Two Hoaxes

As a species mankind has been the victim of two all-pervading hoaxes.
The first is the hoax of the personal self, and the second, derived from the first, is the hoax of death.

The first is the result of an honest mistake. Our senses, limited as they are, are producing a lie. I seem to be over here, doing whatever with this body that I seem to control. The "doing" produces the illusion of time and space, when in reality there is only Here and Now. I thought "I" just did something, when in reality that something is already a memory which presents itself to the pure awareness that is the only "thing" Here Now. Even the thought of "awareness" is an object of awareness, not awareness itself at all. Just a thought, just an object of awareness, fundamentally no different from a pretty girl in view, although much more attractive. I say that because we glom (for lack of a better word) onto our thoughts and sense data without the least hesitation, unlike what we go through regarding the girl.

So we, in affect, construct this world, this alleged reality because we have similar senses and therefore agree (sometimes) on what they are presenting. But we know, for instance, that there are radio waves, gamma rays, ultra violet and infrared light, and who knows what else penetrating or bouncing off every cell in our bodies all the time. Yet we choose to pretend that what we see is all there is, just as we choose to pretend that there is some entity called a "self" that no one has ever seen or produced for viewing under any form of light, yet that somehow has independent existence. It's a agreement that we've created based on the assumption that that apparent entity over there seems to behave as we do. Another term for it is "consensus reality".

We operate in this consensus reality for some "time", and then we "die", or so we believe. We base this assumption on the memory of witnessing some other entity stop functioning in an integrated manner and not reverse that state. Yet we make the assumption that this entity has experienced something. But if it experienced something it would not be dead. We have some anecdotal evidence of near-death
experiences, but we have no evidence of anybody experiencing death.

And how do we explain dreamless sleep or anesthesia? If you've ever had a tooth extracted under sodium pentothal the experience from the inside resembles a time discontinuity. The doctor sticks a needle in your arm, you pass out almost instantaneously, and then you are awake (notice I didn't say "You wake up"). The usual comment is "So, when are you guys gonna get started?", and the usual response is, "We've already finished." From the point of view of consciousness, no time passed between being out cold and being awake. Now if you look carefully, that's the only true point of view. Everything else is inference or speculation, in other words, an idea.

If we apply that same test to death, it has to look like, "You approach loss of consciousness you are awake somewhere." No discontinuity. We can speculate to the end of time what happens after "death", but from the point of consciousness, there is no death. If there is experience there is consciousness. Period. So awareness always is. Always.