To definitively answer whether consciousness can be destroyed, one must first understand what consciousness truly is.
According to materialism—the widely accepted paradigm that posits reality is made entirely of matter—consciousness is a byproduct of material particles interacting in the brain. In Western society, we blindly adopt the materialist paradigm to explain reality. Unfortunately, the majority of people don’t pause to analyze the profound repercussions such beliefs have on our relationship with life and the universe.
If you consider consciousness to be caused by the body, the logical conclusion is that when the body dies, consciousness will be destroyed too. There’s only one problem with this reasoning: it has never been demonstrated that reality is made of matter and that consciousness is a byproduct of material particles interacting with the brain.
Fortunately, materialism is wrong. Consciousness is not caused by the body. The opposite is actually the case: the body is made of consciousness, as is everything else in the universe. The body is an appearance inside consciousness, and not the other way around. Your body happens inside your subjective experience, just like the entire universe.
In the following sections, I will offer you an alternative to the materialist paradigm, but you don’t have to believe anything you read. In fact, the beauty of non-duality is that you can experience firsthand the truths to which it points.
The Dream of Life
The universe is akin to a dream—a single Mind dreaming up the whole of reality. This dreamer is what we usually call God (if you’re not comfortable with this word, you can substitute it with Consciousness, Truth, or Being). The cosmos is the actualization of God’s imagination.
God imagines the universe to share the possibility of existence with all of creation. Love and Infinity are one and the same: creation is infinite because God gives life to everything without exclusion. If God were to exclude from creation the parts of reality that you might consider evil, God would be evil. This insight is the solution to the problem of evil.
Just as in a dream, the death of the character with which you identify during the dream is not the death of the mind that dreams up the entire dream-universe. When you die in a dream at night, you simply wake up. That’s what happens after death: you awaken from the dream of life and realize your true divine nature.
The soul is never born nor dies at any time. Soul has not come into being, does not come into being, and will not come into being. Soul is unborn, eternal, ever-existing and primeval. Soul is not slain when the body is slain. Weapons cannot cleave the soul, fire cannot burn it, water cannot wet it, and wind cannot dry it.
Bhagavad Gita
Please note, this understanding is not an excuse to cause harm to your body or to anyone else. You can directly experience all that you are reading through various spiritual practices such as Kriya Yoga and conscious psychedelic use. I share this information to celebrate life and help you make the most of this incredible gift that is reality.
The Non-Dual Explanation of Reality
Consciousness is that of which everything is made; it’s the substance that constitutes any phenomenal appearance, and what you really are is consciousness. You are the substance that makes up any possible dream; that’s why consciousness can’t be destroyed: there’s nothing beyond it.
The content of the dream can change and cease to exist, but consciousness is eternal. Spiritual enlightenment is the loss of individual identity and the realization of oneself as consciousness itself. Once you realize yourself to be the substance which makes up reality itself, you will understand that there is fundamentally nothing to fear.
Inside a dream, there is nothing that can really harm you because, in reality, you are the mind that is dreaming and not the dream character with which you have identified during the dream. No dream figure can harm the mind that is dreaming.
Here’s Why Consciousness Can’t Be destroyed:
Your belief in the possible destruction of consciousness revolves entirely around the belief of being a body and the related mechanics of perception. You believe yourself to be a subject that perceives an external material world through a specific process of perception. In reality, as crazy as it might sound, this explanation is wrong. There is no external material world; perception is always direct—perception is consciousness.
Consciousness is the unity of subject, object, and process of perception. In other words, you are everything that you interact with in your everyday life, just as in a dream, everything you interact with is your own consciousness.
To know the truth, you need only to cease identifying yourself with the body, the mind and the world. Know yourself as you are.
Ramana Maharshi
The reason you can interact with the world around you is that, in a sense, the world around you is your own body. What you are doesn’t end where your skin ends.
You are not conscious because you have a body; you are conscious because you are consciousness. If you can break the spell of believing the body causes consciousness, you can realize that consciousness is eternal. Yes, when the body with which you’ve identified grows old and perishes, it will be the end of your ego identity, but what you really are will remain untouched.