Irvin Yalom wrote "Staring at the Sun: Overcoming the Terror of Death." An absolutely wonderful book that deals straight-forward with the pervasive fear we seem to have of death. Atul Gawande wrote, "Being Mortal," another excellent book. The drug companies capitalize on our fear of death, directly or indirectly. They crank up another incredibly expensive drug to prolong life perhaps just a few more months or even days. The pitch there is that by the end of its effectiveness, death will be conquored.
That is slowly beginning to change and people are discovering the options of a more peaceful death than most of these drugs offer. But it takes acceptance that you know you will die. When I worked in long term care and saw many people die, I found that most people die with more grace than they ever would have guessed.
My personal thoughts are that people who understand there will be an end to their lives, often decide to live their lives to the fullest. When people no longer leave it up to God to help others, they pitch in and help.
That is slowly beginning to change and people are discovering the options of a more peaceful death than most of these drugs offer. But it takes acceptance that you know you will die. When I worked in long term care and saw many people die, I found that most people die with more grace than they ever would have guessed.
My personal thoughts are that people who understand there will be an end to their lives, often decide to live their lives to the fullest. When people no longer leave it up to God to help others, they pitch in and help.
102
The meaning of life is...ice cream on a hot day in August?
31
We can never prove what happens after death. However, it is interesting that individuals who are approaching death often dream that they are preparing for a journey and that loved-ones who have died have come to help them.
Here are some interesting resources regarding - near death experiences, philosophical aspects of quantum physics, and expanded states of awareness.
(1) IANDS - International Association For Near Death Studies - iands.org
Click - NDES
(2) Essays - "Quantum Meta-Physics" - awaken-in-the-dream.com - by Paul Levy
Excerpt from section "No Sameness" - "Quantum physics is pointing at ... an underlying seamless and undivided wholeness .. of the universe." ... "The material world is composed of myriad elementary quantum events incessantly flashing in and out of existence, pulsating in and out of the underlying field of infinite potentiality every nanosecond" ... "These quantum entities are what you and I are made of ..."
(3) Book - "Plant Intelligence and the Imaginal Realm" by Stephen Harrod Buhner
On Amazon - Look inside - pg. 14-15 - (A sudden boyhood experience) -
"... every object in the room ... seemed almost like living stained glass, lit from within ... I felt companioned by everything in that room ... part of a living, breathing, aware universe ... I felt wanted by that universe ..."
(4) Book - "Lucid Dreaming: Gateway To The Inner Self" by Robert Waggoner - Chapters about - The light of awareness - and the hidden observer of dreaming
Here are some interesting resources regarding - near death experiences, philosophical aspects of quantum physics, and expanded states of awareness.
(1) IANDS - International Association For Near Death Studies - iands.org
Click - NDES
(2) Essays - "Quantum Meta-Physics" - awaken-in-the-dream.com - by Paul Levy
Excerpt from section "No Sameness" - "Quantum physics is pointing at ... an underlying seamless and undivided wholeness .. of the universe." ... "The material world is composed of myriad elementary quantum events incessantly flashing in and out of existence, pulsating in and out of the underlying field of infinite potentiality every nanosecond" ... "These quantum entities are what you and I are made of ..."
(3) Book - "Plant Intelligence and the Imaginal Realm" by Stephen Harrod Buhner
On Amazon - Look inside - pg. 14-15 - (A sudden boyhood experience) -
"... every object in the room ... seemed almost like living stained glass, lit from within ... I felt companioned by everything in that room ... part of a living, breathing, aware universe ... I felt wanted by that universe ..."
(4) Book - "Lucid Dreaming: Gateway To The Inner Self" by Robert Waggoner - Chapters about - The light of awareness - and the hidden observer of dreaming
26
"Now I lay me down to sleep. I pray the Lord my soul to keep. If I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take."
What was my mother thinking when these were my last thoughts at night?
What was my mother thinking when these were my last thoughts at night?
75
The problem with the religious understanding of death is that every religion (that I know of) has, at its foundation, some version of a principle that God is invisible to us (to most believers at least) and not directly encountered in the way that you and I encounter each other. I know many religious adherents will want to dispute that, and testify that God can be known in this way or that, but I am trying to be as practical about the question as I can. A show-me kind of skeptic if you will.
Let's imagine for discussion's sake that someone died, and then returned to report what was experienced. I would say that that person is better entitled to say what death is than anyone relying on religious teaching. Let's not get into an argument about whether dying and returning can be or has been done, just let me use it as the basis for my point.
