A continuation of a process.

“I struggle with the concept of ‘time’.”
–Interesting, how a concept can create a struggle. I wonder if letting go, would help.
“Although i don’t understand this, i do take some comfort in it.”
–Interesting, how reading something can create comfort. Does comfort, increase or decrease from understanding this and that?

Roger.
Yes, letting go is an option. It has been my preferred coping mechanism through most of my life.
Simply do not dwell on these matters.
Spirituality can offer help for those who seek an inner peace.
I guess many troubled deep thinkers eventually take this path.
I have been looking more into the end of our universe and with it the permanent end of a process.
Here is a Youtube video on ‘Time’ that relates to my fear of our destiny
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uDhOSDYy-dI&feature=related
The end of the video confirms my fears that the thing we call ‘life’ can cease permanently. Time will not change anything.
Not existing for eternity is a very uncomfortable thought.
I hope one day i can come to terms with it…or find a compelling reason why there should be another path.

Chris,
After your ‘life’ ceases permanently, how do you know you will experience very uncomfortable thoughts? What will be generating these thoughts? Where does this fear come from, when something or someone ends permanently? Why make a big deal about a process ending? Do you get excited when a process begins?
You said,
“Spirituality can offer help for those who seek an inner peace.”
–What is this spirituality, you refer to, that will help in seeking an inner peace? Why doesn’t it help with outer peace?
Chris, thanks for your reply, you seem very honest and sincere.

“Absolute can’t see itself as an object,
it can only BE whatever it is.”
Quote Poster
Getting to the heart of this matter.
I.E. If there is no object to be
seen or felt, the underlying Self
is conscious of nothing. Just like
you can’t see your face unless you
look in a mirror.
The poster does not say “only BE whatever
it is”, is conscious.
But, here’s the problem. The ultimate
grounding of THAT which is, before
it expands into a universe, is not
conscious.
THAT acts according to its inherent
nature unconsciously.
Consciousness is the end result of
evolution. Consciousness did not
create the universe.
It seems THAT which is unconscious,
in its inherent Nature to create,
(without knowledge or consciousness
of its creation).
Picture Mother Nature being asleep.
During sleep she feels an itch
on her nose and her hand goes
up and scratches her nose.
Mother Nature is unaware she has
rubbed her nose. Yet, she
has created this entire universe.
What’s more, Mother Nature has never
been awake, or conscious. She is
Sleeping Beauty. She only moves
by instinct.
We are the inherent energy that
Mother Nature is. Our absolute
material we are made of is unconscious.
Consciousness has been created by that
which is unconscious.
Like drunkeness comes from
the sober grape.
Our ultimate being, no matter
what it is, is UNCONSCIOUS.
In fact, consciousness and the delusion
of continuity is in fact micro seconds
of burts of neurons. We are not even
conscious !
We perceive the fist, but not
the hand.
Consciousness is a belief. It
does not exist.
Consciousness is a term we use
to describe the delusion of
continuity.
How can consciousness survive death,
when we never even had any ?
And, Mother Nature herself is
in a coma ?
It appears we are a silk scarf,
that has blown down over the thorns
…… of a rose bush.
We indeed do exist. But, we
are the butterflies of
intemporality.

Truly, once you die you would also lose all of your senses. In theory you might infer that without senses you will lack perception. And without perception you wouldn’t truly be aware of anything, no emotions or memories to recall on. That’s not to say there isn’t life after death, no one can answer that question. As it stands there is no way to test this but the matter shouldn’t be ignored, it needs to be solved. Essentially, humans fear what they don’t know or can’t see. Possibly, the answer may be found by solving the formation of the known universe. There are several theories but until it’s a law no one can truly accept it.

