Feeling Near Death: Being the Black Hole

And so, having had all those experiences, and knowing what I knew of how people who knew of their coming death behaved, I worked out the truth about my coming death - with a little help from my friends.

There is no truth, except the truth of the situation - and while I presume to know nothing, this much is certain, I am nearing death.

When we near death, and we find out that we are dying - we feel no happiness. Nor even sadness. That at least is my case - and I think for many others. Those who act otherwise put their names in books for not behaving properly in the face of what is to come, sure as... death.

I wrote to my Teacher. I said I have understood my condition finally. I have understood the inescapable nature of my situation. My pain is not going to end - I am. Neither is my joy going to grow - I am.

I am. And I will not be as I am.

Dying is very essential concept if one is to go with the flow of the Universe, Prophecy.

Have you heard of the black holes? Yes I am speaking of the celestial pinheads. Most of the times, we describe the characteristics of black holes. We don't know nor tell what black holes are. Stephen Hawking made a significant attempt in A Brief History of Time. Of all that I remember of his work, I remember the dimensions folding around a black hole.

And that's all the knowledge I need - even if Hawking's theory has been disregarded.

Here is what I think:

A Black Hole is a cosmic metaphysical metaphor of a human who has annihilated in the Essence of Being - and in doing so, has concentrated in their being the force of the Universe - which explains the inexplicably huge force of the black hole.

It is the point of infinity, the point where our personality annihilates.

It is death, and still being alive in a way that Dimensions of Space and Time become meaningless - they are beyond the event horizon.

Nothing is truly known of the black holes except they exist - and they are known by the influence they create on their surroundings. Theories suggest that black holes are formed by stars collapsing within. I do not know where the research on the physical phenomenon will settle - and there is much I have forgotten of what I knew of the science of black holes except the general details... yet I see them clearly as a metaphor of an annihilated Self, that sustains itself with the Universe.

--
[Lengthy side thought has been deleted and put in a separate post. It's for that part of my mind which is shocked that I make such an apparently mental statement as above.]

--
My friend Peter did the favor of putting the truth about my death in words for me. He wrote to me, after the recent event of yet another armed invasion of my family's peace and privacy, that I should consider the possibility that I am dying.

I know since early this year, when I lost much of my years' worth of work and know-how in freak accidents, that I am going to die. One has to see and respect the signs. The death of everything around you - and the death, Prophecy, of feeling and finding meaning in the Mundane, is the clear sign of approaching death.

Given the nature of time - the quanta-ified nature of time - we can make a decision at every second, every quanta-i-fication of time. So one can't say for sure if they are going to die completely - but it's a choice to be made and I will, given the signs, choose the option to die completely.

--
Note: I started writing this note on, well, October 4th 2007. Today is actually Dec 08, '07. I don't remember much of what I was going to say - in fact, I may just be feeling shy of what I was then so sure to say.

This blog post is so disconnected. When I started writing, Prophecy, I was in the exact state which I was describing in the post. I am no longer in that mindset - so I don't know what I was going to say. There are two thoughts: One, that I had neared death when I wrote this post and its predecessor. One.point.two, that death is a metaphor for stopping being as one is - which, then, is followed by being someone else - a fresher Self. (Not a new Self - I'll tell you why on this journal.) Two, that when one is in the state of annihilation, they are like a black hole, or being absorbed into one.


A black hole, according to some explanations, is a space between two Universe spaces. I remember reading as a child - I'll remorsefully add that I had an extraordinary knowledge of time/ space/ gravity as a child-teen - that it was believed that stepping into a black hole would lead to another Universe on the other side. That's because the black hole has a tremendous mass within, which makes one wonder if it's falling in somewhere? Anyhow that's my recollection of readings from a younger age.

To come back to the point - the black hole is the annihilation of matter in Universe. The annihilation of a human in Being's Essence is much he same. These are metaphors for each other, depending on which school of thought one sees it from: the only-literary, or the spiritual.

Feeling Near Death: Memoirs of Moments Before a Death

Edit: I have renamed the blog post.
Feeling Near Death: Memoirs of Moments Before a Timely Death
How would I presume to know what's Time? And what's Timely? I haven't absorbed fully all I have learned.

I've known through stories that people display a strange behavior when they learn they are nearing death: in short, to these prescient people, nothing means anymore, except the meaningful do.

And now it has happened to me.

Since 2004, I have thought - OK, maybe, this one more step to go. Yet another step, but one more. Then it will be over. The pain will be over. And I can be free. Then I can enjoy the everyday. Then I can, actually to begin with, participate in it.

Meanwhile, I have gone through so many experiences and stages.

