What is immAnence of death?

Answer 1

When life continues "as if" it were going to happen "as normal", in other words, for another day as expected, but then out of nowhere...

...something happens. Perhaps it is something that has happened to you countless times before, but this time it happens in just such a way...

...or perhaps it is something you thought would only happen to others, perhaps something you thought would only happen if you deserved it or if you weren't prepared for it...

...and when this thing happens, it kills you. It doesn't scrape you, merely scare you, inconvenience you, toy with you or otherwise interact with your ego. It goes right after your body to make sure that it cannot live anymore.

In that moment you will realize that this is it, this is real, this is immanent. This is not going away, this is not a dream you can wake up from.. etc. Of course this could be true of anything that is "immanent" and which goes against the grain of expectations: winning the lottery and you're really about to collect your first installment of 10,000,000 dollars, kissing a celebrity you've always fawned over, realizing what were the odds that you were born into a royal family rather than not (and your head begins to swim...) or any other kind of "windfall". It obviously applies to negative events, especially disasters, in a special way however. In this world to have something "good" is already only temporary, and such things can much more easily be taken away then reclaimed, or even had in the first place. There are many more ways to suffer than to enjoy, many more ways to lose than to win, many more ways to die than to live...

So really the "immanence" of death is pervasive, unlike the immanence of anything else in this world, good or bad. Death is the ultimate roadblock to any further attempts at ANYTHING, whatsoever. That is a powerful force. It is not the WAY that death comes that is so powerful, but it is the finality of it. And there is nothing else in this world so final, so when it immanent, the entire rest of the world is put on hold like nothing else can be. You will be granted access to parts of your mind and self you didn't even know existed, to say nothing of your life flashing before your eyes. You'll realize things at odd angles before impossible for you, and there will be alterations of your consciousness not unlike what bodies endure when they fall into a black hole...

So this immanence is truly powerful, because even as it approaches, its approach seems to forestall itself, not because you would have it stall, but because there is SO MUCH of it coming, and because when it comes all else must go away. It seems as if when something like this approaches, is immanent, it must make more room in your consciousness in order to properly approach, so there is the illusion that it approaches in tides when in fact it may have come instantly in physical, objective time.

And the real truth of this immanence is that it is always just around the corner, and it is only an illusion, even now, that it has not already arrived...