FANA

The total annihilation of self.

So much of my creative output—from my stories to the music I’ve produced and the photographs I’ve taken—has been influenced by my time living out of a fancy hotel room in Berlin, Germany, during the summer of 2001.¹ Before arriving there, lonely, depressed, and heartbroken, I had spent a harrowing six months living in New Mexico, followed by tech consulting gigs in Atlanta and Chicago. Because of all the traveling and office politics I had to navigate as a tech consultant, my personal life back in the States was falling apart (a breakdown I loosely depict in my novel series, The Desert Road of Night). It was with that as the backdrop of my life that I wrote the following:

July 16, 2001

Last night, I had the television on the only channel I could understand and enjoy: MTV. I saw a music video that tapped directly into a longing I’ve had in my heart for years but could never pin down.

I’m not going to describe the video in great detail because doing so would strip it of its magic. In the video, the singer Nelly Furtado was in a state of ecstasy as she was lifted into the air by an unseen force, toward the tops of trees, like a puppet, with her arms, head, and legs dangling back. Rays of sunshine radiated from the open corners of her body, casting her in silhouette.

It looked like she was surrendering to the light.

Nelly Furtado—I’m Like A Bird (YouTube)

Later in the video, she stood on a tree branch, eyes closed, with a smile that grew wide and bright. She extended her arms and fell backward. As she dropped, her eyes stayed closed, and the smile remained wide and bright, like she knew someone or something would be there to catch her. Just before she hit the ground, a crowd appeared. With their outstretched arms, they caught her. The singer floated on top of the crowd as they passed her around, her eyes closed and her mouth open, as if in ecstasy.

Nelly Furtado—I’m Like A Bird (YouTube)

Throughout this scene, she sang:

This video and the lyrics touched something in me so deeply that I started crying hard. Not because I was sad, but because I was happy. I finally understand what drives me and where that feeling behind my drive comes from.

It was February 1987, and I was in my room with a girlfriend. She thought it would be funny to bring over a Ouija board and ask it goofy questions. We sat down on my bed, facing each other. She placed the board on our laps. We put the tips of our fingers on the dial, watching it glide across the board as we asked the spirit guiding it dumb questions.

My girlfriend kept asking me, “Are you moving it?”

I kept replying, “No, I thought you were.”

After a few minutes of this, and answers to some questions about each other, we became believers. I asked the dumbest question I could think of: “How old will I be when I die?”

The spirit’s response was, “Seventeen.”

My girlfriend asked for the month, and the spirit spelled out “April.”

I asked for the day, and the spirit guided the dial to the number “two.” It kept pointing to “two,” over and over.

My girlfriend asked for the cause of death, and the spirit spelled out “car,” then “bomb,” then “car” again.

At the time, it all made sense.

At the time, I was a wannabe graffiti artist, sneaking into “the yards” and spray-painting murals on the side of trains. It was a dangerous hobby where, if I didn’t watch my step, I could slip and end up frying on the third rail or fall through a hole in the elevated train tracks.

Photo by V. E. Marés (1987)

Worse, I could run into someone who wanted to beat me until I could no longer move, just because they could.

What does this have to do with anything? This hobby was known as “bombing the cars,” as in train cars, and graffiti artists were known as “bombers.”

My girlfriend had no idea about this “hobby.” It was something only a few people knew, and I didn’t want to tell her because we had just started dating. I didn’t want her to think she had hooked up with a criminal. So, I was shocked—and became convinced—that on April 2, 1987, I was going to die.

In the days leading up to that date, I prepared myself. Fate was going to catch me, whether I continued “bombing the cars” and met it in a train yard, or stayed home, only to step outside and run into another bomber who, for whatever reason, wanted to kill me. Back then, it didn’t take much to get to that point—something as small as tagging your street name too close to a mural was enough to get that bomber to come after you—find out where you live—and beat you down until you were dead.

