Part 1, Escape
All of this started several Sundays ago while I was minding my own business and doing my normal Sunday things. I woke up, made coffee, took the dog for a walk and then took a nice long shower. But afterward, I went back to bed, as I was feeling especially lazy and rather introspective about life. I lay in bed with the ceiling fan zipping away, on a warm summer-day in California. I am not sure if it was the heat, or the fan, or my contemplation and introspective mood, but I felt besieged by a trance-like state. I was mind altered. At some point my eyes-closed, but I don’t recall how or when. I did not fall asleep- I just floated away.
I felt this sensation of absolute nothingness, just me in essence without form or thought. It was like I found some void that existed in between wake and sleep- like a perpetual state of blink. Then, I felt a release, like whatever was pulling me into the realm of the transcendence released my soul back into my control, and from this, I opened my eyes.
I was floating over my own body, looking down- I looked very peaceful and resolved, this image was rather soothing and I hope I remember this. I felt like a balloon that had been released and I was slowly floating up; facing down and watching my body become smaller. I floated right through my ceiling and right into the sky. Kept going up and up and up. The weird part was for some reason I could see everything, even though I couldn’t see it. Like, I could still see my sleeping body lying in bed, with an occasional turn and twist. I could not actually see this, but I knew it to be true. I could see my dog starring out the back window, watching the birds scavenge for food. I can see freeways full of busy cars speeding around. I can see people, so many people, doing so many things. So much activity and I can see it all, hear it all. I am suddenly capable of viewing the entire world and everything it does, at the exact same time…I keep rising and I keep seeing more. I am thousands of feet up now, and now I see all the land and the oceans. I see all the animals of the sea, swimming and fighting for food and shelter. I see birds flying everywhere, some of them right next to me. I see clouds and rain. I see a storm in Colorado and a tropical storm in the gulf of Mexico- just a little one.
I start to notice that things are beginning to move faster, as I get higher in the atmosphere. Only seconds have past to me, but I have witnessed my dog get old and die. Seasons are coming and going constantly. The earth spins around the sun with brilliant celestial intensity, almost like it’s being flung around, like a child’s toy. Time seems to continue to speed up more and more, I have no idea what year it is now, but it seems like centuries have past. Everybody is wearing much different clothes, and everything looks odd and strange, cars are flying about and I can’t even understand the language everyone’s speaking, but I get what they’re sayin. I am now close to leaving the atmosphere altogether- I feel my body become warm, as I am about to leave earth. By this point it seems that every second to me is a thousand years on earth, and for some reason, I can still see every person and every action with absolute clarity.
In this perspective I start to see patterns: patterns of pain and death. Patterns of disease and pandemics. Patterns of war, genocide and atrocities. Climate patterns, earthquake patterns, volcanic patterns and even patterns within the patterns. There is a point when everything starts over and the entire song plays over again, each note represents a thousands years of existence and this song is on repeat. Every human life is the same as every non-human life. Birth, death, nothingness and repeat. – the cycle keeps going. I am high enough now that I can see comets and planets flying by all over- and I keep floating away.
I am now trying to understand and contemplate everything I see and try to make sense of it. I am now significantly outside of our galaxy, looking in, and I can still see earth and all she holds in full clarity. I have seen my dog die and be reborn several thousand times already. I have seen every birth and every death, over and over. Time seems to be this circle of perpetual nothingness, and there does not seem to be a point or an end, or a beginning at that. I have seen the same wars fought thousands of times over and it always ends the same. I have seen the earth warm and cool over and over. I have seen the creation and destruction of empires, and the perpetual cycles of evolution.
Time is now moving so fast that each cycle of existence seems to be equal to one rotation of my ceiling fan, which, I can still see. It spins over my sleeping body as I lay in peace, dreaming of the universe. I wonder what all this means, perhaps the meaning of the universe is, that there is no meaning. There is no heaven or hell, or souls, or anything. It’s just a big perpetual cycle of nothingness- forever and ever. As far as I am concerned, I am a universe to myself and everything that floats around me is nothing. I am nothing to myself, except myself and only myself. Everything I have known before this dream is an illusion. Morality, nationalism, God, society, culture, language, life and death-everything- it’s all one big fucking illusion. There is only one thing I know for sure. I am me, and I am nothing.
Part 2, Release
I have been floating for millions of years and to be honest, I have no idea how much time has really passed in my real life. I have become rather lonely out here in space and the notion of nothingness is depressing. At any moment I will wake up from my slumber and I will remember this dream, and then what. How do I proceed in life knowing all of this now? How can I find any motivation to wake up, to eat, to work, to love- to live? I suppose I can kill myself and skip to the point, but I know I will not do that, as I have already seen my life happen thousands of times and I already know how it plays out, I already know how I die. And, besides, death is no more futile then birth or life. It is all the same- null. The only thing I know with certitude is that I am growing weary of all the pain and suffering.
I begin to imagine what the world would be like if all the suffering was to stop: I close my eyes and then, out of nowhere, silence.
Long, dark – silence.
Out of confusion, I open my eyes again and everything has stopped- EVERYTHING. I have hit “pause” on time and every planet has stopped, every person- everything. The only thing that is capable of moving, is me. I have frozen time and now I float in wonder and awe, as nothingness, has become truly, nothingness. I focus all my attention back to earth and zoom in to my apartment, to my dog and I see my dog sprawled out on the living room floor, being cooled off by the ceiling fan in freeze-frame.
For the first time since this long, weird, wicked dream has began, I finally feel relaxed and at peace. My dog looks happy and content. Satisfied with the simple pleasure of a cool breeze on a warm day. He has a smile on his face, or at least the dog version of a smile. It is spectacular that in the infinite space and time, some atoms found a way to align and make my dog in, what seems like, a state of perfection. This single moment of existence does not have suffering at all. My dog is a manifestation of the entire universe- equally in complexity and simplicity. My dog represents all pain and pleasure, all gods and men, all heaven and hell, and all the light and all the dark. Perhaps the meaning of the universe is not nothingness, as I thought before. Maybe the meaning of life is each moment and recognizing the beauty that lies in each moment. Maybe it’s futile to look at the bigger picture and project notions of a grand design or significance. All existence and the entire universe is only one thing, and one thing only: Right now.
I softly and tenderly awoke from my dream and spent the rest of the day playing with my dog.
Nothing's Sacred 