Epitaph for a Tombstone

There is more to me than time allows to be

By Tian Xu Tong

I came across this poem recently, something I wrote years and years ago.

So much has changed since then, but not this, that a handful of years is just not enough to realize all that I am.

Epitaph for a Tombstone

I am compressed within my skin
Like a time-bomb

There is more to me than time
Allows to be

When the end comes I’ll explode
Like an atom

It is my end to explore
Infinity

I was obsessed with the idea that I would never be able to see, do, be all that I wanted within the time allotted me. That this little life “rounded by a dream” as Shakespeare wrote, was but an interlude, and that I had existed before and will exist well after it ends.

Perhaps that’s why Wordsworth’s lines in “Intimations of Immortality” mean so much to me, that we come into this world “trailing clouds of glory.” The biblical verses about being there “when the morning stars first sang together” have a similar déjà vu effect on me.

The sense of pre-existence is as strong in me as the sense that existence continues after this current life comes an end.

What Does Science Say?

I read a blog post recently where the question of an after-life was being discussed, along with the musings of Thomas Jefferson and Saul Bellow on the subject.

The suggestion was that there is no science to support such speculation, and these musings by learned men were merely a comforting concession to ease the pain of lost loved ones or the anxiety about one’s own impending death. I took a different viewpoint, and wrote this:

I’m very skeptical of what “Science” knows at this point about the mind and consciousness and the thing that sages through the ages have referred to as “soul” or “spirit.” That individual consciousness would just disappear when life leaves the body seems almost more fantastical than if it should continue in some form.

Look at what happens when we turn out the lights at night–consciousness continues to spin out a type of “reality” at least to the one “awake” in the dream, seemingly conscious and aware of himself and others and a world around him. This waking dream we all seem to be part of seems no more real at times than the one I left when the alarm when off.

And when we look at the “new science” and quantum physics, it appears we know less about how this world is fabricated than we had thought, but what it does seem to indicate is that consciousness plays a much larger role in reality than mere physical particles (as if the two can be separated!).

I guess all this rambling goes to say I think when it comes to facing our eventual deaths, scientists can tell us nothing of importance, but the great shock of contemplating a blank slate in place of continuing consciousness may be such an affront to reason that it kick-starts a higher sense of perception or intuition, where the continuation of a person’s spirit or soul does not seem so unreasonable after all. Hence Jefferson’s and Bellow’s musings on death.

A New Study Deconstructed

Not long after writing that, I read a new study debunking the claims of those who have had near-death experiences of an after-life. Apparently researchers have discovered that as the brain dies there is a flurry of abnormal activity—lots of bells and whistle going off, neurons going crazy, atoms exploding, that sort of thing (a bit like my poem depicts, don’t you think?).

These frantic falterings cause those near-death experiences, so they speculate. But a cause and effect relationship can go both ways. It could easily be that in those final moments before the brain goes dead it records the experience of our consciousness of crossing over to a new mental landscape beyond this world. That crazy brain activity could be the last gasp, or mental grasping, of the mortal as it perceives a glimpse of its own continuity into an alternate reality.

There’s no way to know for sure, of course. But when the best minds of this world and many cultures across time all seem to have a similar sense of something of ourselves continuing after this life ends, I think we’d be wise not to dismiss this altogether, despite the lack of science to support it.

Science after all is just evolving thought, new ways of perceiving reality, discovering new patterns of evidence that explain the phenomena around us.

And, if true to itself, Science is open-ended as well as open-minded, poised to grasp things that may never have occurred to it yet. Science too, in the end, may be but one way by which we “explore infinity.”

A Metaphysical Approach, Within the Here and Now

These days, however, I look somewhat differently on the subject. That escape into an ever-expansive sense of self no longer seems to lie upon a birth-death or time-space axis but within the here and now which defies such limitations.

That smallness of being which so ill-fits us, which pinches and punishes, which we all in this present life seem heir to, does not define us and has little in reality to do with us. It’s but an ill-shaped mind-box that seems to contain us but never really can.

It’s as if this limited life which seems to bind us is like a box with four sides. Before and behind us are Birth and Death, and on either side are I and Other. Below is the Ground of Being which supports us. But there is no lid above.

It is open to the Wonder or Mystery of Being, enticing us to rise beyond the strictures of time and space, birth and death, I and Other. Inviting us to explore what lies beyond this small sense of self; and so we do, each following our bliss. Through exploration of the sciences or creative arts, or by pursuing the ideals of freedom, equality, justice, service, selfless love, and the common good, we rise somewhat out of our smaller selves into something more expansive.

But until those opposing walls of birth and death, time and space, and I or Other collapse, we are still confined within a smaller, ill-fitting sense of being. We can slip in and out of that box, but cannot escape it altogether. Death is not the door that frees us. Mind is.

Rising to a higher, more expansive sense of self that identifies both with the Ground of Being that supports us, and the Wonder of Being that surrounds us, we find our freedom. There the restrictive walls that would bind us collapse for lack of identity.

A Whiff of the Infinite

All the great spiritual teachings point in that direction. Not toward something outside or apart from us, but toward a more expansive identity: the Kingdom of Heaven, Enlightenment, the Tao. All lie within a higher consciousness or understanding of being.

We know this, it is not new. Nor is it far away. We all taste it, hear it, glimpse it in rarified moments even within this limited sense of self.

When one student asked the sage to show him this higher reality, the master said, “There, do you not smell it?” as their feet crushed the sweet-smelling vine beneath them.

Nothing is hidden. We all catch that whiff of the infinite in humble and exquisite ways along our journey within.

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Thank you for reading. I’d love to hear your thoughts about any of this.