The cosmos is within us. We are made of star-stuff. We are a way for the universe to know itself — Carl Sagan
On rare occasions, I receive a gift of connectedness. The trigger could be the upbeat rhythm, or its opposite, the sadness of a song. It could be an aftermath of immersing in moments of creativity, or a gust of cool wind in the middle of summer brushing against the face. It could be an unexpected whiff of sweet fragrance of jasmine, or a chance look at the open spaces stretching to the horizon that is aglow with an orange sunset. It could be a sudden ache of nostalgia of moments gone by and realizing how old I have become and how little time is left there to be lived.
The feeling of connectedness dissolves the invisible boundaries between the self that I am and the rest that is out there. Without the notion of duality I have always lived with, the idea of the destruction of the self after death also dissipates. The fear of mortality, in those ever-fleeting moments, no longer haunts.
After all, what else is the fear of mortality if not the fear of the destruction of the self? The thought that I will no longer be here, but the party will continue without me is the fear and the angst of mortality. I simply wish not to disappear without a trace.
Today, I experienced brief moments of connectedness, and for an instant, the fear of mortality receded once more. In its wake, a question emerged: Could the self I possess be immortal, and is my fear of mortality merely irrational?
At the physical level I am immortal. I am connected with everything else that existed or will exist in space and time.
I, like everything that is out there, is made of the same atoms that originated at the moment of the Big Bang. After death, the atoms of my physical self would be given back to the universe. They would eventually become part of some other form — a rock, a bacterium, a chimpanzee, perhaps another human being.
The principle of conservation of energy provides the foundation for my physical immortality and I have no reason to doubt that I will continue to exist either as matter or as ephemeral energy.
Would my consciousness self also continue to exist beyond the moment of my death? After my death, would I remember what I was and what I accomplished during this lifetime?
As for my conscious self, other than for a few moments when I feel connected with the rest of the universe (and when the sense mortality dissolves), I am not as certain about my immortality.
There is no phenomenological evidence for my immortality. In my current form I do not remember anything what I was prior to taking this form. People pass away and without missing a beat the universe continues on its merry journey. There is nothing to make me think that the same would not happen when I die.
Even if my consciousness is immortal, however, if it does not have any remembrance, then functionally, that immortality is equivalent to being mortal.
For all I know, the awareness of self may have been just an outgrowth of the process of natural selection and is meant to increase my chances for survival and reproduction. The self is nothing more than that and when I die there is nothing left vying for survival and reproduction.
It is only in the rare moments of connectedness that the awareness of self is eliminated. In those moments, the self is no longer the skin I need. But it is also hard to let that skin go and feel naked, and so I hold on to the self and become a mortal again.
Ciao.
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