People fear death because they think it means the extinction of consciousness and the end of existence. But in the Sanatana Dharma we are taught that Consciousness (chit) and Existence (sat) are absolute and eternal.

It may be more accurate to say that in death, dreamless sleep, or while under general anesthesia, consciousness is still present, but we no longer perceive objects. Our "mental screen" has gone blank.

Let's say that our mental screen is analogous to a radar screen and that consciousness is analogous to radar energy. Even if blips no longer register on the screen, we cannot conclude that energy has ceased to emanate from the radar beacon. There remains the possibility that the energy field is still present...but being homogeneous, the field is transparent and undetectable in the absence of asymmetries caused by objects.

RF (radio frequency) engineers have explained to me how they modulate energy, create deviations/fluctuations from a reference level -- generate vritti, as it were -- in order to create a detectable signal. Otherwise energy is transparent. It is present, but it is undetectable.

We certainly agree with Descartes when he said "I think, therefore I am" - i.e., I'm getting blips on my mental screen; they therefore prove my existence. But...the absence of blips does not prove nonexistence.

The point of attaining chitta vritti nirodha (restraint of mental fluctuations in the field of consciousness -- Patanjali's formal definition of Yoga) is to experience this truth for ourselves. In the state of nirodha, the screen has gone blank, but consciousness is still present regardless of whether we register blips or not. When we realize this, we no longer rely on blips in our mental screen for proof of our existence and we can rest assured that consciousness is indeed eternal.

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