I long ago began to wonder why God would set things up in a way that left us to seek, if we were inclined, for a way to find Him/Her/It, when it would be foreseeable that there would be so many competing systems of belief, all of which would have at their foundation that axiom that we cant know DIRECTLY until we die, and dying appears to be impossible to return from to tell others about. I know many religious adherents will have an answer to that, but it seems to me it would be so difficult as to be almost not very nice of God to do that. And surely God would be nice to us, his own children. Would you do that to your own children?
Let's imagine for discussion's sake that someone died, and then returned to report what was experienced. I would say that that person is better entitled to say what death is than anyone relying on religious teaching. Let's not get into an argument about whether dying and returning can be or has been done, just let me use it as the basis for my point.
I long ago began to wonder why God would set things up in a way that left us to seek, if we were inclined, for a way to find Him/Her/It, when it would be foreseeable that there would be so many competing systems of belief, all of which would have at their foundation that axiom that we cant know DIRECTLY until we die, and dying appears to be impossible to return from to tell others about. I know many religious adherents will have an answer to that, but it seems to me it would be so difficult as to be almost not very nice of God to do that. And surely God would be nice to us, his own children. Would you do that to your own children?
34
Philosophy, like religion, often shrouds the toughest truths in words. This is the consolation of philosophy. But Death is horror. No fancy footwork, no colorful curtain, no flowers or music can refute this fact. These are all coping mechanisms. I know how to cope just like the next guy, but coping is not a solution to the problem. It's a palliative for a problem that has no solution.
44
Can you get a patent on this?
"It is now patently unclear to me, however, that we ever actually die in this way."
Who would provide it?
Do you actually mean 'very' or 'terribly' or 'excrusiatingly"?
"It is now patently unclear to me, however, that we ever actually die in this way."
Who would provide it?
Do you actually mean 'very' or 'terribly' or 'excrusiatingly"?
11
Good article! But I regret that Mr. Rockhill has so readily given up on "religion" or the "illusion" of "eternal transcendence." Stravinsky has an interesting story. He was eating breakfast with his mentor, Rimsky-Korsakov. A family gathering. May have been around Easter. Rimsky (an atheist apparently) was expressing his certainty, nothing like Christ's resurrection had ever occurred. The young Stravinsky (Orthodox) looked up. "How do you know? Isn't your disbelief in the Resurrection as much a matter of faith as our belief?" And there was a long, frosty silence. "But now is Christ risen from the dead and become the first-fruits of them that sleep." Which is why we call it the Gospel. Good news! Very good news! Mr. Rockhill--I wish you believed it.
32
'Since I recognized eternal transcendence as nothing more than a comforting illusion ...'
Ah, no. It's not. It's real, albeit rather austere.
Cheers!
Ah, no. It's not. It's real, albeit rather austere.
Cheers!
19
For Rumi, his day of death was his "wedding day".
21
Life is like catching an n-dimensional flight connection -- you arrive, hang out in the transit lounge for awhile, and take off again.
29
Since no one knows the truth, why doesn't everyone stop pretending he/she knows and instead quiet down?
77
What struck me most about this piece was when the author would like "to imagine one day drinking from an enchanted glass and sharing it with the entire family." I know he dismisses religion but When Jesus was speaking to the woman at the well in the Gospel of John, he said to her: "Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again.The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” I know this sounds fantastical but when you meet the living God through Christ he puts his Holy Spirit in you which testifies to your spirit that you are a child of God. In other words, you have absolute certainty that God is real, Jesus is real, the resurrection was an historical event, that eternal life is real. Any doubt of what happens to you after you die vanishes. I was an agnostic/atheist most of my adult life until my conversion to Christianity at the age of 42. Everyone is a skeptic until they meet Christ. When you meet him you suddenly know where you came from, why you are here, and where you are going. Again, later in John's Gospel: Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die. Do you believe this?”
39
Has anyone mentioned re-incarnation ? I'm sure some have. Hey, the choices are: nothingness, heaven/hell or a re-birth. Multiple choice test .... Choose wisely. And tell your kids the truth.
12
I'm reading a book called 'I Am That: Talks with Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj'. It's pretty trippy. I'd like to share a few passages...
+++++++++++
The sense 'I am' is always with you, only you have attached all kinds of things to it: body, feelings, thoughts, ideas... All of these self-identifications are misleading. Because of them, you take yourself to be what you are not.
