After all the speculation about life after death in the various literature I’ve had the opportunity to read, I finally had an extraordinary and insightful experience last week to gather my own qualitative data.
It happened when I stood up too quickly and experienced my first-ever total blackout of consciousness. First, the head started feeling numb, much like any other body part would when blood supply is restricted from it. Next, the vision began to cloud with white static Gaussian noise, reminiscent of a television screen with a malfunctioning antenna. What follows is the strength fading from the lower limbs, similar to when a car’s battery stops working and the engine stalls. Then, the body collapsed to the ground, and the head bumping the wall behind me (it remained aching for a few days after that).
The final sensation before the consciousness completely faded was the total relaxation of all the muscles in the body starting from the heart, emanating outwards. Somehow the eyes remained open during the whole process. In the minds, its observed all manner of attachments layered on top of the consciousness ceased to be when the base layer faded, leaving only darkness accompanied with total and absolute peace.
When consciousness was regained, I observed three people were standing over me who hadn’t been there before. I had no sense of time passing during the blackout.
From this qualitative experience, I derive the conclusion that consciousness enters oblivion after the body dies. Thereafter the body breaks down, and its energy returns to the environment.
With oblivion as the base case, it becomes intriguing to optimize the use of energy by adopting Boyle’s Law —weaving a rich, intricate existence while the body and mind are still functioning. Similar to creating a unique multiplication equation before introducing zero at the end.
When zero is introduced, the body disintegrates, and consciousness enters oblivion. What remains is a mathematical equation weaved across time and space that is a unique and irreplicable but somewhat useless because the only thing it ever returns is zero.