The experience of non-priority - when all things seem to be on an equal plane, and it's impossible to prioritize one over the other.
The experience of nearness, when everything and everyone is dear to your heart.
The experience of aloofness, when you wake up one day, and suddenly feel you are not connected.
The experience of unanimatedness, when you feel that all people you are seeing are unreal, and you are on the outside.
The experience of animatedness, to such a degree of subtlety, that you can move your fingers, and feel the winds stir with it.
The experience of silence, when you hear the hollow in your heart.
The experience of noise, when you feel whispers in every movement of the wind, in every corner you turn to.

Experiences. After experiences. And experiences.

My solace was that at least, I now feel. Anger, retribution, like, love, dislike, hate, forgiveness, empathy, lust, piety, self-pity, self-revulsion, self-acceptance - I feel. I felt them all, and went though it all. In the expectation that one day, I will be normal again.

Why did I expect that? I don't know why, except that that is what everyone seemed to be aspiring to in general. And so I thought I should give up my dreams and imaginations, and be normal.

And if you heard a sneer there, Prophecy, it's because there is. Yes, Prophecy, when I say "dream," I mean it in that grand way. I mean it when I said I will give up dreaming - I meant clearly to be understood that I value this whole dream thing.

And then what happened, Prophecy, would you want to know?

I stopped dreaming for real. I gave up, Prophecy, I gave up.

Once again.

All this struggle that I have made, in a way all my life - and ever since the tragedies that have come my way since 2000 - tragedies that turned horrible since the fateful days and nights of 2003/4... the terrors of those days and nights when I couldn't understand how will I keep my head up and straight the next day... or whether I would be alive at all... I did think I would die Prophecy, or at least there was nothing to live for.

But Propehcy, meanwhile, something happened.

Meanwhile, Prophecy, over the edge of pain, I discovered Life.

I've heard of some extreme experiences things, but I didn't know one could have them emotionally-mentally. I thought one had to dive from the sky for that kind of thing.

So in the struggle to stay alive, to find what good could there be in the hearts of people, to challenge myself to determine if I am or could be loved, I found.

I found hearts with love and giving. It's almost like discovering an invisible specie. But it's a state of mind, Prophecy, and once you have it... or wait, rather, it's a condition of heart which changes in turn the state of mind... and once you have it, you see.

You see them all around you. The quiet types. The answering "I am here" types. The talking with eyes types. The listening in silence types. The keeping an eye about types. The caring for animals and plants types. The working without complaint and with joy with their heads down type. The non self-aggrandizing types. The silently fulfilling types. The appreciators of small things types.

The types of people who are capable of giving and receiving love. You see them, Prophecy. You see them.

I saw them, and in that condition of heart, and state of mind - I found myself utterly capable of selfless love, and not ashamed to receive love. I decided to turn this power towards the elements, Prophecy, and that's when I learned how words can bring rains, and how when you run your fingers through the currents of air, you make wind stir. I knew I was the Butterfly who could flap her wings and stir the elements.

And this much I felt, Prophecy, and more, moments before I learned I was going to die.


Image: N. Wayne Taylor, The Mandala Series - after a near death experience

Absolute Justice: After thoughts

1. When One comes across the Other - each must remember that if the world is just, then One to Other is Other, and Other to Other is One.

I.e. I am "me" to me, but "you" to someone else. Both have a right to choose a strategy and to assume that their way is better.

Then, of course, is absolute truth - i.e. which way is really better? Given that One and the Other are both smaller than the larger truth, each can see it. The one more familiar with the truth is tasked with the responsibility of enlightening their self, and then the other. Having reached the point of decision, the one who knows the truth also has the responsibility to protect the truth.

In that entire process lies the area of Mercy.

2. Absolute Justice would destroy the world. Which is why, our legal systems are always bound by the doctrine of the necessity of continuation of existence. There is no absolute, neutral, odorless, colorless, and tasteless justice out there - as some try to seek it. It does not exist in human design. Seeking it is self-destructive.

+++

You will be lost if you haven't read:

Absolute Justice... and a Little Mercy - 3: Justice Destroys

Absolute Justice... and a Little Mercy - 3: Justice Destroys

And at that day, waiting for my colleague, I saw in my mind's eye how the next worlds are being created on the simple principle of Love & Mercy.

We are going from one moment to another on the basis of trust, hope, faith, love, giving, and forgiving others. We would stop driving to our offices - I realized - if the human mind did not understand the principle of having hope - in reaching the office at all. We would stop running the business of life as the store would not let customers touch merchandise - because buyers hadn't paid! Isn't it unjust, I thought, that people buy first, pay later? And there are at least seconds between these part of the transaction?

Why would farmers plant seeds? Why would parents raise children? Why would we employ workforce? Why would we give our hands in marriage? Why do teachers teach? Why do people start journeys? Why would we start a conversation?

Why would we start all transactions essentially by giving or offering ourselves or our possessions - and standing the chance of being cheated or taken away from? Why, when such consequences do happen - we forgive and move on?

