Yours is the Sixty-Four-Dollar Question, Lou: “In death, is there still an awareness of life?” Let us see what can be intuited.

Are we perhaps getting a daily—actually, nightly—clue as to post-consciousness? To use your words, “being presence without awareness of any thing, because every thing disappears.” Where “self” and “body” drop away in deep sleep, can we anticipate death to be anything less?

Our fundamental state of awareness is an aspect of the Ultimate Reality, but this all-inclusive Reality would not be aware of any thing which is not “itself.” Being all things, it is not any thing in particular, so it is not subjective regarding whatever could be objectified.

So, if this Ultimate Reality is your ultimate reality, you would not be aware of life (as objectifiable, or an appearance) because you are life. And if you were aware of life, you could be aware of death. In a reality where there is no conceivable thing, there would presumably be no defined states as “existing” or “not existing.” I suppose we could say, what is it about nothingness that you don’t understand?

So, regarding the fear of death (which you identified as “the fear of nothing”), mere Presence is present as “self” now. When (limited) self falls away from (unlimited) Presence, is there no longer the actuality which we think of as Presence? That is the actuality into which the self initially appeared. Where could it go when the self disappears?

So, post hoc, you will in a sense be “more” than Lou; but in an equal sense, you’ll be entirely nothing. In neither sense, of course, will you be Lou. (Which you are not even, in deep sleep, now.)

My newly published book, One Essence, can assist you in attuning to this Absolute (“without limitation”) perspective. Meanwhile consider that, every night, you are receiving a reminder of your Ultimate Reality. And that Reality knows nothing of fear, “death” as apart from “life,” or “Lou” who conceives of either. Could this be a hint as to how we are to live our life?

******

A woman asked Ramana, “Is it possible to know the condition of an individual after death?”

Ramana: “It is possible….You are eternal….Until this truth is realized, there will always be [anxiety] due to false values arising from wrong knowledge and wrong identity.”