They say the eyes are the windows to the soul. Do they always say it figuratively, as in "the muscles near the eyes are most expressive of emotions"?

Or do they sometimes say it more literally, as in "look in the pupils attentively and you will know the nature of thoughts hidden behind them"?

Or more literally still...

I stand in front of the mirror. I draw very close, open my eyes wide, and stare into the blackness of my pupils. I try to discern a soul in them. I look deep and long, but all I see is video cameras. Or at least something as mechanical and soulless.

That very night, I dreamed that I was dead. Except that it wasn't a dream. A momentary misunderstanding, rather.

I was asleep. It was a deep and dreamless slumber. Then, there was some sort of a mighty explosion, an interrupted one, because at that very instant I was awake, and there was nothing.

My mind was clear, and I knew I wasn't sleeping anymore. I heard nothing and felt nothing. If I had eyes, I was gaping in front of me, but there was only blackness. But it was not an endless abyss. Indeed, there was no space at all, or it was infinitely small, or I was not anywhere on the material plane. It was very unusual. It's like you've been engrossed in a world of a video game and then suddenly it was the title screen—with no menu. Not for one moment I had a thought at the back of my mind that I may've been in Heaven or Hell, or that I was a ghost stuck underground, or that I was a brain stuck in a body in coma, because all of that implied some connection with the real world or at least a place, but I was nowhere, and there was an all-encompassing understanding that I was nowhere and had no connection with the real world anymore.

Perhaps any sufficient sensory deprivation will feel exactly like that.

"I'm dead," I thought without sorrow or resentment, though maybe there was a touch of melancholy. "Something big killed me instantly. And this is what death is like. You came from nothing, and to nothing you shall return. Am I trapped here, forever?"

At least that's what I would've thought if I'd had the time to express my thoughts in full. But it was only a fleeting feeling, because within a few seconds my brain finally started to register the sensations from my body: with a bit of relief I felt the pillow under my head, I heard the noise in my ears. And the blackness before my eyes started to dissipate.

Maybe—probably—those strange feelings and interpretations were conjured by the part of the brain that was still asleep, even if it didn't feel like a dream. I still find it rather interesting. First, the fact that I, as sleepy as I was, didn't find the afterlife surprising. Second, the idea that the afterlife amounts to being nowhere and experiencing nothing. In fact, I'm surprised this theory isn't very popular. Is it not the most plausible one? Why must they believe in something so intricate and made up and leave something so simple unheeded? Because it's dismal and does not make for an engaging story? Suppose the soul does exist. Suppose you have one, or identify yourself with it. Have you ever experienced anything through it? No. Every experience, even emotions or the clarity or cloudiness of mind, can be traced back to your physical body. And so your body is the only medium through which your soul experiences life. So what happens when that link is severed? Your soul experiences nothing, and feels as if it is being nowhere.