You are nothing perceivable or imaginable. Yet, without you, there can be neither perception nor imagination. You observe the heart feeling, the mind thinking, the body acting; the very act of perceiving shows that you are not what you perceive. Can there be perception or experience without you? An experience must 'belong'. Somebody must come and declare it as his own. Without an experiencer, the experience is not real. It is the experiencer that imparts reality to experience.
+++++++++++
The sense 'I am' is always with you, only you have attached all kinds of things to it: body, feelings, thoughts, ideas... All of these self-identifications are misleading. Because of them, you take yourself to be what you are not.
You are nothing perceivable or imaginable. Yet, without you, there can be neither perception nor imagination. You observe the heart feeling, the mind thinking, the body acting; the very act of perceiving shows that you are not what you perceive. Can there be perception or experience without you? An experience must 'belong'. Somebody must come and declare it as his own. Without an experiencer, the experience is not real. It is the experiencer that imparts reality to experience.
23
Here's a poem I wrote after the death of oldest child who was 21.
When you lose a dog, you are devastated, but you get another.
When you lose a lover, you are heartbroken, but you find another.
When you lose a parent or grandparent, you are grief stricken (maybe), but it’s the order of life.
When you lose a child, there is no relief, there is no replacement, there is no respite from guilt and remorse, or the pain of missing him!
There is only a hole. You are dead inside.
There is no more peace.
When you lose a dog, you are devastated, but you get another.
When you lose a lover, you are heartbroken, but you find another.
When you lose a parent or grandparent, you are grief stricken (maybe), but it’s the order of life.
When you lose a child, there is no relief, there is no replacement, there is no respite from guilt and remorse, or the pain of missing him!
There is only a hole. You are dead inside.
There is no more peace.
67
I love what Socrates said about death: if you meet all your friends and loved ones after you die, that's good. But think of this: have you ever had sleep at night so deep that you didn't even dream? And you woke saying what a wonderful sleep you had. Death could be like that. There is nothing to fear said a later Greek philosopher, Epicurus. And he explained why.
21
What was your life like before you were born? That is what it will be like after you die. Nothing but the most serene oblivion, while the good you did and the love you gave, living on among your survivors. What is there to fear?
49
I thought Socrates woofed all the sophists out of town. Think you missed one Dude.
15
Tell him that death is as natural as life. That we are all going to die. Plants, animals, marine creatures, people -- we live a certain amount of time and we die. Not one living thing is an exception. Why on earth were you so terrified? And if you are conveying that terror, and all the hyperbole you catalog in your first paragrah, of course your child is going to be terrified. Tell him that this is the only life he will ever have and that you will help see him on his way in his journey, so that he enjoys his life to the fullest. And please stop handwringing about it.
63
Beautiful piece.
8
usage: should be "had my brother and me chiseling." Obective pronoun needed as object of the verb had.
You get far less obsessed with or fearful of death as you age. Good thing.
You get far less obsessed with or fearful of death as you age. Good thing.
12
Professor Rockhill, have you tried to give your son a hug? Philosophers do love discussions and sometimes these get in the way of doing what is essential at the moment.
48
Gee, that's great. Even so, I just don't like the notion of going unconscious and never coming back, and these other ways of being hold not the slightest appeal for me. We all do what we can to keep the blank end from poisoning us, and if this is what works for Rockhill, good for him.
8
I first learned not to fear death while working in a nursing home as a young woman. The gentle passing of the one dying, was, more often than not, easier than for those left behind. More than once, an individual would talk of the beauty they were seeing and how they were ready to leave. It was a privilege to share in the experience as it became as natural as life itself.
73
Years ago, I heard on a talk radio show, the host talking about this very same thing. His son asked if his father was afraid to die. The father told his son he was not afraid before he was born, so he would not be afraid after. That always stuck with me. I thought it was a koan of an answer, but satisfying.
15
I have raised four kids and I remember my stepdaughter being terrified of dying in a fire... we went over the escape plan and the protocol for reacting to a fire... she soon got interested in other things. This discussion of a child's fear of death has been hijacked as a general discussion of mankind's fear of death. They are not the same. Mankind needs religion... A child needs only reassurance, distraction, comforting. Unless the child has an obsession the issue soon disappears. The author seems to be confessing to an obsession with death. Its hard to believe he has not somehow communicated or shared that fear with his child... ok... not judging. I'm saying the two of you need to go hiking, camping, walking on the beach, sliding on a water slide... and so on. Fear of death is certainly a very large issue. And one that can generate mountains of poetry, film, art of all kinds... That's about it... There is no "answer" or solution... that should be obvious.
