“Contemplation of death is the highest meditation.”
~ Unknown
When I was younger I used to be absolutely terrified of death. It wasn’t the process of dying I was afraid of – I couldn’t have cared less about that – it was the eternity part. I’m going to be dead forever and ever and ever and ever and ever. Being dead for a long time? Sure, I could handle that, but forever? That made me so afraid any time I thought about it I would be filled with terror and had to quickly distract myself and push it out of my mind. Sequestered in a little box labelled, “Not to be thought about.”
Of course, all this presupposed the idea that “I” would be having an “experience” of “nothingness” “forever”. It is impossible for the human mind to imagine nothingness, so what it usually conjures up is an experience of an infinite black void with nothing going on. But that’s not nothingness, that’s an infinite black void with nothing going on.
Despite this fear of death, getting older never really bothered me. I remember turning 30 and my uncle telling me he hated his 30th birthday because he felt like his youth was over. I couldn’t have cared less. Maybe it was because I didn’t have a terribly enjoyable youth, but it was just another birthday for me.
This changed when I turned 36. I thought, wow, my youth really is kind of over now, I’m pretty much middle-aged now. If you consider the fact that the average life expectancy of a male in Australia is 83 years, it’s not that far off. I remember when I was at school, and the holidays were half over, I started to feel really depressed. I hated school, so the idea that we had reached the halfway mark and it was now a slippery slope to the end made me feel horrible.
So when I turned 36, I started to think about death more. But I didn’t consider this a bad thing – in fact I was excited by it! I’d been on the spiritual path for 11 years at this point, and I knew that the concept of death was central to enlightenment, so I was grateful that I could contemplate this and hopefully let go of the Will character even more.
Ramana Maharshi, an enlightened sage from India, had his uncle die when he was 16. He became obsessed with the idea of death, and one day he laid down and imagined what it would be like to die. The fear of death began to overwhelm him, he completely let go in the face of it, and then… he woke up. He no longer identified with Ramana.
But it was still scary for me. You can have all the “spiritual knowledge” in the world, but until you directly experience this truth for yourself, you don’t know it. You just believe it. And beliefs are never ultimately convincing.
About halfway through my 38th year on this planet, I started to experience some health concerns. Because I’ve been on the antipsychotic Olanzapine for 7 years, I’ve put on a lot of weight. 50kgs. It makes you super hungry, and also messes with your metabolism. So I developed sleep apnoea as a result of this, and soon after started experiencing heart pain and palpitations. This brought up tremendous fear in me. I thought I could have a heart attack any moment. I went to hospital about 4 times because I thought I had had one. It was terrifying.
And all my spiritual “knowledge”? It didn’t help one fucking bit. Because I didn’t know it. I hadn’t seen it for myself in a way that removed all doubt. I still identified with Will, and as long as I identified with Will, it was believed that if Will goes, I go. Nothingness.
I had some sessions with the spiritual teacher Tom Das during this time (who is a GP by coincidence), and told him about how much anxiety I had regarding my health. It got really, really bad in the first two months of 2025. I was petrified. I’d never experienced that level of anxiety over an extended period before. I couldn’t leave the house, I was constantly measuring my heart rate, I bought a blood pressure monitor (although most of the time was too anxious to use it, knowing that it can give false high readings if you’re anxious about measuring, which I absolutely was). I was terrified.
Tom’s response?
“Oh, you’re a materialist.”
Um, what? I thought to myself. I had spent the last 13 years arguing against materialism (the idea that we live in a physical, space-time universe), that it was an illusion based on the mind’s interpretation of reality. This again is the difference between believing and knowing. I thought this, but I hadn’t seen it.
There’s one thing I know for certain in this life, and that is “I am” or “consciousness is.” Everything else is completely up for debate, but the fact that there is some type of existence is undeniable. It is self-evident, and requires no external proof.
So what do I think is likely, but do not know, based on what I’ve learnt from enlightened people over the years? That death is ultimately an illusion. What you are – consciousness – was never born and cannot die. In the world of form, there is constant change. The person you were when you started reading this sentence is effectively dead now. You are a different person. Are there similarities? Sure, but you’re not exactly the same. You’ve been changed. Maybe the change is, “Man, Will’s really an idiot.” But there’s been a change.
Even if you think about it at an atomic level: every moment every atom in your body changes state. So where is the continuous “you” that moves from one moment to the next?
In Eastern traditions, they talk a lot about the cycle of death and rebirth – reincarnation. I think this is likely to be true for two reasons. 1. Many, many spiritual teachers I trust have said this to be the case and that they’ve experienced their past (and future) lives directly. 2. There’s a lot of evidence of young people in particular recounting stories of “who they used to be.” The interesting thing is, this becomes a scientific question because we can actually look up details of what they describe and see if a person matching that description existed. There are a lot of videos of this on youtube which I’d recommend checking out. Even Sam Harris, the famed atheist, said at a scientific conference once, there are “spooky stories” of this kind. The University of Virginia was actually studying these cases to determine their validity, and they said they had thousands of cases. Most parents never speak about it, either because they chalk it up to childhood imagination, or they’re too weirded out by it to talk to anyone about it.
This opens up the possibility – in my opinion the likely possibility – that there is a potentially infinite cycle of death and rebirth. If the universe is infinite and eternal, which I think it must be logically speaking, then this opens up the possibility of an endless cycle.
Some spiritual teachers and traditions claim that enlightenment is the end of this cycle. That you are no longer reborn but exist as your primordial Self eternally (capital S Self referring not to the individual but the universal Self). My teacher Isira rubbished this idea once. She said, referring to the notion of karma and rebirth: “And guess what? You’ll go back and do it all over again anyway, because you are eternal. You know what most concepts of karma are based on this finite cycle as if you go from point A, you know? Right, “Go,” there’s your piece on the board, roll your dice, “oo, you get to move three steps today!” And that somehow you get to the end of the board and that’s liberation, over and out, no more reincarnation. What? What? Hang on a minute, isn’t it recognised right alongside of that notion that actually the source of all of those experiences is eternal life? That we ourselves are eternal life? Well, if we’re eternal life, how are we going to stop? And this eternal life includes the dynamic of manifesting in form which is a given end of the spectrum of energy – that doesn’t cease. In liberation, this condensed level of energy does not cease. You can’t erase anything from the universe. So have fun, while you’re at it!” (The link to this full satsang can be found here, and it is great: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YvzM2EC3v4s&t=3221s ). But either way, what is experienced is not “nothingness.” At least, not in the way the mind imagines that.
The Australian spiritual teacher Linda Clair once said ultimately all fear is a fear of death. I really agree with this. People might find this a bit hard to believe, but take one example: social anxiety. This is essentially a fear of people thinking badly of you. How could this be a fear of death? Well, as a social species, in our evolutionary history our tribes were of utmost importance to us. It was part of how we survived and thrived. To be cut off or ostracised from a group meant that we were vulnerable, and this meant vulnerability to death. So you can see how something as commonplace as social anxiety can actually really be a fear of death.
Enlightenment is the complete eradication of psychological fear. Physiological fear reactions – stepping too close to a cliff, getting cut off in traffic – still exist, but they are fleeting, and leave once the danger is removed. The perpetual fear all humans who aren’t enlightened experience is conquered when the fear of death is conquered. And it can be. Completely.
So here’s to eternal life! (hopefully 😉)
Will.
P.S. I eventually went to a cardiologist and they said my heart seemed fine so that eased my concerns a bit, and my heart pain has mostly subsided now, but my anxiety is still there, for a variety of reasons. I’m working on it.
