The Life and Death Feeling

    I recall reading many years ago about Jean-Paul Sartre, and how his most lucid moments in life occurred when he was facing life and death, particularly while part of the French Resistance in the Second World War. I have never experienced such a harrowing situation before, and am glad for it in a way, but I can understand what happens to a person when they are in extreme anxiety and uncertainty. One of the things that happens is that time seems to slow down almost to the point of stopping, and one can easily lose sight of what is really dangerous and what isn't. It's as though any minor explosion or sound becomes a major, life-threatening signal to run for cover. While Sartre celebrated the emotion as an affirmation of freedom (that is, the barebones sensation of existing, without the baggage of the past), I can't help but feel that the mind is easily confused in these moments, thinking that things are a danger when they are not so dangerous.
    It makes me wonder, is the sensation of life-or-death really a form of mental liberation, or is it attachment? I think that it's more likely than not attachment to a feeling or a mood. It's quite true, as Sartre suggests, that moments of danger can bring people very close to the 'facticity' of their being, stripped away of frivolous or irrelevant notions of self and identity which arise from one's past conditioning. In that sense, a lot of vexations can start to drop away when danger puts one in the present moment. On the other hand, I can't help but feel that too many stress signals or traumatic episodes can foster new and more problematic attachments, particularly if one is not in a position to see them in their proper proportions. Too much 'life and death' can prolong a groundless attitude that one is constantly in danger and therefore must constantly be on guard, as though one has created a permanent identity based on the emotion of fear itself.
     Perhaps I am talking about two different kinds of attachments here. One is based on attachment to habits, while the other is the more fundamental habit of fear of losing the self by losing one's body. Perhaps the latter was so exhilarating to Sartre precisely because it touches the one fundamental attachment that leads to the others, offering a possibility of transcending that attachment through insight and experience.