Death and Spirituality: If death isn't a problem then what about...
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To simplify, you might say that last post I asked,
“So, does death bother you?”
And that about half of you said “Not a problem!” with the other half saying, “Very deeply...”
“Why do they have to take away the people you love?”
Maria, Grade Three
“Yeah…why can’t it just be your toys or something?”
Karina, Grade Two
-- Two sisters, on the death of their grandmother.
Excerpted from Original Faith: What Your Life Is Trying to Tell You
The work that I did counseling children who were grieving the loss of parents, grandparents, siblings, and sometimes pets leads me to think that most of you who don’t see mortality as a problem didn’t always feel that way. Can you give an idea of the process of how it stopped being a problem?
Power of Nowers
If your answer is a version of learning to live in the moment, I wonder if this is the complete answer...
While being in the moment is possible and desirable in many ways, it’s not a hundred percent for anyone. As an analogy, a quarterback won’t have the ticking clock at the front of his mind while he’s playing – but it’s in the back of his mind. He knows the end of the fourth quarter’s coming. People who practice living in the moment as much as possible still know that death is coming.
Knowers
To those who believe they know that we’re immortal, it seems to me that it’s important to notice that near-death experiences are near death, not death. That’s a really big difference.
Near-death experiences, like every experience that anyone has lived to tell, occur while a person is still very much alive and possesses a biologically intact brain. Almost dead is alive, not dead. Having a profound experience when you’re almost dead or at any other time doesn’t indicate that you can experience anything like it – or anything at all – once your brain has stopped functioning.
Every experience we have occurs while we have a living brain; therefore no one can know that any experience is possible without one.
Contrasting emotional tones?
I seem to notice two emotional tones for those to whom death isn’t a problem. Some of you sound perfectly OK with it - with your existential good cheer perfectly intact, so to speak. It sounds like mortality just hasn't been that big an issue for you. Others sound more like you may have pondered mortality and come to a philosophical perspective on it - like Tennyson in "In Memoriam" (“a sadder and a wiser man”) or the sober but appreciative author of Ecclesiastes who advocates enjoying life’s best and simple pleasures to the utmost because tomorrow we die.
Up next: If death IS a problem to you, how confident are you that personal immortality is the solution?
As Time Allows – I’m no longer able to reply to every comment and email I receive. Disease progression with more bedridden time means having to focus on getting posts done. But I read everything I get, and at times take direction from comments and emails for upcoming posts. So please keep them coming and I’ll reply as time allows.
To simplify, you might say that last post I asked,
“So, does death bother you?”
And that about half of you said “Not a problem!” with the other half saying, “Very deeply...”
“Why do they have to take away the people you love?”
Maria, Grade Three
“Yeah…why can’t it just be your toys or something?”
Karina, Grade Two
-- Two sisters, on the death of their grandmother.
Excerpted from Original Faith: What Your Life Is Trying to Tell You
The work that I did counseling children who were grieving the loss of parents, grandparents, siblings, and sometimes pets leads me to think that most of you who don’t see mortality as a problem didn’t always feel that way. Can you give an idea of the process of how it stopped being a problem?
Power of Nowers
If your answer is a version of learning to live in the moment, I wonder if this is the complete answer...
While being in the moment is possible and desirable in many ways, it’s not a hundred percent for anyone. As an analogy, a quarterback won’t have the ticking clock at the front of his mind while he’s playing – but it’s in the back of his mind. He knows the end of the fourth quarter’s coming. People who practice living in the moment as much as possible still know that death is coming.
Knowers
To those who believe they know that we’re immortal, it seems to me that it’s important to notice that near-death experiences are near death, not death. That’s a really big difference.
Near-death experiences, like every experience that anyone has lived to tell, occur while a person is still very much alive and possesses a biologically intact brain. Almost dead is alive, not dead. Having a profound experience when you’re almost dead or at any other time doesn’t indicate that you can experience anything like it – or anything at all – once your brain has stopped functioning.
Every experience we have occurs while we have a living brain; therefore no one can know that any experience is possible without one.
Contrasting emotional tones?
I seem to notice two emotional tones for those to whom death isn’t a problem. Some of you sound perfectly OK with it - with your existential good cheer perfectly intact, so to speak. It sounds like mortality just hasn't been that big an issue for you. Others sound more like you may have pondered mortality and come to a philosophical perspective on it - like Tennyson in "In Memoriam" (“a sadder and a wiser man”) or the sober but appreciative author of Ecclesiastes who advocates enjoying life’s best and simple pleasures to the utmost because tomorrow we die.
Up next: If death IS a problem to you, how confident are you that personal immortality is the solution?
As Time Allows – I’m no longer able to reply to every comment and email I receive. Disease progression with more bedridden time means having to focus on getting posts done. But I read everything I get, and at times take direction from comments and emails for upcoming posts. So please keep them coming and I’ll reply as time allows.
Posted by Paul at 10:19 AM Permalink
21 Comments:
maybe i don't like life because with life, there is inevitable death.
And yes I believe in Ghosts :)
I am really sorry to hear about the progression. Today, I am going to add you to my altar space here...Candle lit, prayers ongoing.
