Tuesday, August 19, 2008

Sleep versus Death in the Bronte Project

I mentioned this book 'The Bronte Project' in an earlier entry. An excerpt from it aroused a sense of fear in me as I read it.

Two characters are talking about one of them having slept through a night in a haunted room. He described his sleep experience as such. "It wasn't a normal sleep though. It was more like a lack of consciousness. I simply ceased to be aware of being awake. It is, I imagine, how it must feel to be dead."

While my eyes moved from word to word, my mind accumulated indescribable terror. The last sentence struck cold chills into me. However, upon further reflection, I realised that he wasn't saying anything new.

A recent sermon I had heard in church spoke on sleep as "resting in the Lord". The fear I felt was because I was thinking from the worldly point of view. When you aren't consciously aware of your actions at all, and I mean physically unconscious, it can mean you've departed from life. Yes, this describes sleepwalking too, come to think of it. I guess the last sentence of the excerpt was the cause of my fear.

On the contrary, when you think of death from a religious point of view, there's only joy and anticipation, because when you die, you really live with the Lord. :) In that case, I wouldn't mind dying sooner!

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