CONSCIOUSNESS AFTER THE DEATH OF THE BODY

     When I was almost seven years old, I became very ill. I had pneumonia in each lung, meningitis, polio, and an infected mastoid bone behind my left ear. I was feverish. I hurt all over. I was dying. My mom and dad rushed me to the hospital, and they immediately gave me some of the newly discovered sulfa drug. Then they prepped me for surgery - the infected mastoid bone had to be removed.

      They wheeled me into the operating room that day, put a mask over my mouth and made me breathe the ether. The last thing I saw was all these people in white gowns standing over me. I was very scared. I wanted my mommy. Then the swing went all the way over, and I began to fall.

      I was still conscious. The ether didn't knock me out. It just disconnected me from my body. I just didn't feel whatever it was that the doctors and nurses were doing to my head.

      I was falling. I screamed in the darkness, and a voice answered, telling me that there was no bottom and to turn the falling into flying. I did so and immediately began to float peacefully towards a great White Light. I felt blissful. I was dying.

      Suddenly though, the doctors brought me back to life and jerked me back into my poor, hurting, little body. I remember gripping the bars of my hospital bed as tightly as I could, needing to hold onto something, needing to stop all the movement. And the bandages and the pain - it was horrible!

      Of course, this experience totally freaked me out. I was a very scared little boy when I finally came to and felt my mommy holding my hand. She had stayed with me, sleeping on the floor under my hospital bed and praying for my life.

      Thanks to that voice in the darkness, telling me to turn the falling into flying, I could still pass for sane. But I was afraid to tell anyone, even my mom, what I had experienced. Afterwards, I lay in bed for over a year, first in the hospital and then at home. I learned to read then so I could read grownup books. Otherwise I would have gone insane.

      Whenever I wasn't reading or listening to loud music, I heard voices. I was inside everyone's head, and not just the folks around me. I had trouble remembering who I was. So I read. I read a book a day. Jack London was one of my favorites. Zane Grey another. I read about Druids too and decided that I would grow up to be a holy man myself.

      Eventually, my body was ready to move about. But then I found that my legs didn't work, so I had to learn to walk all over again. Every day, I struggled around the living room and the dining room, holding onto chairs and tables - or even the walls themselves. My parents thought I was crippled, that I would never walk again. I didn't know, but I kept on trying - and eventually I did end up walking again.


      Over the years, I have come to believe that we are all great White Lights, suns maybe, when we are not in these physical bodies. I believe, along with the author of Seven Arrows, that we are here on Earth in these bodies to experience limitation, touch, and especially love. I also believe that each of us is here to do something important. Each of us has a calling.

      I know that we exist after death. This has always been a great comfort to me. At seventy-four years of age, it's good to know that I won't have to be here forever. Some day I will be able to stop and rest. No hurry though. My three boys, especially Jake, will keep me here for another twenty or more years.

      When I do go, I will be in Bliss again.


      The Tibetans have a notion that the main function of mediation is to prepare us for the moment of death; so that when we die, our consciousness will be able to survive the loss of our bodily connection. When I was that little boy, if I had gone on, I probably would have just merged with that White Light. My consciousness would not have survived my bodily death then. I would have lost whatever little personal identity that I might have acquired in my seven short years of life.

      Don Juan has this notion that, when we die, we are met by the Eagle, who eats all of our departing souls. This would be the same as merging with the great White Light. Don Juan says that, by becoming a man of knowledge, one can avoid this fate and continue to exist as pure consciousness, separate from the Eagle.

      The Taoists say that our work here in these bodies is to create a diamond body, a body that will survive the death of the physical body. By this diamond body, they mean a body of consciousness. This body is created by focusing our awareness upon two centers of consciousness in our bodies, the solar plexus and the third eye. By channeling the energies between these two centers, we can create a new center of consciousness, a diamond body, one that is independent of our physical bodies. One that is immortal.

      I have spent a lot of my time creating my diamond body. I have always found that creating it involves more than just channeling my energies between the two chakras. It also involves dealing with all the karma that I continually create in this life. If I don't deal with it as it comes up, I might end up carrying it as unnecessary baggage on my way to the White Light and Beyond. When I go, I want to leave all this behind. I want to leave finished.

      I see Heaven and Hell, not as places, but as states of consciousness, maybe like the Tibetan Bardos. For me, Hell is just realizing, after you have died, that you are still conscious and you have fucked up. You're there, saying to yourself, over and over again, forever - "Oh shit. I forgot to say goodbye. I forgot to tell her I still loved her. I forgot to sign the will. I forgot to tell him I cheated him out of his inheritance. I forgot to tell the judge that the man was really innocent. I forgot to tell the judge it was really me that did it. I forgot to...." Over and over again, forever....

      When I leave this body, I certainly don't want to be pulled back into remembering something or someone important that I forgot, not like the time when I was already an hour into a difficult hike when I remembered I'd left my keys in the door of the van. I don't want anything like that. I just want to be free to keep on going, wandering about without a care in the universe.

     By Eugene Marks