by Epoch II (Cyrus Kirkpatrick)

Three months after his first post to alt.consciousness.near-death-exp, Cyrus Kirkpatrick returned with a second essay, longer and more developed. He had been troubled by what he saw as a recurring error in NDE interpretation: people hearing the word "Oneness" and concluding that the NDE predicts the dissolution of individual identity into a featureless unity. He considered this not only wrong but needlessly frightening — and traceable to a single source: the poverty of human language when it tries to describe hyperdimensional reality.

The essay proceeds through four problems: the limits of NDE accounts as partial glimpses (the scuba diver and the coral), the error of existential reductionism about Oneness, the mathematical vacuity of singularity/duality as human concepts, and the inadequacy of the word "Love" — which, in its Earthly form, is only a fragment of what the NDE reports returning to.

The conclusion is calm: if the NDE is to be believed, dying is probably not unlike living. You find yourself in an etheric state. Someone you knew finds you. You go somewhere less hostile. The things you love — people, animals, your own individuality — are exactly what you bring with you.

As I described in a post preceding this one, I feel like we need to take a step backward and remain modest about our beliefs, this is because the Near Death Experience is obviously not the full picture. Just a taste of something which is far more complex and full of depth. And there are times when people may misinterpret this phenomena, sometimes even misinterpret their own experience, which creates a confusing and inaccurate picture, to sum things up clearly; during an NDE you're still connected to your body, like a scuba diver repelling from a cord into the ocean depths... Just because you see a batch of coral doesn't mean it's all the water has to offer.

What worries me is how people over analyze the Near Death Experience until it borders on existentialism, and we forget that all we are doing is speculating on what cannot be currently known to us. For there are obviously elements in the great beyond which do not exist in this dimension, colors and concepts which are not fathomable to us, and when a human "mortal" tries to explain these things with a limited brain capacity... It's like trying to translate a Japanese book to Chinese, then to Ancient Hebrew, then to English, then back to Japanese. And you don't even know any of the requested languages to complete the task.

What results is a misinterpretation of the spiritual which may confuse or worry people, or even result in fear. Some people believe that returning to this "oneness" means destruction of who and what we are. Just to be reborn again from the light in some physical embodiment in an endless cycle of creating new and wonderful personas and then discarding them to "experiment" with a new form. Essentially implying that "everything" is one big lonely singular entity, existing for all eternity by itself and trying desperately to find meaning in its life by amassing itself in an endless cycle of personas to interact with, thus implying our lives are forfeit — nothing means anything.

I find it laughable when I speak to people who believe this, I don't think anything could be more far from the truth, it's like a blend of empirical spiritualism and human pessimism coated by a general misunderstanding of the subject at hand.

To help clear this up, the first thing we must do is swallow our egos and realize our limited vocabulary simply cannot describe some things in the universe, when somebody experiences a full-blown NDE they try to reduce it into words we can understand. This reductionism can be lethal.

The second thing we must do is relieve the silly paranoia's, in your mind you should put together everything you feel that matters in your life. The people you love, the animals you love, the scenes you love, the smells you love. Your own individuality, and everything else. And then remind yourself that if there's anything the NDE tries to convey it's that these are the things we preserve after dying. So, there isn't going to be some hyperdimensional reawakening if you don't want one, death will probably be exactly like life. You'll find yourself outside of your body in a new etheric state, you might wander around a bit until someone you knew on Earth finds you and takes you away to some other world which is less hostile than this one. Where you can probably live in peace for as long as you want until you decide to go out and "adventure" some more... So, by not being ridiculously analytical... Life and Death can be that simple.

Furthermore, we must understand where the communication breakdown is occurring, when somebody experiences what they describe as returning to the "Oneness" and becoming "One with Everything" it doesn't mean that person has discarded who they were and returned to the lonely old singular God who doesn't have anything to do but reincarnate himself over and over again as human beings, it means something far different:

We must understand that trying to describe this feeling as "Oneness" is forfeit because there's obviously no mathematical system like 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 or singularity / duality in such a dimension, these ideas are HUMAN concepts which mean nothing. I previously stated in a post that I believe the nature of God is duality and not singularity, in retrospect I'm wrong. We shouldn't even be using such words to try and describe what I believe is the act of being given the awareness of "everything." And since everything = infinity, the very nature of this experience cannot be defined unless you are a hyperdimensional entity. So therefore, jumping to conclusions like "Our individuality means nothing" based upon peoples descriptions of "oneness" is highly illogical. The universe isn't set up like this, ironically the best way to figure out how the universe works is to look around in your everyday life, the connections we make, the things we love, the things we experience, and basic companionship. This is what matters in life. This is the universe.

Fourthly, another human word which I feel is inadequately describing something is "Love." The one message that we repeatedly receive from the Other Side is that "Love" means everything, but what is "Love"? I feel on Earth we are only experiencing a small fragment of what "Love" really is, it's actually not something that can be accurately described by any Earthly means, but we each have a taste of it after feeling it in our hearts. Essentially it is meaningfulness, companionship, positivity, adventure, desire, passion, wonder, mystery, intrigue, peacefulness, imagination, bonding, heroism, valor, and a million other words which still do not give it justice, it is what brings forth meaning to us, it is the difference between Order and Chaos, it is perpetual harmony.

Do you know the feeling when you have fallen deeply or romantically in love with another person and it feels like it has "blinded" you from everything else? Words and analysis no longer matter, it's being with that person which matters, it doesn't mean anything if the world should end tomorrow and time itself collapses because Fear (Chaos) immediately becomes such a superficial and hollow feeling in comparison to this wonderful and fleeting sense. This feeling is but a small aspect of the many dimensions which exist in the word "Love."

Needless to say, it's difficult trying to accurately bundle everything that's wonderful about being human into one little package called "Love." But, this is the package that we take with us after we die.

So, what is there to worry about?

This is just what I believe anyway.

Colophon

Written by Cyrus Kirkpatrick, posting as Epoch II. Posted to alt.consciousness.near-death-exp on May 17, 2004, as a companion to an earlier post on afterlife possibilities. Kirkpatrick wrote this essay in response to what he saw as the recurring misinterpretation of "Oneness" in NDE accounts — a misreading he traced to the fundamental inadequacy of human language when applied to hyperdimensional experience.

Preserved from the Usenet archive for the Good Work Library by the New Tianmu Anglican Church, 2026. Original Message-ID: <[email protected]>.

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