The Unavoidable Nature of Philosophy
Most people believe they are exempt from philosophical inquiry. However, believing that you are a body and believing in the existence of a material reality external to your consciousness is already engaging in philosophy and metaphysics. This conception of reality is called materialism, and it has profound consequences regarding our approach to life and reality. To relate to the world, you cannot help but have an explanation of reality, and in our Western society, materialism is the predominant philosophy that allows us to relate to reality.
Why Death Is Impossible: You Are Not Your Body
The reason it’s possible to discover the unreality of death is that death is merely a concept. Death consists of the loss of one’s identity. In fact, the main goal of every serious spiritual practices is to lose one’s identity and discover the unreality of death.
By implementing certain spiritual practices and contemplating the nature of reality, anyone can realize the unreality of death without causing any harm to their body. The main reason why death is impossible is that you are not your body. You are the consciousness that has identified with the body.
With the term “consciousness,” I’m pointing to the present moment, everything that is happening right here, right now. The present, which is what you truly are, has identified with a single part of reality, and because of this identification, the fear of death arises: as soon as you identify with a limited part of reality, the belief in death is created.
They say that I am dying, but I am not going away. Where could I go? I am here.
Ramana Maharshi
Breaking Down the Process of Identification
To help you understand the process of identification, let’s analyze an ordinary object like a cup. Imagine identifying with a cup; as soon as you’ve identified with it, you’ll start worrying about prolonging its survival. If I were to throw the cup to the ground and break it into a thousand pieces, you would experience death, the loss of your identity.
Obviously, you don’t care about a cup because it’s an object you don’t give importance to, and with which you usually don’t identify. But if instead of the cup, you had identified with a person, with an object you care about, with a situation, with a label, etc., you would be very concerned about the survival of what you’ve identified with.
The Process of Bodily Identification
The same thing happens when identifying with the body. Of course, it’s necessary to take care of your body. I’m not suggesting you stop using common sense. However, it’s important to understand the process of identification.
Consciousness has contracted and identified with the body when in reality, consciousness is the eternal present moment. And the eternal present moment cannot cease to exist precisely because it has no opposite; it’s the Absolute. The concept of death arises from our belief in the existence of a future separate from the present. If you were able to realize the unreality of the future, you would also understand the unreality and impossibility of death.
The present moment, everything that is happening now, is eternal precisely because it exists. The eternity of anything is demonstrated by its very existence. Death is impossible because there is no reality separate from the present moment.
The Unity of Consciousness and Reality
Death is impossible because there is no reality separate from the present moment. The present moment has no opposite, or rather, the external reality that you believe to be material is nothing other than your own consciousness. There is no material world separate from what you are – everything you interact with is your own consciousness. Reality is a single phenomenal field, and there exists only the subjective experience of reality. This means that there is no other to interact with, everything is your own subjectivity, everything is your own Self. As Eastern Vedanta mystics would say, there is nothing beyond your Mind, and it’s impossible to prove the existence of anything beyond the subjective experience of reality.
This picture perfectly represents the metaphysical nature of reality: there is only your Self.
The Limits of Proving Otherness
You cannot prove to me your existence as an entity separate from me. The simple fact that I am able to perceive the external world demonstrates my intimate equality with what I’m perceiving; it doesn’t demonstrate my separation from what I perceive.
Even if you were to pinch my arm to prove your existence, you wouldn’t solve anything at all because you wouldn’t have proved anything beyond my subjective experience of yourself. It’s impossible to prove the existence of a material world separate from the consciousness that perceives it precisely because there is no material world separate from consciousness.
And it’s clear that it’s equally impossible for me to prove to you that I am your same consciousness. To realize the mental nature of reality you have to destroy all your ideas and assumptions you might have about reality. The idea that you are a body, the idea that reality is material are indeed just assumptions.
The Path to Understanding Through Vedanta
Conducting a philosophical analysis aimed at destroying all your preconceptions, all your ideas about reality, you will arrive at the discovery of the subjective nature of reality. And this is precisely what is implemented in Vedanta, in the branch of Yoga called Jnana Yoga. The goal of Jnana Yoga is to destroy all the beliefs that the individual projects onto reality.
