I like the idea of losing a sense of time. G'wan, work out the ramifications ...
... it's kinda oxymoronic or paradoxical. Like, at the "beginning" of the universe, immediately as the big bang was revving up, there was no time, because all matter was compressed into a super-gravitationally heavy point which (if you're up on your relativity) would absorb all timeliness into itself, thus preventing it from moving forward. Weird, no? I think that we humans have a weak time-sense, forced upon us by our earthly presence, and when we are finally set free of our mortal shell, we develop a greater capacity to untime ourselves. Hence, a lack / superiority in the realm of self-awareness. Hmm ...
Maybe there are levels. Like, dogs have some degree of awareness of self, worms less, humans more (or so we like to think). How 'bout, when we die, we go on up another level or two beyond doggies and humans? Who says we are the pinnacle? Maybe Martians are much better at that stuff than we are, already ... kinda reincarnation but not earthly, is this theory.
I also like E.M.Forster's "The Life to Come," which has a variety of neat metaphors, mostly vaguely Manichean / Christian, including one neo-Plationic one which is just a narrative of a small bubble rising up into (and *pop* getting absorbed by) a larger one.
The Star Trek theory is, that there's GOT to be some kind of wave of life-essence that doesn't die, because we will some day have sensors for it, if only Geordi would get back to work on that project.