That day, I understood the very meaning of the metaphysical phrase "establishment of the Day of Justice" and why, should that day exist, every thing and being would essentially have to be destroyed. I understood the Arabic roots of the word "Qiyamah" - known as "Qiyamat" in Urdu. Essentially, "qiyamah" is "qiyam" - a static state, establishment, equilibrium, full stop.

For as long as Love & Mercy lives, there can or must never be absolute justice, nor absolute destruction.

+++

Complete conversation:

Absolute Justice... and a Little Mercy - 1: Conversation with a Lawyer
Absolute Justice... and a Little Mercy - 2: Why I'd Rather Not be Treated Justly

Absolute Justice... and a Little Mercy - 2: Why I'd Rather Not be Treated Justly

Waiting for someone who was late, one day, I felt annoyed and thought of ways such behavior must be punished. It seemed to me, feeling languid at that moment, that punishment was the solution to such problems.

My conscience then quietly reminded me that at times, I am late also. My problem-loving mind suddenly got active at this. It tried to create a mathematical visual where everyone was going to settle scores.

BOOM! BANG! CRASH! - I saw.

Without the need of precision, I realized that it would mean I would somehow perish for all my faults, so far unaccounted or simply forgive by others. This would also be the fate of most of others, and so - I realized that establishment of absolute justice would lead to instantaneous destruction of Existence.

Between action and reaction, there is choice. Between One's first contact with the Other, there is time & space, and adjustment - there is flow of information, and creation of a connection. This little "work-in-progress" area is either directed by the principle of mercy, or the principle of "attack." Love, or hate.

I use this term "attack" to mean a wide variety of active behaviors including hostility, lack of empathy and understanding, desire to modify the Other, intolerance, feeling superiority, etc.

Say we are urban explorers who enter a tribal region. We don't like the way they treat their women. What do we do between the period of our first contact - and until the time they see the light, given that we have light at all in the first place?

Do we understand their position,observe their cultural evolution, and understand their aspirations? And help them towards the light - a process which will take time, effort, and much sacrifice from us?

Or do we impose our values on them in an instant - declaring their ways illegal and barbaric - and try to get them to change either by being obedient to us, or be captives to us?

Or do we decide to finish them there and then - as living being or as a cultural phenomena?

The first is the way of Love, and or mercy. It is dynamic. And it creates the next world.

The second is the way of Attack, Ruthlessness, Un-Compassion. It is dynamic. And it destroys the next world.

The third is the way of Absolute Justice - which is not the absolute prerogative of any human over the other. It is static. It destroys our world instantaneously as neither One nor the Other would remain.

+++

You may also want to read:

Absolute Justice... and a Little Mercy - 1: Conversation with a Lawyer

Absolute Justice... and a Little Mercy - 1: Conversation with a Lawyer

On a flight towards the North once, I got to sit along a woman lawyer.

They say that on this planet, seven persons look, and behave like one another. I.e. each person has six doppelgänger(s). This lady seemed as broody and thoughtful as a certain teacher of mine - with facial features, hairstyle, and age to match.

So we struck up a conversation - something I rarely attempts with strangers - with my heart feeling certain sense of familiarity, of having always known her. It was no surprise to me, then, that just my certain teacher would, she delved into a thoughtful exchange. Even her life story was told in a reflective narration. She wondered at every moment how she got to be where she got to be, and what was she doing... not in an edgy, questioning way which elicits the kind of face expression from me that alarms people... but in a way that one who listened to her only would hear in her words.

She told me she was a lawyer.

And somehow (wasn't it predictable!) we started talking about life. Her company stirred in me the kind of thoughtfulness that I always feel in the company of people who are... awake.

I shared with her what I believed was an insight:

This World is Balanced on Justice, But Operated on Mercy.

In Urdu, my words were:

Ye Duniya Insaaf Par Qayem Hai, Aur Reham Par Chalti Hai.

She turned her head away from me, and down, and reflected. I wondered what this lawyer would think. She turned her face back to me after a few moments, smiling that strange, pained smile of my teacher, and said, "True."

+++

The Design of the Universe - 2

Prophecy,

I was going to speak of the design of the Universe but someone came by. I was interrupted, and had more moments to reflect, and now I think it is not something to be written about here in concrete detail, as I originally planned.

I begin with this:

"Your remedy is within you, but you do not sense it. Your sickness is from you, but you do not perceive it. You presume you are a small entity, but within you is enfolded the entire Universe. You are indeed the Evident Book, by whose alphabet the Hidden becomes Manifest. Therefore you have no need to look beyond yourself. What you seek is within you, if only you reflect."

- Imam Ali Ibne Abu Talib, May Allah be pleased with him

And to conclude what I said of the stars - there is no wonder that stars' paths concur with us. At the same time, I always believed in humans creating their own destiny or influencing it greatly - enough to over-ride the stars.

