The Fear of Death and Knowing Without Experience
El miedo a la muerte y el conocer sin experiencia
A student who practices improv draws parallels between the freedom of performance and spiritual freedom, leading to a deeper inquiry into the fear of death and whether awareness depends on experience.
The Fear of Death and Knowing Without Experience
A student who practices improv draws parallels between the freedom of performance and spiritual freedom, leading to a deeper inquiry into the fear of death and whether awareness depends on experience.
I keep thinking about improv, because it connects to everything in this conversation. The first thing I felt was the willingness to fail, which is one of the improv rules: you cheer and applaud when someone fails. And the surfing analogy is very close to improv, but improv is even closer to daily life, because we're talking and interacting all the time. I always find it funny when people say, "Oh my God, I can't believe you do improv. It's so scary. How would I know what to say?" And I think: how do you know what to say right now? Is this scripted? The difference between ordinary conversation and being in a scene is just that you feel this is real, because you're talking from this body and this mind. There's a box around what makes sense. Whereas if I make up a story where I'm a different character, that's supposedly fantasy and imagination, but it's actually more free.
It's the other way around. It's more real.
Yes, because it's just whatever is here. Whatever wants to be expressed, not limited through some narrative or character that I'm taking myself to be. That's why I love improv. And yet I don't know anyone I do improv with who is spiritually awake in their life. There's still a separation: in this container, we'll be totally free, but then we'll go back to our normal, real lives.
The temporary suspension of identification
That's because it's a temporary suspension of the identification, a temporary relaxation of it. This body-mind is very suited for that. You see it in every form of mastery and performance art: musicians, actors. Getting in the zone is the dropping of identification and entering full flow, entering presence. But the moment the performance is over, identification kicks back in. That's the normal functioning.
That's what it seems like to me, and I try not to have that separation for myself. But I can see when it comes in: "Oh, but this is important. This is my life. This is fear of dying, or my health." The things that are so closely connected to my survival, those don't feel like play. They're not light and easy.
Death as a belief
The key there is to look at the belief, because death is a belief. We know for a fact the body dies. But you cannot prove or find any evidence that you are the body. Therefore, you cannot find any proof or evidence that you will die. That's what needs to be investigated.
The whole death thing feels like the holy grail: when I can finally meet my fear of death.
The best way to meet the fear of death is to see what it really is.
I feel like I see it on micro levels all the time, like almost every moment where I have to die to some painful fear that arises.
But I'm referring to the actual, real, big fear: the body dying. Unless you address the root of it, you're just playing whack-a-mole. So let's look at it. What is death? We know this body will die. That is pretty much certain. The only thing that's truly certain is that there is something rather than nothing, but next to that, this body will die. What is that?
You say, "I will die." What is that? What's the problem with it? If you look at it, it's the imagination of me ending. And with it, some association of pain in that process. But if you set the pain aside, consider this: if you truly end, there could be no pain. It is not possible for you to end and for pain to still remain. The pain only exists up until the end.
Now, what is this ending? What is it that can end? How would it look for you to end?
It doesn't make any sense intellectually, because I can see that I'm the awareness of this body. And yet there's still a very visceral reaction to my impending death, still the belief that this will be the end of me.
The question of what is required to know you exist
And how do you know that you are?
That's just the knowing.
Is there anything needed, any condition, anything required for you to know that?
No, it just is.
Do you need to be experiencing sounds, sensations? Can there be knowing without sounds, without sensations, without thoughts?
I'm hearing "yes." And I see how it's such a good question.
You hear "yes," and maybe that's intuition. But it's a good question because the answer needs to be experiential.
I can sense there's still this feeling of, "No, I need these senses as a framing, a reference point: okay, I'm here, I'm still here."
Exactly. That's the question. Do you need them? And don't stop looking until you know the answer from experience, without a doubt. Not intellectually, but from experience. That will free you. You cannot fight the experience of the fear of death. You will fight it and lose the battle every single time, until you answer that question from experience, from knowing without a doubt. This might sound very abstract and hypothetical, but it is not, and it can be known.
Intuition is not enough
When you ask me, there's a simultaneous movement: there's the knowing, and then there's the mind that says, "But how do I know?" Like it's looking for a technique.
That's what I sense. I think you intuitively have a sense, but it needs to be more than intuition. It needs to be the experience of it. The intuition is a good thread. It is there, and it can be there because at some level of depth we already know this. But it needs to be bridged. We need to connect our day-to-day awareness to that deeper knowing. It needs to be clear and obvious at all times.
Keep looking. Do you need to reference experience? Do you need to reference thoughts, sensations, perceptions, images, sounds in order to know that you are? Can there be awareness without any experience, without any sensation, any thought, any perception, no sound, no sight, nothing? Can there be awareness? You cannot answer this intellectually or hypothetically. You can only answer it from experience, when you know for a fact because you have had that experience.
So the experience I'm having now that's saying "yes," that's not enough?
I think it's not enough because I sense you're responding from intuition, which is valuable, but I don't feel the certainty and the clarity. The real answer is an absolute yes, grounded in direct knowledge: "I know that. I have had that experience. I have seen it." It's like having seen your father in the Santa Claus outfit and having seen the gifts hiding in the closet all of December. Then someone tells you he comes flying on a sleigh and brings the gift down the chimney. No. You have seen it. You have seen that Santa is not there.
I suppose I get confused, because I spend so much time resting as awareness and presence, not doing or thinking.
Resting in presence is not the same question
That's something else. In that practice, you are learning to be in presence while there are appearances, while there is body, mind, sensation, perception. And that's valuable too. But I'm asking a different question: the awareness that you're resting into, can it be without any experience? And by that I mean without any form, without any sensation, perception, sound, or sight.
It feels like such a good question. I can feel it so deeply.
That is what will dissolve the whole attachment, the whole struggle, the whole sense of "this is more important because it's survival, this is more important because it's my actual life."