I am often horrified by people's will to seemingly disregard their life by dancing with elements that will surely separate them from their body and end their life as they or we have so far known it.
He seemed to have strategically calculated an entry into a fierce blazing sculpture the size of a building. No one knows what was going on with him to drive him to elude securities attempts to protect him from himself before he put his precious life as a father, partner, son and fellow attendee, into heat and flames no sane person would expect to survive.
Of course we will never know what he intended nor expected out of such a purposeful move to enter an inferno.
I had a hard time reconciling all the potential variables such as drugs, mental illness, depression, or some other nature or drug inspired state of mind that would move someone to barbecue himself.
Drugs do outrageous things to people's brains. So do intense elements. People whose brains are affected by mind altering drugs, extreme temperatures or conditions are well known for outrageous and dangerous acts they do not always survive. Not sure mind altering substance played a part in his journey, yet I hope it is the likely explanation. Unless he was simply enchanted and mesmerized by heat and flames he could not resist entering. Otherwise, I would hope it is not contagious.
I also wonder if there is some transcendental inclination that no longer sees the end result of a deep personal exploration of intense heat? As if death was not considered in the desire to become one with fire? It might have been more of a spiritual drive to join and know fire than an urge to no longer live in a body. Just saying, cause so much of what we think and know is limited by our being in a body and our attachment to human oriented life. Shed that attachment to what we know and there is a whole other vast reality we cannot conceive from here in our contained by body/mind perspective. What is out there... does not fit within the human experience; it is much greater.
So what looks like a selfish need to end life, (and traumatize others who witnessed in horror), may not have had that consideration at all. It might have been a blissful enter into non-attachment.
When I nearly died in 1984 and had an 'out-of-body' experience (due to hemorrhaging two pints of blood after my daughter was born)... the bliss of leaving my body was euphoric and not of this world. I was completely disassociated from my body. At first, while on my way out... I had no knowledge nor attachment to this life at all in those moments. I did not have any memory or knowledge of existing in human form, and had no association with a body and limbs. None. Had no orientation to being a new mom, having just had a baby, nothing. I seemed to be ethereal and simply energy passing through a veil to its source and in those moments my awareness seemed to see through walls and ceilings to collect information I could not possibly have known nor seen from the body I had been occupying. I had no body but I knew things. I had no mind, but I gained information.
I saw a scene below me as I drifted away. It is imprinted in my mind's eye. It took me about ten years to process what I had "seen" or perceived and felt and then had to translate that experience into words to be able to speak about it at all. It was so intense it was hard to talk about for many years. It was so dissociated with life as I knew it at the time it happened, I had no idea it was me on a hospital bed, nearly dying while nurses tended to my just born daughter. I had no idea a baby had just come out of me, nor of my being a being that could produce offspring. I had no association with being a creature. I could see a commotion, lots of medical staff tending to us without my understanding what was happening nor who they all were, nor what the busy energy was about. I had a memory image of the people in the room, as seen from about fifteen feet straight above their heads. As I simply drifted away. Free of concern.
After a while, I had a thought, among many other non-dualistic experiences that were not in words, nor thoughts, more like knowing. The thought, was not in words, it was an idea, a sentiment, a feeling. It was an ego orientation to life in a body from a distance with only a vague idea of the gravity of my meandering away from this life; the thing that brought me back into the world of the living, back into inhabiting my body, was a desire to prevent my husband and daughter suffering the loss of me in their life. I did not even understand while that sentiment wafted through my detached mind, who I was, nor who they were. Nor who we were to each other, nor even what value I might be to them, nor them to me, if I stayed or left. I just knew I wanted to prevent potential suffering in others. I did not want my husband to have to raise our child without me. I could not place in real time what that meant. Not wanting to leave the raising of my daughter solely to her father was an idea whose meaning was far from where I was and was headed.
Oh how worldly is that? That thought or idea about life, a shared life, parenting, being present for each other. Snap! Back to this world. One worldly thought and "Boom" this life was mine again.
Coming back was complicated, ugly, and excruciatingly painful. Every moment of life demanded all of my attentive concentration, and it was all a shock compared to painless euphoria.
And still, knowing that euphoria has not led me to want to check out nor end my life in order to get back to that. I am in this life now, committed to and in this life for the long run, no matter how demanding and seemingly impossible it all is.
I just also know the feeling of freedom out of a body, (while I gently drifted away from all attachments). It was lovely to not have my mind all twisted up in meaning and interpretation knots.
So, occasionally when people do themselves in - I can't help wondering if they are driven by some force to commune with something other than what we know and can experience while trapped inside a body with the limits of our brain-confined minds.
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