Life After

So you die... then what?

 

Life After

 

 

I heard the “BAM!” when the driver’s front tire blew, then felt the car’s violent lurch into oncoming traffic, the headlights in the windshield, someone screaming (Maybe me. I don’t know). A head-on collision at about 75 MPH. - Almost seems that would make for a bad day. Not so much!

My death was surprisingly painless, and a lot less scary then I’d imagined. Maybe “curious” is a better word. I never imagined that dying would be anywhere near boring, especially when you insert the little details like the mangled body inside the burning wreck below me.

At the moment of my “passing” I seemed to be floating over the scene. I remember thinking how cliché that was. I’d read it in a dozen Reader’s Digest stories. Then, (As if I wasn’t expecting it) a bright white light shown, and I was compelled to go down a tunnel toward it. It felt warm, friendly, loving,.. and correct, natural, normal, expected.

After a life of writing crazy, impossible fiction stories, frankly I was a little bored by the whole event. Everything happened just like I imagined it would. And in the same order. And at the expected intensity. My death was a Reader’s Digest article.

Up ahead, outlines of familiar people I had known (Check.), dead relatives (Check.), dead teachers (Check.), dead friends (Check.), and even a few classmates whose names I’d forgotten (Check.). Suddenly I’m face to face with “The Light” and I watch my entire life pass by in review (Check.).

What a drag. Everything just the way I’d expected it. B-o-r-i-n-g.

 

Up ahead, a door. I opened it and walked in. Of course the man seated at the big desk wore a bright white suit, with white tie, ascot, and white watchband tastefully peeking out from his cuff. He was straight out of a twilight zone episode. I had to shield my eyes a bit from the bright light in the room. He gave me a friendly (kind of patronizing) smile and motioned that I sit in the lone chair in front of the desk. I did. (Check.)

 

“Dax, right?”

I nodded. He sat there for a while, slowly allowing a thin grin to show. Finally he said out loud what I’d been thinking all along. “Kind of anticlimactic, isn’t it?” I nodded again. “So what’re ya gonna do?” he said in a bad Brooklyn accent. He pushed his chair back a bit, stood, and took off the white suit jacket, then loosened the tie, unbuttoned two buttons, sat back down, and put his feet up on the desk. He leaned back and put his hands behind his head, then asked; “Well, ‘r you done with the whole death thing now? Can we move forward?”

“Huh?”

“You satisfied?” I didn’t say anything. I was disillusioned. All I could think was that death was a s**t way to spend a day. “You’re the bad writer guy, aren’t you. I’ve read some of your stuff… Funny.” He said, and I felt even weirder. The guy at the Pearly Gates has read my book? This can’t be happening. He continued, all business. “The physical plain is a strange place, with long-established habits dictating what happens. Call it reality. The final act of that reality is physical death. The physical beings have evolved a comfortable transition sequence, which we try to honor. It includes the “Being of Light” and the tunnel, and the relatives and the life-review. It’s kind of a tradition, if you will.” I raised one eyebrow, again eliciting his smile, and he added, “So have you finished your death experience yet? Are you satisfied? Comfortable going forward?”

“Let me get this straight.” I asked. “I’m dead?”

“You’re dead.”

“You sure? Not dreaming or writing another one of my stupid stories?”

“You’re dead.”

“And all this “Reader’s Digest afterlife article” stuff is just for show?”

“Pretty much.”

“And now you’re asking me if I’m ready for what, the next step?”

“OK.”

“If you mean ‘Am I bored’ then yes, I’m ready for something a little more amazing.” I said, and I meant it. “So far this whole death thing seems like a bad short story…worse…a dragging-on-and-on story. Too bad even for ME to write, and I specialize in bad short stories.” The glowing white surroundings faded into a much more comfortable space, and Mr. Clean was now dressed in a polo shirt and blue jeans.

“Little better?” he asked, “I figured you’d be bored by the whole orientation thing but it’s expected. Dying for some can be quite traumatic.”

“No s**t.”

He started laughing, “They arrive in tears and babble on and on about people and things they “lost.” Hell, they haven’t lost anything. After our little orientation process, most souls shed a spent lifetime like an old T-shirt.”

“Huh?”

“We call ‘em cycles. You get thousands, even millions of them if you want. One single cycle, one lifetime, spent on one tiny planet is certainly not much to base an eternal being on. Good God, man! What would an eternal soul do if he only lived for 72.6 years – then died forever. One f*****g lifetime to last forever? What would occupy that being’s thoughts?” He saw by the blank stare on my face that he was losing me.