In the light of all this (apparently contradictory) knowledge, Prophecy, I have reached the simple conclusion about our existence:

We have been looking at it outside-in. It's not the stars that affect human destiny. It is the humans who move the stars - and that is how whoever realized that they could create or destroy something, and took action to do so, indeed did. Single men and women have moved the world - leading it to lofty achievements or dreadful despair. Single-minded single souls. It was possible because of the secret of the Universe.

You see, Prophecy? The humans create the stars and black-holes and the matter and elements of the Universe. It's inside-out.

This is why, in response to the wish of a person, the Universe re-arranges itself and re-aligns its resources. This much, many creative persons and spiritual-minded people now agree upon. The popular theorem of the Law of Attraction alludes to this "secret." But why does the Law of Attraction work that way? They couldn't say.

Whoever believed in either genesis or the Big Bang or any similar mythology of the beginning sees that it all began from a singularity, and expanded. How, then, do we still picture the oddity of something coming from up above? As if the Universe existed as large as it is, and we are in it somehow.

Have we not seen the plant growing? What comes first? The tip of the leaf, or the seed - then the stem, then the unrolled leaf rolling out and the flowers blossoming from a bud? To imagine a single pollen to be contained in the periphery of leaves is not the truth of existence. It is the perception of existence to one who has not seen a plant grow.

+++

I leave you to reflect upon these images:

The Design of the Universe - 1

Note: This knowledge is blogged for my own remembrance. It is not for the Beginners, but for those on the middle of the way.


Prophecy,

I am going to share with you the pithy result of my years of pondering the question: What is the Universe? Or the Multiverse, as it surely is, but for the sake of simplicity....

Why do stars seem to affect the lives of humans? How do all things co-relate and why? How come so many elements of being are in a dance with humans - above all, I have wondered about Fate.

Once again, I turn to stars which have fascinated the humankind for so long. For the simple reason, perhaps, of them being "above us" - though how have we come to determine that the South Pole is at the "bottom" of the world, and the North Pole is the "top" of the world is a matter of pure arbitration. It should logically be that the stars seen from the Southern End of the Earth must be "below" the people on North if North indeed is the right side up.

So, Prophecy, the human race must learn to embrace duality - the yin and the yang - and understand that the stars are around us. Neither above, nor below.

Perception, however, in relation to the human body of which the head is the de facto right side up, determines that the stars are above our head, and therefore above us. The stars have guided the humans on our travels and navigations. They have, as astrologers have determined over the ages, also shown curious concurrence with the patterns of human life.

Now if concurrence occurs at all, it means two things to our perceptions: the stars affect us; or there exist cycles (of economic activity, of stars' and comets' orbits, of climate change, of life change) that have co-relations with one another. I.e. If I come home only on Sundays - and my neighbor's wife fights with her husband having been impressed by my car, and demanding her husband to furnish one likewise - there will be a pattern of co-relation 1/ by my affect upon her moods; 2/ by the simple fact that I and the neighbors come across each other every Sunday only.

If the neighbors undertake an unrelated activity such as going on a picnic on Sundays, we will still find that every Sunday, I come home, and neighbors go away.


Now what's the co-relation of the Universe to us?

How come there are so many similarities between the Universe's macrocosm and our microcosm and what does it signify? It signifies more than the assumption that we all burst open as part of a giant blob, and have similar patterns/codes inside our organisms (which, if someone agrees to it, is still an astounding belief).

What has concerned me, dear Prophecy, is the expansion of the Universe. The Universe is expanding - at an accelerating speed. Something is going on. We are boggled by the size of the Universe and the point of ever figuring it all out. And why?

Meanwhile the human society has declared several times that it has neared the end of its evolution. How did they reach this conclusion is beyond me. As long as people are hungry, and some of us can still obtain gourmet food - how on Earth could we even reach the mathematical conclusion that it's either a state of equilibrium or perfection or destruction? The human society will never end as long as there is room for either possibility or further hopelessness.

But the human society is in admitted deep trouble - so will we ever embark upon journeys to explore the depths of the Universe?

What shall we do with our fascination with this giant project then? Will we perish before ever setting foot forth? And how far shall we go anyway?

... But I hadn't give up on the Universe, Prophecy. I have alway had a feeling that there is a point here to be seen, and something to be understood, and something I can find out in my own lifetime, without the need to leave it to the eternity of later generations.

So Prophecy, last week some time, I found out what the Universe is.

Where is it "coming from," why and how is it expanding, and why the microcosms within the Universe draw such a true parallel to human micro/macrocosms. And why do stars seem to affect human lives.

Seek-ing

Prophecy -

I have learned that there is no point in seek-ing. As long as one seeks, the Other hides.

How can one seek what's already there? The point, perhaps, is to stop seek-ing, and be sought.

Seek-ing is do-ing. As they say, we are human beings, not human doings.