Hi Louis,
Agree with you. there is much unknown
and I have seen things I definitely
cannot explain in my journey.
You know Yagananda’s group claimed his
body was incorruptible after death. It
turned out they blacked out the portion from
the cemetary stating his body was embalmed.
Later they took out his vault a few years
back to see if he was a genuine incorruptible.
He must not have been, as Yogananda group
keep the results secret.
But, the other night, I spent about 6 hours
investigating the incorruptible bodies of
the Catholic Saints.
St. Bernedette was the most intriging. She
was the little girl whom saw the Virgin Mary
in the grotto and movies were made about it.
People don’t usually know she is one of the
incorruptible Saints. Her body did not
decompose and rests in display at Lourdes.
I read the doctors reports as they dug up her
grave every twenty years or so. Remarkable.
Here is You Tube video of Saint Bernedette
lying in state..
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G5711hI04mw&feature=related

cognate/= exsistance quid per ergo sum
you esist
you cognate
ergo you are
all else is redundant

Brian, what you described is exactly what happened to me three times. It is not a fear of death or wondering what God is or philosophical questioning about why we’re here. It is the feeling, knowledge, that nothing is here. It is the scariest thing I’ve ever experienced. It happened to me at night and I kept myself awake all night the first time to ensure that everything wouldn’t disappear. The next time I paced the floor, telling myself that I want to stay in this existence and not to let it disappear, until the feeling, the knowledge, went away. The third time the logic of nonexistence kept occuring to me and I felt it threatening the existence of everything, and I pulled out a puzzle book to distract me from that logic. I thought I was the only one in the world who had this feeling. My family thinks I might be too stressed or have some kind of brain disease or something. Maybe so, or maybe “all you all” are a figment of my imagination. Just a while ago I could feel it coming on again and I tried to distract myself with television and then looked online and accidently found this site. I don’t know if I feel better that others have the same feeling; it either means we are really not here and I’m all alone in a dark place and I made this existence up to entertain myself, or we have some kind of mental condition.

Genie, what you describe seems a bit different from my experience. You feel a sense of “nothing” in the here and now, apparently. I feel it when I envision myself not existing as anything forever, after death.
But maybe the feeling is much the same. It’s just how we try to describe the indescribable feeling.
Regardless… you aren’t alone. Others, including me, have felt much like you do. I’ve written quite a few posts about “nothing.” Some might resonate with you.
http://goo.gl/RyVlt
You also might find Jack Haas’ “Way of Wonder” to be of interest. This is a book that could give you another way of looking upon the “nothing” you sense in the world. Lots of mystics, poets, philosophers, and others have seen this nothing as marvelous Mystery — which puts a different slant on it.
See:
https://churchofthechurchless.com/2010/09/wonder-the-sole-essential-of-spirituality
I just got another Haas book, “The Dream of Being.” This morning I came across a passage that made me think of your comment:
“What is it you seek anyway? To hold a truth within you? But perhaps the only truth is the uncomfortable emptiness which lies so irrefutably inside of you. And if poor you should choose to fill that honest vacancy, then your only truth will not be true, and, instead of being empty, you will be full of lies.”
So don’t deny what you feel. Don’t rush to fill that truth of “nothing” with a fake sense of “something.” Yes, truth can be uncomfortable. But the way I see it, it’s better to embrace that truth, passing through it, then to shy away from it.

I’ve had depersonalization/derealization disorder for 6 years and I feel like I don’t exist 24/7. It’s terrifying.

Sorana, I’m not familiar with the disorder you have. It sounds decidedly unpleasant. I hope you succeed in finding a way to deal with it.
I’m not sure what you mean by “feel like I don’t exist.” Well, I sort of understand. Maybe. In my late teens I used to feel like I was going through life while watching myself from the outside, so to speak.
Meaning, I felt like I was watching myself do things. It was unsettling. Hard to be spontaneous or “yourself” when you don’t feel like you are your self — if that makes any sense.
Don’t know if this is anything close to what you’re experiencing. After a few years I stopped feeling that way, which was a relief.
Being without a self is very Buddhist, very Zen. It’s a desirable thing, since most of our problems arise from feeling that we are someone/something separate and distinct from the world. But what you feel sounds quite different.
Hopefully you’re getting help from someone. Counseling, treatment, therapy… whatever. We all need to lean on someone.