At first I was going to answer your question by mentioning my near death experience. But I liked your reasoning....so I thought again. Truthfully, it's because I know for a fact that there is more to this life than what we can see. I've not written much about this publicly but I have had a number of experiences with people who have passed on (my dad, my grandmothers) and these are so unexpected, so uncalled for, so full of love and joy--bigger love than I have ever felt from the human realm--God like love--that I just have to have faith that when it is time for me to leave here, something else awaits. xo
That's a quote froman android that's about to die in the movie Blade Runner :)
The thing that bothers me about the idea of no afterlife is that everything that each person is, all they have experienced and learned and dreamed, will be lost and eventually forgotten. To think that my grandfather, or even my cat Kermit, came and went and are gone forever just kind of horrifies me. Of course that doesn't man it isn't so.
And I'm aware that everything is constantly being lost and forgotten, like water running off the top of Niagara Falls, plunging into oblivion. Except that water goes on. Individuality is like the flowers and fruit on a plant, coming to fulfilment and then dying, to be reborn as a new flower.
This is not philosophically satisfying. It doesn't take away the fear of death, or remove the longing for immortality. Something else does that. I don't know what.
It's a tantalising topic, for Christians (as you know I am) and for everyone. It's inescapable.
I like it how you 'danced' with the topic. It's somewhat a taboo subject in some circles. Yet, there's nothing surer.
Whatever happens 'on the other side' we should be sure there is nothing to fear if we're in God, i.e. in Christ.
For the non-Christians readers, this is simply a Christian's view of what his faith's about.
Death can but be a wonderful, terrible event.
I can't come by as often, either--so we're even!
Death, to me, is like waking up from a bad dream...not something to fear except that it means a drastic change from what we're used to--
I think it will be like getting off the plane in Florida, from the snowy Northeast in February.
Plus you get to see all your friends you forgot you even had!
At least that is what my mother, father, and mother-in-law confirmed, after they died. They, and so many other sources who all agree that we go "home" to a place where there is no anger or greed, no hunger or cold, and access to any information we might wish...and love permeates everything!
The idea that death means the absolute end of our consciousness and identity is looking more absurd every day, as I hear more about people's near-death experiences, and it seems that getting communications from those who passed on is getting more commonplace.
I am fascinated by what some of you have said here. I am especially eager to learn more from Jan.
That said, not everyone wants personal immortality. Your heaven might be somebody else’s purgatory or hell! More next post…
I'm with you, Crystal. That's the main reason why personal immortality sounds great to me. But again, just because I want it doesn't mean it's so.
Sometimes I wonder, though, why persons and their lives being forgotten is such a sad or terrifying thought. Sometimes I think that if I could recognize the beauty in transience and change, I wouldn't find the universe so terrifying or sad. But I've been raised to believe that the way we transcend death is through permanence and immortality, not by accepting that -- in the words of one ancient philosopher -- the universe is made of water.
Sometimes I wonder, though, why persons and their lives being forgotten is such a sad or terrifying thought. Sometimes I think that if I could recognize the beauty in transience and change, I wouldn't find the universe so terrifying or sad.
I think this would be Captain Kirk's view :) He'd say that th e very impermanence and fragility or life is what gives it its beauty and power.
I often think there is no afterlife at all and then it's actually not so sad that I lose people because eventaully I'll be no more and won't miss them.
But the only thing I've felt that seems to transcend death is love, and love is relational, so I hope that the relationships and the people in them aren't lost ...
Though lovers be lost love shall not; And death shall have no dominion. - Dylan Thomas
Can anyone?
We conceptualize, imagine, base assumptions on past experiences... But I'm not sure it's possible to ever know how we would feel about something until we're actually in the grips of it.
Personal death is one thing, while death of others is quite different.
As an atheist I had no problem with personal death - after all, if I'm dead-dead, I can't care! but still had a pervasive sense of grief and loss around the death of others.
It seems to me that the two are completely different, yet both are tied to the personal ego. If I'm dead, I have to let go of sense of self. That was easy for me. But for other's deaths, I had to let go of all of the unrealized potential times/events that would forever go unshared. I grieved not for them, but for myself and my own sense of loneliness.
The two different components don't seem to have much changed with my spiritual experiences. I now believe/know that I will survive death, but I also still grieve for my own losses when I think of those close to me who have died. My selfishness doesn't do the math over whether they might be happier or better now, it still focuses on my own sense of loss.
I do - and have always - taken solace from the remarkable web of life woven by Ma Nature. I love the fact that my individual molecules, organic matter, whatever - will be harvested and transformed into more life. The depth of interconnections between all life is fundamental, even within rational science. I find it remarkable, wonderous, and inspiring.
Wishing you strength and clarity, Paul, as you navigate your path...
But to me, when I experienced death as a major spiritual issue in my teens and early twenties, the main thing was what my death and the deaths of others held in common: the apparent annihilation of people I loved. I loved my life and I loved other people and was disturbed by their apparent permanent transformation into inanimate objects.
If, like some of you, I’d considered myself to know or had grounds to firmly believe that we're actually immortal then this couldn't have been a problem, and I imagine that my way forward, epecially when I was young, would have looked very different.
In both instances I still grieve over the death of other because immortality doesn't erase sadness over the times left unshared in this life.
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