Abbey-Roads2

 

But body gone he sleeps no more,
And till his intellect grows sure
That all’s arranged in one clear view,
pursues the thoughts that I pursue,
Then stands in judgment on his soul,
And, all work done, dismisses all
Out of intellect and sight
And sinks at last into the night.  - Yeats 

I don’t know how to describe it.

Twice in the last month I experienced the strangest sensation.  It wasn’t supernatural or anything, I’m sure.  I don’t think it is depression either.  I don’t know how to categorize the experience however.  It has happened before in my life, a fleeting moment - maybe longer - wherein it seemed to me I knew what it feels like to die.

When I was younger, I experienced intense anxiety about it, until I “calmed” myself with an act of contrition.   Some would call these episodes “panic attacks” - but I’m not sure that is correct, since I would regain my peace with prayer and a conscious surrender of my soul into God’s hands, certain I was accepting whatever he willed at that moment.

Nevertheless, my recent experiences, though just as fleeting as the others, have been different.  There was no anxiety, no nothing.  I was totally conscious of what was happening and distinctly aware of everything outside of myself.  As I looked out a window, I could hear passers by on the street, children playing in the distance, and yet I felt completely removed from it all.  I felt as if I was suspended in time and place, and that I was totally alone.

I realized that no one, and no thing outside of me had any effect upon my soul, my being.  That the sounds I heard, were from persons who had no awareness of my existence.  Understanding this, I recognized that people from my past were not aware of my existence either, and that my past was only present to myself, but for all others, it could only be a faint recollection or memory, as of someone who had once lived. 

(For some strange reason, I had a vague sense of the dead and imagined they were aware of me, although I felt they couldn’t know my experience of myself.  They were aware of me, but they could not “know” me.  I thought, only God knows me, yet I didn’t understand how.) 

I imagine the experience was similar to Scrooge with the ghost of Christmas present, when Scrooge was invisibly present at his nephew’s Christmas celebration, yet impotent to make his presence felt.  Unlike Scrooge, I experienced no emotion - I felt absolutely nothing.  Or maybe the episodes could be best described as being in limbo, albeit without joy.  Like I said, I can’t describe it.  I say I felt nothing, yet that is not completely true.  I felt no joy - therefore it seemed as if I experienced the absence of emotion.  Nevertheless, it was as if I sensed an oncoming awareness of profound aloneness.  I say aloneness, as opposed to loneliness.  I think loneliness implies a desire for anothers company, or to be acknowledged by those outside oneself - yet that wasn’t a part of my experience.  I did not feel lonesome, but I felt alone.

The only thing I can make of the experience is that each of us are completely alone before God.  That we are accountable to him alone.  That he alone knows us.  It seemed to me, that everything outside of myself counted for nothing compared to this reality.  That my knowledge, my experiences, my accomplishments were somehow unimportant to this solitude.  It seemed that nothing created could fill my aloneness but would only serve to increase my sense of exile and alienation.

As I said, I felt no joy, neither did I feel sadness, which is why I say I felt no emotion.  I don’t know what to make of it, but it seems to me it was a sort of heightened realization of my existence, as well as an obscure knowledge of the existence and the immensity of God.  It seemed to me my experience is similar to what one understands at approaching death.

I’m sure the whole experience can be attributed to some chemical imbalance in my brain - I find it intriguing nonetheless.  Although death promises to be a very dramatic experience, don’t you think?