I wanted to clarify my remark about how the seeming evanescence of the universe (and other things) fit with my growing sense (not belief, or conviction) that there is no death. I didn’t mean life after death, i.e continuing on in the spirit realm, or passing into another form, or persisting as consciousness after the death of the body, none of which (at least when stated thus baldly) have much resonance for me. I was actually speaking of something like the opposite: that the universe can’t outlive or transcend consciousness.
Here’s how I tried to express it in a letter to my friend T-Ruth (who seems to have put into abeyance her interesting blog linked to herein). I had been having something like mystic flashes of apprehension (as in understanding, not as in creepy expectation). They had me thinking about that experience that some mystic thinkers or feelers call a Moment in Eternity. I wrote:
“It seems to me that if you experience one, then it can never stop—it’s a moment in eternity, which by definition would be as long as eternity itself. So then what would that moment be like to experience? What would the next moment be like? Wouldn’t everything subsequent just be aspects of the Moment in Eternity? And if the mystics are right and the Moment in Eternity is one we all can access and experience, then aren’t we all living in the Moment in Eternity but some of us haven’t figured it out yet? We live as though life were like a candle lit in a room: the candle’s lit, it burns, it burns down, it goes out, but the room remains the same. But it can’t be like that. The room, the candle, the idea of the room and the candle, all exist in the Moment in Eternity. We are prone to thinking that existence can’t go on after our deaths, it seems impossible; and yet we know we’ll die, and everything will go on. Have a Moment in Eternity and you’ll dissolve the paradox. (Not that I’ve had one; I’m just thinking about it.)”
It will readily be seen that this notion is a) unformed, b) doubtful on the face of it, c) open to obvious philosophical objections (solipsism, etc.), and d) possibly a joke; but I felt that the instances of mass evanescence I had been seeing somehow supported it. Lent some kind of credence to it. Maybe. If it is an “it” at all.
John Crowley, World Fantasy Award winner, 
