Is there consciousness beyond (physical) death? My experiences suggest there is, but there’s no way I can be certain. Perhaps one day I will know for sure. Perhaps not.

I recently received some clarity, however, on what might await us after death. One night earlier this week, I awoke to find God speaking to me with a very clear message.

Yes, there is consciousness beyond death, God said to me. But not individual consciousness.

You will continue to experience things after your body dies, God explained, but not from your own individual perspective. You will experience everything from my perspective. You will no longer perceive yourself to be separate from anyone or anything else in the universe.

While this may sound strange, I have had several out-of-body experiences in the last couple of years – and all of them suggest something very similar to this. I have had moments where the sense of separation between me and the universe temporarily dissolved. I believe that one day I will come to dwell in this state permanently.

If this is true, it has a number of important implications. For one thing, it means that there can’t possibly be an eternal hell.

Hell, by its very nature, is an experience of isolation – an “outer darkness” (Matt 25:30) where our guilt and emptiness consumes us from within like a fire or worm (Mark 9:47-48). But if individual consciousness doesn’t survive (physical) death, then we can’t experience hell after we die.

If anyone is in hell, it’s here in this life! Once our bodies die, the illusion of isolation disappears – and hell with it.

Furthermore, if our true nature is that of a “universal consciousness,” it’s not really possible for us to die.

Yes, this body that I call “me” will die one day; and my sense of myself as an individual will likely die, too. But “I” can’t die, because “I” (as an individual) am not real. I’m simply a part of a much larger whole – which can’t die because it was never really “born.”

This is at least part of the reason Jesus tells us, “Those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will find it” (Mark 8:35).

When we can let go of the ego (the idea of “I” as a separate self), we will find our true life, which is eternal and immortal.

One more thing that follows from this is that the greatest cause of human suffering is the illusion of people as separate, individual selves.

While there are certainly times we may need to assert our independence (such as when we’re in abusive situations), this independence isn’t our truest self.

“Apart from me you can do nothing,“ Jesus tells us (John 15:5). Indeed, we were never meant to live in isolation from other people, from the natural world, or from God.

There’s only one Reality, and “I” am not separate from it. The sooner we can all come to see this, the sooner our healing will begin.