10
As there is no definitive evidence about life after death, it is hard to argue the author's few years of dwelling on the subject compared to the few millennia it took to complete the Bible. Just because you feel a certain way does not necessarily make it right. I hope people do take the time to really dwell on the content of the Bible and make an informed opinion.
2
We are all doomed to suffer and die.
8
Professor Rockhill's article beautifully illustrates a lot of the uselessness and pointless rambling that characterizes much of modern philosophy. Words tumble forth and obfuscate what is real. Consider his description of his 6 year-old son: "With two fingers lodged in his mouth, he pulls down on his lower jaw as if he were trying to hold onto some self-supporting ledge of meaning." Huh? Self-supporting ledge of meaning? Are you serious? What does that even mean? I am the eldest of eight children, and witnessed my brothers and sisters being frightened of things occasionally. What do you do with a frightened child? Hug and reassure. P.S. How about this, too: "I hear him repeating in the dark, like an echo across the ages, the thoughts that I once silently had, including the conviction that I would die young. He returns me to those terrors, which have surprisingly receded with the years. Was it, perhaps, that I had merely survived a prolonged adolescent death." When your child is repeating frightening things in the dark, you are supposed to go to him and comfort/reassure him, not immediately make the whole event about YOU and your childhood "terrors." P.P.S. Grinnell College alum, eh? Figures.
41
I had the same fear of dying in my youth. I felt I needed to read all the books contained in my small town library before the event happened. Suddenly I was reading 10 books a day and could not get out of bed. My mother took me to the doctor. There was nothing wrong. She demanded to know "what was wrong," when I told her, she suggested that I might need to see a psychiatrist.....making me so angry that I pulled out of my funk. However years later, I found myself receiving training on how to remain conscious during the dying process and expelling my "being" consciously from my body at death.....nice to see there are others with a common theme.....
6
Around the age of four or five I remember lying in bed one night when suddenly I had the realization that one day I would be a skeleton in a grave. Actually, in my mind's eye I was looking down at what I knew to be my own skeleton in a grave realizing what it meant. Skeletons often figured in scary movies in those days, and were terrifying to me.
As an adult I have never feared the nothingness of death so much as the moment of death.
I fear the rush of awareness, if I should not die in my sleep, that I am dying. I fear any physical pain but more than that the terror of knowing "this is it". This will be the last thing I know. The last thing I know will be that I am dying. The last thing I feel will be this pain. The last thing I know will be this fear. The last thing I know will precede me knowing nothing ever again.
I also grew up on a farm and have seen death and come close to death. I lost a brother in a harvest accident. I know what is meant by "your life passing before your eyes". At least I know how quickly the mind can race between so many thoughts in just a second or two, it is amazing. "Who will find me? How torn up will I be? What can I still do to save myself? This will kill my mom. I never got to finish my truck. If I could only get my hand out of this glove that's stuck in the roll of barbed wire dragging me into the tractor's PTO..."
The world is
a bad place
A bad place
A terrible place to live
Oh but I don't want to die ...
~The Marmalade
As an adult I have never feared the nothingness of death so much as the moment of death.
I fear the rush of awareness, if I should not die in my sleep, that I am dying. I fear any physical pain but more than that the terror of knowing "this is it". This will be the last thing I know. The last thing I know will be that I am dying. The last thing I feel will be this pain. The last thing I know will be this fear. The last thing I know will precede me knowing nothing ever again.
I also grew up on a farm and have seen death and come close to death. I lost a brother in a harvest accident. I know what is meant by "your life passing before your eyes". At least I know how quickly the mind can race between so many thoughts in just a second or two, it is amazing. "Who will find me? How torn up will I be? What can I still do to save myself? This will kill my mom. I never got to finish my truck. If I could only get my hand out of this glove that's stuck in the roll of barbed wire dragging me into the tractor's PTO..."
The world is
a bad place
A bad place
A terrible place to live
Oh but I don't want to die ...
~The Marmalade
16
I think we should be encouraged to talk about death and dying; it should no longer be considered taboo.
13
Random thoughts... think of all the humans and animals that have gone before us and passed-on. Somehow they all made it and so too will we. I find strange comfort that I will join trillions of others who went through exact same process that I will.
What is actual process of dying like, esp if one is 'aware'? What goes on in one's mind as one realizes 'ok, I think this might be it?' I'd imagine very different for a person who's aware, but young, and who suffered an unexpected trauma or sudden illness but isn't ready to go, versus a person who's older, aware, but yet tired of dragging on after long-term illness, and is now 'ready to go'.