Sorana,
You probably are in need of B vitamins. you may have a dangerously low B-1 deficiency. this is called “wernicke’s enchaphalopathy” which can also then become “korsakoff’s syndrome”.
This is a very very serious condition that can easily result in coma and death.
If i were you, i would immediately start taking at least 400 to 600 milligrams of B-1 per day, for a month. and then drop down to about 200 – 300 mgs per day for another few months. you should also take two or three 50mg to 100mg complete B-complex per day.
You should also immediately go to a medical doctor and get your B-1 level tested. thats because you may need actually to go to a hospital and get an emergency super high-level “infusion” of B-1. they will give it to you through an IV (intervenous). it takes an hour or two.
You may be dangerously low in B viatamins. the symptoms that you have – feeling like you don’t exist – that is one of the symptoms of Wernicke/Korsakoff syndrome.
Until you get tested, you don’t know. and even if your B-1 level is alrigjht, you still should take one or two 50 to 100 miligrams B-complex per day. this will help your nerves and make you feel much more grounded.
Don’t mess around and delay. you may be in very serious danger. you could go into a coma at anytime. and once you go into coma, it is unlikely that you will return to consciousness. it is irreversible once it gets that far.
So go see a doctor and get tested immediately. but you should also immediately start taking lots of B-1 and B-complex on your own. you can get them in any pharmacy or health-food store.
Good luck.

Tao is right, a lot of people have Vitamin B decencies, especially B12, the idiot government and fda have brainwashed us into using the wrong Vitamin b12.
VITAMIN B12 METHYLCOBLAMIN is the correct one, this is suitable for humans.
Vitamin B12 is essential, if this is amiss it can cause anxiety,and problems related to the brain.
Also do the pran mudra, this helps correct all vitamin defencies.
Best of luck, let us know how you get on
God bless
Gaz

Oh Gazz really thank you for remember me of pran mudra,thanks,man

I’m 35 and today was reading another forum where people were discussing their experiences with death and being resuscitated. The very vivid descriptions of the black, emptiness, nothingness struck me very hard. The more I read, the worse it got, until I began to get light-headed and felt queasy.
I began to walk away from the computer feeling like I could throw up at any moment. I sat down trying to regain my balance, and for several minutes I had a cold sweat all over. It slowly passed.
It was as if the idea–the thoughts, the mental struggle to relate to what they went through–struck a very primal fear of non-existence within me.
It is hard to describe just how powerful and overwhelming this was for me. I’ve fainted before. I’ve taken some hard drugs before. Have had loved ones pass. Even the time I experienced a full blown maniac episode where I lost complete control of my mental faculties wasn’t deeply horrifying as what I experienced today.
So searching online led me hear. It is nice to hear others’ thoughts on it. I especially enjoyed the email to Adam posted by Brian on July 16, 2009 at 03:59 PM. You may consider adding that to the original entry as an update, or as a new blog entry itself with a link in this entry to it.
I’d like to add too that I am a Christian. And my understanding of death and the afterlife from my study of the Bible is this:
1) We live;
2) We die and go to the Grave (Sheol in Hebrew, Hades in Greek);
3) At some point in the future (on the Day of Resurrection) all the righteous are called out of the grave and ascend to heaven. The rest cease to be.
Even though I believe this, and the idea of a temporary non-existence fits perfectly with this, for some reason reading those experiences tapped into something very primal within me. It is hard to describe. Although I would die before I rescinded my faith, exploring this notion of non-existence hits me in a way that defies reason and my ability to handle it. In other words, even though it was in sync with my religious beliefs, it didn’t matter.
So after reading all these comments and thinking about how to deal with this in the future should it come up again, I’ve decided to take the coward’s approach: Don’t let my mind wander the dangerous paths. Do everything I can to not think about it. If I feel myself headed that way I’ll read a book, start a banal conversation with a stranger, start counting by prime numbers, put on my favorite song, pick up something in front of me and start examining in great detail, anything.

I find comfort in that all of us here experience this feeling. I wrote an article on my website about it. It’s called The Strength In Fear
http://persistentvisionmedia.com/2014/02/21/the-strength-in-fear/
Here is an excerpt from it:
“Let me describe this feeling. It is an utterly helpless, panicked, desperate feeling that makes you feel shaky and the worst kind of uncertainty. The fear churns like a popcorn machine and spreads throughout your body, continuously shifting so it constantly feels new as if you’re experiencing this feeling for the first time over and over again in quick succession. There is no other moment where I’ve felt more scared, small, and insignificant. It is the ultimate feeling of hopelessness.
I sought to get rid of feeling this way, if only temporarily. I searched for websites acknowledging and discussing this topic. I come across an article of someone who described this fear just as I have and the myriad of comments that followed from others who felt the same way. I read through many of the responses and found solace in some of the answers. As the feeling started to subside a little, the disturbing fact that we can never know for sure what happens upon death until it’s happening takes a permanent seat.”
Give it a read. It may help. I hope it does. And if it does, please leave me a note saying that it did. =]

