Dying is Only the Beginning

Dying is not easy. All sensation increases, with sharply heightened sensitivity to sounds and light: ambulance sirens screaming, voices speaking, bumping of your body in the ambulance, the sudden cold and jolts of the exit from the ambulance, lights overhead, drip/infusion bottles clanging and people running and antiseptic hospital scents.

You have the sensation of being fitted into a wet suit that shrinks several sizes as it surrounds you. You get this sense that this is the “new you,” and the moments that you are in this state have a timeless feeling—like it’s an infinitesimal and inestimable length of time all at once. You also will have a very “trippy” realization that you are merely a tiny pinprick of the universe’s enormous consciousness. You genuinely feel like one little itsy-bitsy part of something limitless. Then you’re shot out of this wetsuit at an unimaginable velocity, through its narrowest part, head first, into another even tighter space. It’s like going through a tube of toothpaste the size of a cannon.

Next, you’ll find yourself falling through blackness without the slightest idea of up or down, and going at a ridiculous speed. It’s lonely, scary, dark as black velvet, and endless. Then suddenly the pluses of dying kick in with a kaleidoscope of intense and myriad vibrant color and vibration. You are no longer falling and there is no sound at all, which is really weird. This world of vision is stunningly beautiful and all-enveloping. The exposure to this explosion of color and vibration is enormous enough an event to forget the pain forever, but in real time probably lasts seconds. This whole episode of falling and then witnessing the colors is well-documented by everyone who has had a near-death experience, and has been explained by neurologists as the brain’s chemical reactions to death and trauma. A free trip, in other words. Whether it is biology or spirituality, this is just how it happens every time I die.

Next, you’ll experience what I think is the real moment of death. There are sensations of being surrounded by gentle beings and white light within which are figures that exude comfort, relief, warmth, release, and liberation.

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