“Most believe at the moment of death the person dies and the Universe goes on, but could it be that the Universe dies and the person goes on?”[i]

   Yes, this is very much my experience—my universe died as I awoke to the true nature of reality. This was my awakening after life. Even though I did not die, I left my body and this world to experience the ultimate reality, and this has given me the ability to share this story. My single motivation for writing this book, Awakening After Life has been to testify to this absolute reality—the Truth beyond what we can see with our eyes. It does exist, even though some of us do not see it because we have been cut off from its source. However, sooner or later we will all have to experience it because we are all in it.

   This is the fundamental level of reality and absolute truth of our existence that near-death experiencers experience as superreal—the ultimate reality. Researcher Michael Grosso explains that, “The superreality or special intensity of the NDE, in Jungian terms, results from it being an experience of individuation, or undividedness, of integration of conscious and unconscious.”[ii] 

   The Tibetan Book of the Dead describes this state as “the eternally blissful union of bliss awareness,” and reveals that it is the “ultimate reality as the ultimate lover, experiencing voidness as a total mental and physical union between oneself as orgasmic bliss.”[iii]

   This eternal orgasmic bliss of absolute love is what is on the other side of the door to eternal life. This is what awaits us in the next dimension. This is the ultimate reality of life, in a dimension that is far beyond anything we can imagine in this world. And it is love—it is all love—beyond our wildest imagination.

   Now, of course one could ask what happens to me—“I”—in this explosion of love? His Holiness, the Dalai Lama explains that, “there is only the very subtle energy-mind, and upon that basis you can impute the very subtle person or ‘I.’ At that time there isn’t any gross ‘I’ at all, so the two—the gross self and the very subtle self—do not manifest simultaneously.”[iv]

   Jung also explains this:

The union of the conscious mind or ego-personality with the unconscious personified as anima produces a new personality compounded of both…Not that the new personality is a third thing midway between conscious and unconscious, it is both together. Since it transcends consciousness it can no longer be called “ego” but must be given the name of “self”…The self too is both ego and non-ego, subjective and objective, individual and collective. It is the “uniting symbol” which epitomizes the total union of opposites.[v]

   For me, it was clearly this experience of the self. After my experience of ego-death I left my body and entered the ultimate reality in a powerful sensation as if I was dissolved in a massive explosion of pure love. Outside my body I became one with infinite space of unbound awareness. My consciousness had no boundaries and I had all the knowledge in the whole universe.

   This was my true nature of eternal and unlimited love beyond human comprehension. My essence was one with the universe; I was it and it was me. This was the true nature of reality as the fundamental truth of everything. All is one—everything is connected—and it is ALL Love.    

   So, where was “I”—my ego? It had died in this profound revelation and what was left was a new me united with everything; individual and collective, in total oneness. The reality that I believed in before was dead, and what was born in its place was a new understanding of the ultimate truth of reality. To be reborn in this new reality, all we have to do is surrender to it—surrender to the love—by remembering it is love.

   In The Dreamers Book of the Dead, Robert Moss shares this beautiful account by Mary:

This gate is invisible…I am merged with Jesus and merged with the light and merged with the vast wings of the eagle and one with God. Wave upon wave of energy sweeps through “me.” I say “me” in quotes because I have ceased to exist as the person I am in the phenomenal world, and instead am simply energy, light, and joy. “My” consciousness is connected to this vastness, this love, this energy. I am but I am not. I am everything, nothing…Am I afraid of losing myself? No, because in this light, I still am so much more. I am not in this heavy body. I am a part of the singing light. As soon as I relax, I am back in the light again.[vi]

   The energy of love is the spirit in pure form. By identifying with this pure energy, our true self, we become one with the flow of energy in the universe. All we have to do is to hold on to who we are and surrender to God—the ultimate reality—as pure and unbound love. In this flow of love, we are truly alive and in eternal existence.

   This is the awakening to eternal life. This is the final frontier of our evolution, and the gateway to the endless universe. It is a cosmic journey in orgasmic bliss into the eternal existence. It is the entry into another dimension of absolute and infinite love beyond our comprehension.