When I was a small blonde child I had a nightmare about the void. Utter non existence. Dylan Thomas’ poem about his fathers death, “..rage against the dying of the light” holds that place for and to me.
In February this year, sixty years later I had a cycle accident. The “I”, that is to say – me.. well, it just blinked out. I was rebooted in an ambulance some hours later. I remember nothing of the time or even how the accident happened. Where did I go? Was I meanwhile in that void? I believe my ego simply ceased – being a confection of the brain. But that something – an essence continued. (As do our atoms and our effect also). It seems to me that we fade to white, not to black. That we rejoin our real life which is co-rooted in some different way, place and dimension. This after the separations loneliness and pains of this materialistic world. Indeed that this, here and now is the nightmare, not the return beyond death to our intermingling.
Something like “Life’s a bitch but then you die”.
The purpose of this moment of lonely and fragmented consciousness? Maybe simply to witness the glory of the universe in some way – then to help bring the whole to consciousness of the love the underlies all that is.
My answer to Dylan Thomas’ poem about death? ..
Rather than “ Do not go gentle into that good night..” it should be
“Let us go gentle into that good light, Old age should turn to brave the close of day; Courage guag’d against the flighting of its wight”