Cindi, thanks for sharing the link to your post. I just left this comment on your blog/site:
——————–
Cindi, I enjoyed reading your post. I also have experienced what I call the “primal fear of non-existence.” You described your own experience well. It’s a very personal thing, how this fear feels, and how we deal with it.
I’ve been finding that as I’ve grown older (I’m 65 now) the fear has subsided. I don’t take myself as seriously now, in part because after a bunch of neuroscience book reading, and simply living, I no longer believe that I am, or have, a self.
I’m just part of the universe, a bit of life that the cosmos has cast up with the aid of billions of years of evolution here on Earth. Life will continue after I die. Since both science and some forms of spirituality (Buddhism, for instance) tell me that I don’t have a separate distinct self, there really never has been anything for me to lose at death.
The fear of death is natural, for sure. Living beings wouldn’t survive long enough to reproduce without it. But seemingly only us humans have enough of an abstract and introspective ability to be aware that one day we won’t exist anymore. Whether this is evolution or devolution from the standpoint of happiness, I’m unsure. Often my dog seems happier than I am, lacking the sort of anxiety about the future that I have.
Regardless, I’ve come to feel that the more I can accept the fact that I’m nothing but an integral part of life, a twig of the tree of life that will break off and die one day while the tree lives on, the less I fear the notion of non-existence. This may be similar to how you feel. Or not.
Like I said, we all grapple with life and death in different ways. Thanks for sharing your way.
— Brian

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9NQ5KBzD8w0

Yes I have felt this too. And it is not due to my disbelief in a god or lack of speculation into an ultimate reality; I am a Christian. But Christians do not escape the roller coaster of our frail human existences more so than someone who chooses to believe something contrary. But I would like to share a thought.
Whenever I experience the sensation (though this term does not fully sum it up) of pondering non-existence in the face of a prospective lack of eternal security, I ask one more question. And just one more. “where is my faith? I usually do this after crying and feeling a gaping hole in my chest which I cannot explain; sort of like a vacuum.
I do not have enough time to go into terrific detail but I would love to take the liberty and extend to everybody the notion that every one’s ‘existence’ only gains its feeling warrant on assertions of faith. I have faith that my car will start when I am late for work; I have faith that the food I eat is perfectly safe; I have faith that my girlfriend loves me as much as I, sometimes insecurely, love her. And it is not because I am ignorant that I, and we, make these faith assertions; rather it is because we are informed. And every worldview requires a statement of faith. To not believe in an afterlife is inversely to believe in a lack of afterlife. To not believe in a God is inversely to believe in nothingness.
Jesus Christ says in the Gospel of Matther, “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest” (11:28). And I too say to you, and myself, that all questioning needs one further question, “where is my faith?”
It takes just as much faith to believe in nothingness as it does to believe in Christ. Do your research well; question all that surrounds the resurrection of a Jewish man in the first century; do not be ignorant. But further may I say, do not be ignorant to Him, Jesus Christ, who is not ignorant of you. Do not be scared of nothingness when there is a person ready to comfort you in your fear of His lack of existence. Truth invites questioning.

It takes just as much faith to believe in nothingness as it does to believe in Christ.
Nonsense. It takes no faith at all to acknowledge the greater likelihood that death is the end, non-existence, or “nothingness”, as you put it; that Christ and all the rest of it is just comforting twaddle for the feeble mind and the faint of heart.

I too have felt the feeling of non existence, it started about 2 yrs. ago and i have experienced it about a dozen times. Most of the experiences for some reason are in the shower until recently I had one on a vacation visiting family and i had to turn away from everybody. the experience only last a few seconds, but seems for minutes. The feeling is nothingness, a paralysis of your inner being and organs, there is no feeling of existence around you as well. Scary, it takes a few to get back in control. I wish I could understand it.