I stopped bombing the cars. I stopped living. Since I became a shut-in, I lost my girlfriend and was on my own to deal with this. I stopped caring about petty, small things and savored every moment alive. The night of April 1st, I remember going to bed thinking, “This is it. Tomorrow, I’m going to die.”

A few hours later, I woke up. I got out of bed and checked the time—it was 3:12 a.m. I turned to go back to bed and saw my body lying there. I didn’t know what to do. I poked my body, and it felt like a clump of raw, cold meat.

At first, I was horrified by this perception, but then I felt relief. I was dead, but I was conscious. Every fear of death disappeared. I sat on the floor of my room, looking at my body, waiting for whatever was next.

Nothing happened.

I remember thinking, “I want to go outside,” and suddenly, I was there. I walked the streets, looking at the world around me, feeling tired, wanting to move on.

I remember thinking, “I’m ready to go,” when an overwhelming presence came over me.

It lifted me, like a puppet, with my arms, head, and legs dangling back.

I remember opening my eyes, being blinded by light.

I remember this presence cradling me.

I remember becoming part of this presence.

I remember there was no more body I called “Viktor E. Marés.”

I remember there was no more world.

Nothing existed outside of this presence.

I was one.

I had asked ChatGPT to create a picture based on this post: This is what it gave me. The experience felt like that.

Then I felt a pull, ripping me from this presence. I felt the world again, my sense of self again, and I was back in bed with a crippling headache that left me unable to sleep for the rest of the night.

Did I die? Maybe. I was so focused on dying that maybe I willed myself to? Who knows. But for the rest of the day, nothing else happened. There were no “bombers” at my doorstep, waiting for me to come out.

There was no hint of danger. Nothing. But I was no longer the same.

I remembered the bliss of non-existence.

I remembered the feeling of this presence and my total surrender to it. I remembered how it carried me into the sky, into the light.

Ever since then, I’ve been lost but didn’t know it—not even when I began to read about Sufism and what Sufi poets and philosophers described as Fana—the total annihilation of self.

It still didn’t make sense then.

Seeing this video, the singer’s total surrender to the light, and coupling it with my experience from 1987, I now have an idea.

I’ve always looked for ways to “lose myself” in others: with my ex-girlfriends, with the many women coming in and out of my life between my ex and current wife.

When losing myself like that failed, I turned to prayer and meditation for this bliss. Even if it was only temporary, I’d be in it for just one second, and this union would no longer be a memory but a reality.

But prayer and meditation required too much work.

To be in myself—in the moment—without sex or the love of others would force me to confront the reality of what has become of me.

And that’s what happened last night.

I learned I’m homeless from my heart. My heart is holding a vigil for this bliss, but my mind doesn’t know how to reconcile with my heart because my mind knows that no matter how much one fucks, loves, eats, or sleeps for the purpose of escape, it’s not realistic to feel such bliss forever—at least, not while alive.

I want to die before dying!

So, like a pebble that remains in my shoe for me to walk around on, the memory of the bliss remains inside my heart for me to live with. As Plato once wrote:

The soul of every lover longs for something else; his soul cannot say what it is, but like an oracle it has a sense of what it wants, and like an oracle it hides behind a riddle.

It’s no longer a riddle to me.

That’s why this video made me cry. I’ve solved the riddle:

I now know.

My home is with God.

I want to go home.

Note: On April 22, 1987, while on my way to a Bible study class near my home, the car I was in—along with a new girlfriend, driven by her aunt—was broadsided by another car at an intersection. When I woke up, my face was bleeding, my girlfriend was partially pinned, and her aunt was struggling to get out of the car. Ambulance and fire trucks arrived. The car started fuming, and we could smell gas. The firemen pulled us out. A few minutes later, the car exploded. In the fireman’s words, it exploded “like a bomb.”

My novel The Beautiful World of the Alive, which touches on many of the themes mentioned in this post, is now available in ebook and paperback on Amazon.

1. My work has also been influenced by the events described in my post, Satori.