Why You Will Never Die In An Infinite Universe

Imagine the world you live in is not the solid, defined singularity you perceive it to be. Instead, it is a single branch among many branches, splitting from another branch that splits from another branch splitting infinitely back and back, itself mothering an infinite progression of splitting branches. Imagine you are not you, but one of many yous. Each permutation of your existence lives a unique life, enacting one of many possible realities, and each believing you--and the reality in which you live--are but the only one.
A mathematician by the name of Hugh Everett was the first known person to interpret the mathematics of quantum physics to suggest the possibility of multiple--likely even infinite--worlds where every single possibility that could be actually is. Everett's theory rocked the foundation of human knowledge. Since the 1950s, when Everett announced this theory to the world, various quantum physicists have fought to prove or disprove the "Many Worlds Interpretation" (MWI).
Now, I am no quantum physicist. Not even close. In fact, I'm a recovering heroin junkie with a penchant for reading and writing science fiction. But somewhere around my eighth or ninth should-have-been fatal overdose, I began to seriously consider the implications of an infinite universe housing multiple worlds where every possibility takes place.
We all know death through grief. We experience the death of others as heartwrench and loss. It is a terrible, fearsome thing to forever lose those we hold dearest, especially when the people we love die young or from unnatural causes. We use words like "tragic" to describe events like murder, suicide, drug overdose, and death in natural disasters. But for anyone reading this, death is only that: a heartbreaking, scary, sometimes tragic event that happens to other people. Nobody reading this is dead. The truth is that even though we all expect to die, that expectation is only a theory. And it might just be a false one.
Subjective death--the death of oneself--is impossible in an infinite universe where everything happens. This isn't just the rambling notion of an overly-lucky former-addict who survived a few close brushes with death. Biocentrist Robert Lanza believes that consciousness is an essential creator of the experienced world. That idea is certainly not unique to him, but he takes it one step further to suggest that subjective death--the death of self--doesn't exist. How exactly can consciousness die if consciousness is the very fabric that upholds our universe?
I'm inclined to agree. I don't have the maths knowledge to provide an equation explaining my reasons (or to understand the extant equations in its favor). But I do have the words.
Consciousness is an expression of life. We know, as Decartes philosophized, that we think therefore we are. If we have consciousness, we are alive. Death, as we understand it medically, is the obliteration of consciousness. There is no more perception in death. No more life. So, if in fact we live in a branching multiverse where every possibility enacts at once, then it would make sense that individual consciousness would continue perpetually in the worlds where it exists.
Let's say someone overdoses on an opiate--an estimated 10 people die from opioid overdose each day in Canada, and in the United States, drug overdoses account for a whopping 175 deaths daily, making it a not unlikely possibility for someone addicted to injecting heroin, like I once was. If this person manages to die from the event, her consciousness would flicker out forever. But in the Many Worlds Interpretation, there is also a world where she survives. Since death is abhorrent to consciousness, that individual consciousness could not die. Instead, it would continue to exist in the "next best world;" the world where she survived her overdose.
I remember my worst overdose. My husband had not believed I would survive. He said my eyes were clouded and glossy. Dead eyes. When I came to, I was paralyzed for several seconds, a feeling like my consciousness was slipping slowly back into my body. My lips and extremities were swollen for days. When I went outside, around other living people, I felt like an alien in a world where I did not belong.
What if I was an alien? What if my consciousness merged from the place of my death into a new world where my life still existed? What if I left behind a widow in another world, as near and distant as the sky?
If as many unique worlds exist as possibilities imagined and unimagined alike, then there is a world where we know we never die. Where we are all consciously immortal; where the lost reunite with those who grieved them. What if the religious concepts of "Heaven" and "Hell" are not planes of an afterlife, but part of a quantum series of endless possibilities? What if we all end up in both realities? In all realites? What if some version of us is in that immortal heaven now, and we are only separated from it by the shadowy portal of our death? In an infinite universe, subjective death is not death at all, but a vessel to a new branch on the infinite tree of life.