Ughhh I know exactly how you feel (or felt when you wrote this). You describe it so accurately. I think it doesn’t help that I am a logical problem solver and it’s the one thing I know I can’t solve. No matter what I do, how hard I work at it, no matter how much money I make, I am not able to get around it. One day I will die and it will be the end….forever. It makes life seem precious and pointless all at the same time. I have suffered with this since I was 6 and I used to jump in my mothers bed at night in tears shaking uncontrollably. She couldn’t understand why a 6 year old would be having such thoughts. I couldn’t understand why everyone wasn’t having these thoughts. I don’t think I have ever met anyone who is as terrified or perceives non existence as deeply as I feel I do. I still don’t understand why it doesn’t make other people sick to their core when thinking about it. Not death itself (I’m not particularly risk adverse) just the non existence bit (no point in being risk adverse if you fear non existence because it’s coming for you anyway, it not about when it’s about the inevitability). I have tried to implement a self behavioural therapy where I just have to say “no” to myself as soon as I feel the thought coming over me, usually at bedtime although sometimes when I’m watching a film where death is dealt with in a particular way. I have to force myself to break the thought and think of something else. I now manage to about 80% of the time and i have also noticed the frequency of the thoughts have reduced, maybe to 4-8 times a year but once or twice a year it takes me over until I fall asleep from crying. I think about trying to improve my coping mechanism and then I think “what’s the point because that’s not going to solve the real problem, because it can’t be solved”. Sorry for such a negative post but I think anyone who gets how you feel (like really gets it) will also think anything you can do is just superficial because at the end of the day the fear of not existing makes everything else seem superficial when you are in that place.

I found this post by chance and felt that I had finally found others that felt the same things I had felt. I have always considered myself a deep thinker but never really understood why my thoughts went there, into the fear of not existing. Still don’t really understand it, just try to keep a positive outlook and try not to let myself get into that frame of mind. Having lost my mom in 2010 and with her being cremated, it really gets to me worse at times. I look at her picture and I know she was here because after all, I am here. But when I allow my mind to go there, I get sad, depressed and just a feeling of despondency. Then I pull myself up by my bootstraps so to speak and ask myself, you are here now, so why are you worrying about something that is inevitable and that you have no control over anyway. The best thing I have found for me is to try to be completely in the present in my life and experience each day to the fullest possible extent. I am 55 years old and have arthritis that makes each day difficult. So I really don’t think that even if I could live forever, would I want to in this body. The answer is probably not. So back to the question, what am I worried about. My Christian belief tells me to trust in God and that when my time comes, I will be given the answers to all of my questions. In the meantime, I am just going to try to love and live life to the fullest.

Like you, OP, I have experienced the primal fear of Not-Being. Both when I was younger, like you said, often when falling asleep. But it stopped happening when I was going to sleep, eventually entirely. I stopped feeling it because I stopped experiencing and then thinking about it.
But eventually, in my learnings of philosophy, I decided, forgetting my old fear, to think about what it would be like to Not Be. And all of a sudden that Primal Fear was on me again. You described it rather well, it was like there was a curtain, a Veil if you will, and behind that Veil, was Not-Being, and everything about what it is like to Not Be after having Been. And when I contemplated non-existence after death, the Veil was lifted, just the corner. And it was bad. It was really bad. I had bad dreams. So I stopped thinking about it again.
But eventually, like before, I returned to the concept. I wanted to see if I could induce the feeling of Not Being, like when the Veil was slightly lifted. At the time, I was doing a lot of tests on myself on what the brain could really do, what it was capable of. Unlike you, I was, and still am, able to, at any given moment, induce the feeling of Not-Being. And the first time I did it purposefully, the Veil wasn’t just lifted up a bit at the corner.
The whole fucking thing was destroyed. The Veil itself Stopped Being.
And it was god. Damned. TERRIFYING.
This part requires a bit of backstory. I have always suffered from major depression. The Majorly-large, life-affecting kind. There, back story over.
Knowing THAT, this next part might make sense, if you have had or live with Depression.
That feeling you get when you are so miserable you want to kill yourself. That feeling that there is nothing left for you, which makes you want to die. It’s hard to describe. But with the Veil fully gone, I had that feeling, only dying would make my fears (possibly, as no one yet has provided proof of what happens after death) actually come true, which made that feeling I had worse, made me want to Not Be so I wouldn’t experience this feeling anymore, which created a viscous downward cycle, all while the Veil was still gone.
I had the worst panic attack of my life then. I barely managed to pull back from it, create my own veil, and isolate myself from that feeling. The Veil, the real one hiding the knowledge of what Not Being is really like from me, it never came back. All I have is a pale imitation of it. I have learned to be very, Very, VERY good at not thinking about it too much, even while talking about it. I have essentially had to create another Self with access to my memories, to do that Feeling for me, and they are the one Feeling while I write this.
This fear of Non Existence, is my largest and last remaining Phobia. I have other fears, and used to have over ten full force phobia’s, but I’m what’s referred to as a counterphobe. I faced all my phobias, like a counterphobe does, one at a time, and eventually got rid of ALL of them. Except this last one, and I can’t even begin to face it. I lose more of my sanity every time I try. So I stopped trying.
Now, Timelessness is something that breaks my brain equally as Not Being. But slowly I am learning more about it’s true nature, and unlike with Not Being, Timelessness does not make me fear. It hurts my head to think about, but there is no fear. For which I am grateful. With a brain as science and logic-oriented as mine, I like to think about things like this, but need to find ways to do so without the fear. Hence Timelessness.
I’m rambling at this point, So I’ll stop here.

