The room was small, pitch black, and full of warm, salt-soaked water. It was more of a cell than a room, quite literally designed for those seeking the cutting edge in solitary confinement. For a small fee, adventurous meditators can pay to be placed for an hour into this square submersible coffin to enjoy the spacious ceilings and contemplate their mortality, or test the boundaries of their claustrophobia. To get in and out of the room there is a small mortuary door, about the size of a human body, that clasps firmly shut and blots out any outside light or air. Upon entering the box, freshly showered and completely nude - save for a flashy pair of orange earplugs - I quickly noticed there was absolutely no difference between closing my eyes and having them open, and no amount of time would allow them to adjust to the darkness. As I lowered myself into the warm water, I was taken by a powerful buoyancy which, for the first time in my life, allowed me to float on my back. Always in water, no matter how much might I try to breathe and relax, my body just sinks like a stone to the bottom of the pool. But not here. Here I giggled with delight at the sensation of weightlessness as I floated like a happy seal.
Before long I was focused only on my breathing. Because of the earplugs, and because my head was completely underwater except for the area around my eyes, nose and mouth, the sound of my breath had been augmented to sound like an astronaut's. Suddenly there was the impression of being in the comforting hollows of a womb. Then of infinite space. Then, of death. Stanley Kubrick, eat your fucking heart out. With my mind emptied and my senses all muted, I wondered how closely the experience emulated death. For many people, such a realization might produce profound fear, or a sudden existential panic, but instead the idea seemed to calm me, pushing me deeper into the meditation, allowing me to compare and contrast the earliest stages of life with those of the last. Next a sense of timelessness washed over me, and it was unclear whether five minutes had passed, or twenty. Not that it mattered, I was completely adrift, an amniotic astronaut, a sea lion just floating on the abyss.
An odd thing happens after a while, where the subtle, almost imperceptible currents in the water - which must arise from the pulsing of the heart and the breath - begin to produce a slow disorientation. At times there is a maddening sense of swinging, as though for a moment the strength and direction of gravity have changed, tugging the whole of reality towards some darkened corner which might be two inches, or two miles away. The only analogue I can think of would be a paper boat perched on a puddle after a rain, the breeze catching its sails and sending it spinning wildly on the whims of the wind.
Strangely, I found the experience wasn't nearly as intense or meditative as I was led to believe. People told me of terrible anxieties, of the possibility for full blown hallucinations, and other unpleasantries rivaling those of a bad acid trip. None of that happened, though. Perhaps the novelty of it all overshadowed the act of meditation, creating distraction instead of focus. But more than anything the experience instilled in me an unflappable calm. I tried to sink deeper into the meditative state, but I was but a buoy. Sure, I was breathing long and slow, and my mind was as still as the surface of the water, but that was all. It became clear that I would not achieve heaviosity while floating there - the rules of density simply would not allow it.
What I did come into contact with was a very mild, diet-soda sort of nirvana as I bordered on a state of non-being. In that moment death seemed less scary. Even in the moment it was clear this was illusory, because it is only through being that we can even contemplate non-being. Ruminating on non-being is one thing, but actually being non-being is another still inconceivable thing. So, in fact, this experience tells me nothing of death. No experience can. Because there is no experiential quality in death: there is only the moment of dying. Death, by definition, is to not experience. Anything. Ever agin. We can glean no insights, except for those inferred through an impossible negation.
The closest we can ever know of death is dreamless unconsciousness, a vacuum into which awareness cannot penetrate or escape, and whose only hallmark is oblivion.
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