Sunday, August 7, 2011

Nature of truth in life

I died this morning. The cremation in the afternoon, as cremations go, was a satisfactory affair , with many of my friends and all of my enemies attending it. As I watch what was once my body being subjected to degrading, even humiliating handling by those who loved me no end, I am not even sure if this death experience is one with a ring of finality about it, or is just an illusion - something like an "out of body experience". I read somewhere -- was it in Carl Sagan's Broca's Brain ? -- that people can have an experience of floating above their body and that this experience can be induced by drugs like ketamine. So its really hard to tell what am I experiencing now. I remember -- or seem to -- that I took no such drugs while 'alive' or 'in body', but then, who can tell? One of the effects of that drug could be loss of detailed memory, especially the memory of having taken the substance. Suddenly, another possibility of a stunning range and implications is opening up before me: does the ketamine experience transport us to an illusory reality or does it in fact transport us out of it? Is 'real life' really real and the ketamine experience an illusion, or is it the other way round? Is there some way of proving that our day to experience is a 'reality', an experience of truth, or is it really a 'dream' in which things appear tangible and real whereas the true of nature reality is really not what we think it is and ketamine experience is truly the experience of real life. (To be continued)