Nothing and Everything

Photo: Photo by Greg Rakozy on Unsplash.

In his brilliant book, After, Dr. Bruce Greyson shared two interesting near-death experiences in short succession. The juxtaposition of the accounts struck a chord for me.  

Judy saw deceased loved ones wearing clothes they’d worn on earth while “at the same time” wearing glorious white robes (p. 141). Tracy experienced infinite oneness with the collective while “simultaneously” remaining individual and unique (p. 156). Neither described exclusive one-or-the-other experiences. Rather, they experienced contrasts simultaneously.

In the nonmortal realm, things aren’t always black-or-white, yes-or-no, now-or-later. One can be in two places at the same time or exist simultaneously in more than one form. NDEs challenge our concept of linear time and physical space. 

When I communicated with Bruce about this, he observed our black-or-white thinking in the western world evolved largely from two-fold Aristotelian logic, that things can be one or the other, but not both. By contrast, Nagarjuna, the Indian sage from the 2nd and 3rd centuries, proposed things can be A but not B, B but not A, both A and B, or neither A nor B. A whole Buddhist science arose from this four-fold logic.

This four-fold logic “seems more applicable to NDEs than does the Aristotelian logic,” Bruce told me, “but I suspect that any system of logic will fail to explain NDEs, because they are rooted in our language, and NDEs seem to be beyond the limits of language.”

When we consider this broader philosophy, it is easier to understand how we sometimes feel we are nothing in the grand scope of creation while, at the same time, knowing we are everything in the universe. It’s not one or the other; it’s both, at once.