Articles #Thanatos

Wrestling with Thanatos by Iona Miller, 2013 https://ionamiller2017.weebly.com/thanatos.html Contemplation of death conjures up images of disintegration, dismemberment, flying apart. In consciousness journeys, the dreamer may be sucked through a swirling vortex into a profound blackness--black that is blacker than black--cold and utterly empty. This state of nothingness feels different to individuals, depending on their personal experience with various aspects of death. Thanatos-consciousness may be an encounter with an apocalyptic whirlwind which rends one limb-from-limb, then fragments the sense of self even further down to cellular, genetic, and atomic consciousness. The imagery of apocalypse and natural disaster surfaces as the ego glimpses its immanent doom. The dance of Death is a whirlwind of transformation. Ego-death is a requirement for opening to the broader realm of transpersonal reality. It heralds a change in the form of consciousness. The crux of this consciousness process is reaching the creative state of undifferentiated consciousness. It is in this state that old primal self images dissolve, and from it the new ones form. It is a death because at the deepest levels we define ourselves by this image and what it has created and frozen into our lives. It ultimately means the dismemberment of our former personality and life patterns. We are it and it is our death when it dissolves into the infinite possibilities of chaotic consciousness. This unformed consciousness--which we often mistake for death-- is really the essence of our vitality and life force. It is the energy we can use to recreate ourselves in every instant of time. It reaches our awareness through dreams (Hypnos) and the flow of our imagination. Yielding to ego-death leads to this consciousness, whether it comes through therapy or a spontaneous near-death experience (N.D.E.) or a closely witnessing death. This consciousness can result from a brush with one's own death or that of another. Dissolving is a death that opens into a field of unformed consciousness with infinite creative possibilities. But we must go through the fear and pain which surrounds this experience to reach this consciousness state. There may be sensations of falling, or floating-falling, or flying off in all directions at once. Eventually all parts of the self are dismembered by the centrifugal forces experienced in the vortex. With a sweep of His scythe, the unseen specter of death cuts us down utterly. Sensations of spinning and being drawn deeper create intense dizziness and disorientation, even nausea. Dismemberment in the spiral often leads to a sense of being "no-thing." The experience of another's natural death is awesome, as is that of birth. Being there, one finds that at that amazing moment there is a giant dilation in the flow of time; a window opens into that other vast realm which is slow to close. It may capture part of oneself for a time, creating a mini-death, or death-in-life. The changes which ensue may be voluntary or involuntary. It may trigger a regression as well as a profound opening to transpersonal awareness. Particularly when a parent or child of ours dies, we are permanently changed in ways we may never have imagined. Some of them have to do with what we imagine or believe the nature of death and an afterlife to be. In myth, Thanatos or Death, naturally supplied Hades with his subjects. Thanatos is the son of Night, who in turn was born from Chaos. The godform of Thanatos is pictured alternatively as dressed in a black robe holding the fatal sword, or as a winged spirit, resembling his twin brother Hypnos, or Sleep. Hypnos also lives in the underworld. He induces the little death of sleep with his magic wand or by fanning his dark wings.