“You. The conscious being. The voice that you recognize as your own center. You.” He paused, then leaning into me, serious, he said in a low voice, “If all you could experience was that one lifetime, could you now live forever as a complete soul? … Was one cycle enough? Are you done evolving? Learning? Experiencing? Do you feel… done?”

“Reincarnation?” I more stated then asked.

“Continuation.” He clarified. He stood, gesturing that I should as well, and as I rose, the comfortable space that had been our surroundings sort of evaporated, and I found myself floating in an incredibly crowded universe. The presence that had been my host now communicated with me in ways hard to explain, (so I won’t).

“Welcome to eternity.” I heard, (kind of). “You are part of all this. Connected and complete. You are one with everything.” I had no body, physical or otherwise. I was more than a single conscious being. I recognized facts, truth, realities, because suddenly I was part of a spider’s web connected to,… everything. I could feel the smallest tug of effect from anywhere in the universe, sense the tiniest deviation from still. As the web I was ‘aware’ of all things. All things. Whatever question I tried to ask became obvious before it formed in my, um, mind.

“It’s called being One.” My host-voice informed me. “It is the perfect state.”

 

”The Perfect State?” I asked, knowing.

“Do you feel perfect?” He asked. I knew he knew, too.

“And peaceful as hell.” Was my inadequate reply. Nothing could be better! Just basking in the joy of absolute knowledge. To understand – everything! To experience, and be, the … universe! Vast, eternal, unending…infinite!

Then I remembered being small. I remembered being Dax, a solitary being. A tiny, miniscule, infinitesimally-unimaginably insignificant speck of consciousness that experienced a nanosecond of life on a mote named Earth. That short life was nowhere near a “complete” experience. It would take thousands, no, millions of similar lifetimes to fulfill my potential. To grow, to experience even a fractional part of that universe.

But why would I ever want anything but to float here in boundless knowledge? Why would any being make the decision to “go back?” To live another tiny little life? To be separated from the joyously-fulfilling knowledge so freely available in that non-physical place?

 

“You’ll figure it out.” Said my host, startling me a bit. “Well, I’ll just leave you alone, but first we should finish your orientation. Please?” With my consent, we were back in the white room, him with his feet up on the desk, me in the facing chair.

“Here’s your options, you may make a decision at any time.

One, you can stay what you call ‘dead’ and just float around for a while. The universe is open to you. It is an unimaginably wonderful place as you now understand. Feel free to bask in whatever…”

“I can go anywhere?” I asked, already knowing the answer. “I can experience anything?” again, completely understanding I could before the question had formed. “No limits?”

“…And omni-present, and omniscient, and all that stuff.” My host assured me. “Dead means never having to ask a question.”

“That sounds kind of tacky.” I “told” him. “You seem a little condescending when it comes to being dead. Why is that?” I asked. “Frankly, I don’t understand why anyone would elect to NOT be dead?”

“Come on, Dax. Think about it. Right now you know everything. You lack for nothing. You desire nothing. You are complete. Whole. Total. You can stay right here, do nothing, learn nothing, be nothing…and have all those things you now have. You can exist in an eternal state of bliss. Happiness, peace, and love - Forever!... And you don’t have to make any decisions…ever.”

He didn’t say anything else. I could “feel” him grinning, but it hadn’t struck me yet.

 

Then I got it. The reason death was boring, was that being dead was boring. I didn’t want to know everything. I don’t want to understand everything. If I had to live in total peace and love and understanding…year after year, after century, after millennium, after eon…

 

“OK, So what’d ya got?” I said, now sporting my own grin.

“I knew you’d be a fast turn-around.” He stated. “Writers usually are.” He pulled out a big spiral-bound book of available lives from which I could choose, and as I perused it he made small talk. “Believe it or not, Dax, some beings just float out there for centuries.”

“Get real.”

“Oh, Yah! For hundreds, thousands, even millions of years!” He reached across the desk and made a gesture… “We got a’ ol’ gal who’s been two billion years dead!”

“Not!”

“Yah! Still happy as a clam. She just sort of hovers back and forth, being happy, feeling complete. As far as we can tell, she lived one cycle as grass, and never went back.”

“A blade of grass?”

“Well, actually a cannabis plant.”

Author's Note

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