Picture: A beautiful desert bloom: today is, and tomorrow is gone.
Two days ago God put me through a most interesting test, for what purpose only He knows.
I was residing in Him when He lifted me up and put me into a very specific state of mind. In this state He asked me, “If you have no afterlife when you die, will you still live the life you do?”
My mind went to the very powerful and intimate experiences God has given me in knowing my past lives, my life beyond this body, my eternal Self. For the purposes of this test God put all those experiences at a great distance, a veil dropped down in my consciousness that made these profound awarenesses null and void. I knew this is what He wanted, so I accepted this limitation.
So I asked God, “My experience of You in this life remains the same, You are as immediate, intimate, intelligent, loving and blissful as You ever have been, only there is no afterlife for me?” “Yes.” “And You are eternal, You will carry the memory of me, but I will cease to exist other than that memory?” “Yes.”
I was made to see death as a final curtain in which all individual awareness ceased; I no longer existed. Then I thought of living my life now, with this immediate awareness of God within me, the very source of my Being; an intimate intelligence weaving itself effortlessly through my thoughts; the loving Presence as my constant Beloved; the peace and bliss He gives me, all of that remains the same. Only, in the end, it is the end, for me nothing more. Would I regret or change my mode of living; being, having God as my all and all?
The thought that came to me is that I would be a fool not to have God with me, right up until my last breath. I went with the thought experiment that felt real in the moment, and that God was obviously orchestrating. I reflected on the paradox that I would remain in God’s consciousness, that He is eternal, therefore I am eternal, however, although He remembered me, my “I” awareness was gone. I accepted this condition. And given this condition, I would in no way live my life differently, I would never wish that He was not part and parcel of my existence, moment to moment until that final end. Of this I was absolutely certain. And with this answer I felt an indescribable freedom come over me.
After some little time, the same paradoxical thought came back to me, “If I exist in God’s awareness eternally, then I am eternal, even if I cease to exist,” and in that thought God removed the veil He had placed in my mind and He laughed, like a child playing a game. It was obvious that in Him I am eternal, we all are; we could be nothing else.
I remember reading about an early Jewish sect, the Sadducees, who believed in God, lived according to His law, but they did not believe in an afterlife because it was never mentioned in the Torah. Their virtue of living according to God’s law was that their adherence to that life, the goodness of it was passed down for ten generations; they lived according to the law for their children and their children’s children. It had struck me as strange that these people believed in God but had no thought of an afterlife.
But God’s test for me was even different from that, for He gave me no thought that in living the life I do I would have any good effect down the line for anyone else; there was nothing at the end, just the finality of nothingness. And my love for Him was absolutely the same. I would, and do, want nothing else but Him. He is the best of life in everything I see, touch, taste, smell, hear, think and do; He is the cream of existence in everything that is. It is truly sufficient to have Him here, and now. And with that thought in my mind He laughs at the game He has played; an eternal joy rolls and rolls throughout all creation!