By destroying all these assumptions, what remains is Truth, and in Vedanta, Truth is called Brahman – pure consciousness, exactly what is happening at this moment. If material reality is nothing other than your own Mind, it’s clear that death is impossible because there is nothing beyond your own consciousness. How could you die if there is nothing else apart from what you are?
I ask you only to stop imagining that you were born, have parents, are a body, will die and so on. Just try, make a beginning — it is not as hard as you think.
Nisargadatta Maharaj
Death and The Holographic Nature of Reality
Death is literally a non-event. I invite you to notice that throughout your life you have seen and will see only other people die, precisely because it is literally impossible to experience death in first person.
Reality is a single phenomenal field in which the entirety of reality is contained at every point of reality. What we presume to be outside is actually inside, and this understanding gives rise to the realization that reality is holographic and fractal in nature, because there is no second phenomenal field, there is no reality separate from the “main reality”.
Right now you might believe you are separate from me, in reality you are united with me because you are exactly here. We are not separate. My consciousness and your consciousness are exactly the same consciousness because there is only a single phenomenal field.
Why the Ego Needs Death to Exist
The main metaphysical cause of the belief in the existence of death is the belief in the existence of duality and in the existence of the other.
Death and fear are the best friends of the ego’s thought system because if there exists a material reality separate from you, you can exist as an identity separate from such material reality. If you discovered that there is no material reality external to your subjectivity, you would have to face the death of your identity.
It is thanks to the arising of the belief in the existence of the other that I can exist as an entity separate from the other. Without the other, I could not exist. This is why it’s so difficult to accept everything you are reading.
This is why death and fear serve you to give stability to your perception of reality. If you discovered you are not your body, or better if you discovered you are not only your body, you would have to reprocess everything you believe reality to be, you would have to review all your conceptions about life, and it’s not easy to implement such work.
The belief in death allows you to continue believing you are a body and allows you to continue believing you are your ego. It’s very complicated to realize the non-existence of death because death allows you to continue living as an ego.
A Practical Experiment in Consciousness
To understand the nature of consciousness, I invite you to carry out a simple experiment. To have a greater chance of intuiting the nature of consciousness, it’s necessary to set aside, at least for a moment, everything you believe to be true about reality, all your presuppositions – the presupposition of being a body, the presupposition that there exists something beyond what you are.
With one hand touch your body and with the other hand touch any object you have nearby, and try to intuit the fundamental equality of the perception that occurs between the hand touching your body and the hand touching the object you presume to be separate from you.
If you were able to set aside for a moment the idea of being a body, you would discover that in reality you are the consciousness on which, so to speak, the perception of touch travels. Consciousness is the medium through which any perception occurs.
The Magic of Perception
Perception is a true miracle. There is no mechanistic way through which perception occurs. Consciousness is self-consciousness in the sense that if you observe any object, you will find no separate subject which does the observing. Everything is self-aware because it is made of the same identical substance.
Analyze the environment that surrounds you right this very moment. Everything that is happening is the Self being aware of its own Self, everything that surrounds you is your own consciousness. Perception does not occur in any mechanistic manner.
The Infinite Nature of Consciousness
Perception has no ground because reality is infinite. We could try to find the ground of perception with no success for eternity because reality is infinite both from a macroscopic and microscopic point of view. When I state that reality is holographic, I’m simply stating that reality is infinite both from a microscopic and macroscopic point of view. I’m not stating anything bizarre.
It’s impossible to find the source of consciousness because consciousness is infinite and there exists a single phenomenal field. Consciousness is that which has no ground.
Dismantling the Body-Mind Belief
To realize everything you’ve read so far, it’s necessary to dismantle the belief that the body and brain cause consciousness. This is the main belief shared by most of the world’s population. Most of the world’s population believes they are their body and believes that consciousness is caused by the body and brain.
In reality, your mind is not inside your brain – your brain is inside your Mind. Simply observe everything around you, observe your surroundings and try to intuit that what you’re observing is your Mind with a capital M, it’s the Mind of the universe.
The Final Understanding
Therefore, in reality, you are inside your own consciousness, the body is inside universal consciousness. And this is why death is impossible. There exists a single phenomenal field, and this single phenomenal field can be defined as God. And by the word God, I simply mean Life. Life has no opposite, there exists only existence, and it’s for this reason that death is impossible.