When Universes Collide – Conclusion

In the late 1800s Swiss geologist Albert Heim was enjoying a climb in the Alps when a powerful gust of wind lifted him from the mountain and sent him plummeting to almost certain death. But a peculiar thing happened during his fall: instead of terror Heim experienced an overriding sense of love, joy, peace. “I saw my whole life take place in many images, as though on a stage some distance from me. Everything was transfigured as though by a heavenly light. I felt no conflict or strife: conflict had been transmuted into love.”

Heim obviously survived his fall and after recovering from his injuries set out to uncover what had happened to him. Specifically, he interviewed dozens of climbers who survived similar falls and discovered that during those supposed “final moments” they too had experienced unfathomable bliss – an experience Heim would later describe as “falling into heaven” and which modern science calls the near-death experience (NDE).

Rarely is the intractable separation of human beings more evident than in those moments preceding death. We witness a car strike a pedestrian, sit bedside as a cancer patient breathes his last, watch an Albert Heim plummet from a mountain top, and not only are we gripped with fear but we project that fear into the hearts of the victims. Surely, the thinking seems to go, if I am feeling such terror so too must the victim.

But according to Heim and others who have undergone NDEs, nothing could be farther from the truth. Most describe experiences of transcendent peace, happiness, joy. Carl Jung, who experienced his own NDE following a heart attack, wrote of the experience: “What happens after death is so unspeakably glorious that our imaginations and feelings do not suffice to form even an approximate conception of it.”

Recall, for a moment, a mortally wounded Robert Kennedy, his life spilling out onto the floor of the Ambassador Hotel while a busboy cradles his head. All around the dying man is chaos and cries of horror, but witnesses said Kennedy appeared serene, an almost beatific expression of peace in his eyes. What did he know that the frenzied crowd around him didn’t? Why, so often, is it the dying who must comfort the living?

To the panicked, witnessing ego, such serenity seems impossible. Its entire life experience has been one of frustrated loneliness and isolation. It has invested all its energies seeking approval, connection, love, and along comes death to remind us of just how futile all those efforts were. We watch as death lays claim to an RFK (or any loved one) and we cling to him, beg him “not to go,” to “stay with us” (not for his sake, mind you, but for ours). The ego, desperately alone in this life, sees only an even more permanent isolation in this thing called death.

And how, really, does the experience of death differ all that much from life? Can we really look into the eyes of the living and know any better what lies behind them? Are not our loves and loathings built upon the same flimsy pretense of interpersonal knowing? Do we not rejoice at finding like-minded humans who we can call “friends” and “allies” and “soul mates” and, similarly, do we not fear the strangers we label “enemies” and “traitors” and “ex-spouses”? What do any of us really know about another?

So complete is our isolation that even the simple act of touch is itself something of a lie. Science has shown us that the “intimacy” behind holding hands, kissing, or making love are impossibilities, since the electron fields surrounding our basic atomic structure naturally repel those same electrons in the world around us. A shared kiss is nothing more than an elaborate electromagnetic dance custom-made to enforce our separation from everything else. Always, it appears, there is a gap keeping us apart.

When all is said and done, each of us is seemingly trapped in this coconut called a head, individually conscious of a world that remains stubbornly, impossibly removed from us. No matter how hard we try, how fervently we pray, how deeply we gaze into the eyes of another, how hard we smash together two atoms, the separation remains. The universal message seems to be: You are born alone, you die alone, tough shit.

So the frightened egoic mind is left to cook up new fictions in hopes that something will stick, that something will bring peace to its fevered search. Throughout history it has concocted tales of gods or God, of hidden meanings and magic, of ultimate rewards and heavens of the afterlife. This existence, it seems, is just a test or perhaps a mistake, the real stuff awaits, I’ve just got to get through this first.

And then, when death at last comes for you or a loved one, you pray like hell that one of those gods you’ve put all your chips on really has been listening up there in the sky or by the ceiling fan and will take things from there.

Damned depressing stuff, right?

Except….

There are two very small populations of humans who across time have been telling us different. The NDE and mystic alike repeat a simple, similar mantra to anyone who will listen. We are One. All is unity, oneness, peace, love, perfection. There is nothing wrong – ever. This thing you call “you” really has nothing to do with you. Life is a mirage, a dream.

The NDE and mystic tell us that “there is something afoot in the universe,” says Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, “something that looks like gestation and birth.” The NDE sees a lifeless body and feels no more attachment to it than to an old coat. “What I imagined to be me, to be important, was utterly meaningless.” The mystic tells us that this little self – this lonely little universe of one – is a fabrication of the mind. Each of us is, it seems, is the ultimate ghost writer, a non-existent entity mentally penning an elaborate story that imprisons its protagonist in a permanent state of solitary confinement.

In the beginning was the Word…. That was started on your behalf by the similarly mistaken minds of those who came before you – mom and dad and the world around you. After a time you took over the process, convinced that there really was a “you” around which the world revolved. Day after day, year after year, you added more and more layers to that story: childhood, school, work, love, birth and death.

The weight of your story eventually becomes overwhelming. So much is riding on you maintaining the “truth” about yourself, which helps explain the rabid defenses of your positions, the arguments and fights and wars. You repeat the process with your own children (“Sins of the fathers”) and so goes the great egoic charade.

But what is the alternative? If “I” let go of the story of “me,” what is left? Nothing. No-thing. Too much for the ego to bear, like death itself, back to the TV, to work, to drugs or sex or vacation. God, let’s just get rid of those thoughts now!

With the ego consciously tamping back the truth, *something* else kicks in, whispers you awake at 3 a.m., posits questions you’d rather not have asked. “Where did I come from? Where am I going? What do I really know about anything? About me?” Argh, toss and turn, when is dawn going to get here so I can get back to my life, to the story of me?

The ego’s determined ignorance is difficult to overcome. An even stronger voice/presence is required. Here comes Jesus. He calls into question everything you’ve imagined to be true about yourself and this world. Urges you to see beyond, to overcome the world, to find the kingdom within. That doesn’t go over particularly well, the frightened egos nail him to a cross, then turn the cross into something to “pray” to.

The ego resists and resists and resists. Why? Because to acknowledge the truth about itself is to acknowledge that there is no self. It is to at last admit that all of its suffering, its yearning to achieve, its feelings of insufficiency, its mourning over the dead and fears of its own demise, all of the loving and loathing, the empires and tedium, the art and decadence, all of it is nothing more than the product of an endless chorus of mental chatter signifying nothing. It is no-thing.

“You have projected onto yourself a world of your own imagination, based on memories, on desires and fears, and you have imprisoned yourself in it,” said Nisargadatta. “Break the spell and be free.”

So if there is no “you,” no little separate and lonely universe struggling to combine with other lonely little universes, what is left?

The Oneness “you” never left. The mistake has always been believing that there is a separate you trying to get in from the outside. You are already “in,” you’ve always been in and the same is true of us all. What is left is love itself.

“Always remember deep in your heart that all is well and everything is unfolding as it should. There are no mistakes anywhere, at any time. What appears to be wrong is simply your own false imagination. That’s all. We live in a universe of Brahman, of Absolute Reality, self-contained Consciousness, where there’s perfection, perfect life, perfect bliss, perfect being. That perfection knows nothing about wrong and right, good and bad, happy and sad. It knows only itself as Perfection and you are That. You are the Self, that perfect, immutable Self. Nothing else exists. Nothing else ever existed. Nothing else will ever exist. There is only the one Self and you are That. Rejoice!” – Robert Adams