I had what I call a “mystical experience” more than fifty years ago. There were many aspects to it, but the one relevant to the topic of non existence was: I was standing in the dining room and everything disappeared, even me. There was total blackness. Obviously there was “my awareness” also. Then in the blackness a spark of light appeared and slowly inscribed a circle with the energetic qualities of the ying yang symbol. Just as suddenly as the darkness appeared, it disappeared, and I and the dining room returned. I took a few steps and everything disappeared again. This time the spark extended a horizontal line simultaneously right and left. When the line became so thin, the light disappeared and the dining room and I came back into existence. I knew my consciousness was very far out, and I had to get it focused back in this reality. I told my husband we were going to give a party for 100 people so that I would be forced to focus my consciousness here in preparation for the party. It worked and I have never left this plane since, except perhaps in sleep; which I only sense but do not specifically remember.

I have from time to time experienced the same dark, haunting realisation that you have and it’s crippled my thoughts and wellbeing for years. You’re not alone.

Had this exact experience several times, also often while lying in bed before sleep.
Simultaneously the most real AND the most horrible experience of my life.

There are two things in the universe: energy; and, information, which is the conformation of energy. Matter is called alpha code information. That which was called the universe is just a world in an infinity of worlds, Each world starts with a Big Bang of information (Froth) which finally undifferentiates back into energy (Broth); from Froth to Broth. Capacitance causes consciousness. There has always been, and will be, enough information to present enough capacitance to keep energy conscious eternally. What causes a “Big Bang”? The infinitesimal point nothingness, . (Ain), is rastered by time into timespace, U (Ain Suph), which being the one substance exerts its oneness in one direction, / , that stirs closed circuitry, O , that all going the same way, vO^XvO^, clashes, X
and this is a Big Bang (Ain Suph Aur), that causes the Froth, information, that is pushed into confluency, = , to undifferentiate back into undifferentiated energy, the Broth. The basic polarities are counterclockwise, vO^, and clockwise, ^Ov, which, when they come face to face, are confluent, and can totally undifferentiate in one another, becoming individually nonexistent. When the capacitance of the substance p neurons, in the arising reticular formation of the medulla oblongata, is allowed to be reduced by ambient solvents, consciousness is lost by the reduction in capacitance allowing more undifferentistion. Total undifferentiation, right down to the exact Planck’s volume, guarantees the eternal satisfaction of all desires. In every world (what was called a universe) the one force is to undifferentiate all the differentiations (the Froth) back into the undifferentiated (the Broth). All
pleasures are motions in that direction, so that, total undifferentiation is the eternal satisfaction of all desires. Everything is trying to go that way. But, orthogonality, which is inevitable in the Froth, interferes. The release of all energy, and the attainment of relief (pleasure), is facilitated by shunting orthogonality, to allow undifferentiation of Froth back into Broth.

Sometimes, when speaking about Boundless Existence, I come acrross opinions of people that speak about energy, Big Bang, time…all those things have nothing to do with the feeling of pure existence. They are “entertainement”.The time , specially, is part of our daily life , an illusion as Einstein said.
There is not “me not existing before birth and after death”. Our life, and the space and time of the Universe, is like a film in a pen drive; there is an interbnal time, and¡ internal story. But someone can have this pen drive in his hand , and you always exist because the story of your life is always “there”.
Boundless Existence means the feeling of unlimited, infinite, absolute reality compared with nothing. It has nothing to do with the things or laws of the Universe or universes, or any being.