[jordwest]

I had a similar feeling of terror as a kid, thinking about death and eternity one night in bed and suddenly experiencing terror. The best way I could describe it was this vast eternal concept of nothingness forever that scared me with the immensity of infinity. In a way I’m kinda grateful for that experience now as it’s led me down a path of learning about meditation and eventually a lot of the things described in this thread.

Here’s something you might like to ponder as an alternative perspective (though I can imagine there’s fear of going back there).

What would be the implication if the passage of time is only an illusion created by memory? What if every moment in our lives is experienced simultaneously, but it only appears to move forwards because we experience each of those moments individually - each containing some memory of moments before. After all it’s not possible to experience any other moment than this one, right now, so we don’t have any subjective evidence that we (as awareness) even experience anything other than a single moment.

In other words, even if awareness persists outside death, when memory dies with the brain how can there be any perception of time - what would it even be that experiences eternity?