I agree with others that once we've died, the 'experience' of that is likely just as was our 'experience' before we were born. In other words, no experience or memory to speak of.
And as for memory....how many of us remember how we felt as an infant or a toddler, and those moments when we felt sick but yet our needs weren't tended to (because either our parents were sleeping when we needed them and we were still in a crib and with no 'baby monitor') or because the adults around us couldn't understand why we were being so fidgety or crying? For most of us, we have no recollection of such experiences. Is it the actual unpleasant experiences surrounding death that scare us, or is it the actual idea...the fear of an unpleasant memory?.... Much of our day-to-day lives are full of the unknown. We never know what each day might bring us.
What is actual process of dying like, esp if one is 'aware'? What goes on in one's mind as one realizes 'ok, I think this might be it?' I'd imagine very different for a person who's aware, but young, and who suffered an unexpected trauma or sudden illness but isn't ready to go, versus a person who's older, aware, but yet tired of dragging on after long-term illness, and is now 'ready to go'.
I agree with others that once we've died, the 'experience' of that is likely just as was our 'experience' before we were born. In other words, no experience or memory to speak of.
And as for memory....how many of us remember how we felt as an infant or a toddler, and those moments when we felt sick but yet our needs weren't tended to (because either our parents were sleeping when we needed them and we were still in a crib and with no 'baby monitor') or because the adults around us couldn't understand why we were being so fidgety or crying? For most of us, we have no recollection of such experiences. Is it the actual unpleasant experiences surrounding death that scare us, or is it the actual idea...the fear of an unpleasant memory?.... Much of our day-to-day lives are full of the unknown. We never know what each day might bring us.
8
Everyone shares three experiences in life--birth, sex and death. We know the first two are terrific. Why wouldn't the third one also be wonderful?
16
This is one of the most absurd headlines attached to an equally useless piece of writing I think I have ever encountered.
We die. Everything dies. There is nothing philosophical about it.
Tell your kid to chill out and realize he's going to die at some point an there's nothing you or he or his "mommy" can do about it.
Get on with what's left of your life.
We die. Everything dies. There is nothing philosophical about it.
Tell your kid to chill out and realize he's going to die at some point an there's nothing you or he or his "mommy" can do about it.
Get on with what's left of your life.
12
We come from love
We live with love
We return to love
We live with love
We return to love
14
Gabriel Rockhill (I assume Dr. Rockhill) has written a very nice, no, lovely piece about death, more especially the fear of death by minors (himself, his son) and adults, and more. But ...
It is hardly philosophy. Sadly, this is a direction "The Stone" seems to have fallen into. Write, discuss, 'examine' some hot-button or emotional issue but not actually do the necessary philosophical homework? Perhaps your expectation of your readers is a tad low.
As a (retired Episcopal/parish) priest, I have conducted more than 1,000 funerals and dealt with the families in the midst of death; I have buried my 23 yr. old son, my wife of near 40 yrs., my mother, my in-laws ... I am well acquainted with both fear and grief.
But those emotions are categorically different than the fact/reality of death.
The philosophical question is about 'meaning'; what does death/dying mean?? Such a question leads, almost immediately, to its corollary; what does 'living' mean?
There is neither room nor time in the response page to address those issues. Yes, I am in the last stages of completing a book about death and grief, and much of it is philosophical, about what it 'means'.
But really, NYTimes ... can we get a little closer to actual philosophy rather than pop-psych and feel-good commentary? (Again... YES! I liked the article, was 'nice' ... but not rigorous... not philosophy.)
It is hardly philosophy. Sadly, this is a direction "The Stone" seems to have fallen into. Write, discuss, 'examine' some hot-button or emotional issue but not actually do the necessary philosophical homework? Perhaps your expectation of your readers is a tad low.
As a (retired Episcopal/parish) priest, I have conducted more than 1,000 funerals and dealt with the families in the midst of death; I have buried my 23 yr. old son, my wife of near 40 yrs., my mother, my in-laws ... I am well acquainted with both fear and grief.
But those emotions are categorically different than the fact/reality of death.
The philosophical question is about 'meaning'; what does death/dying mean?? Such a question leads, almost immediately, to its corollary; what does 'living' mean?
There is neither room nor time in the response page to address those issues. Yes, I am in the last stages of completing a book about death and grief, and much of it is philosophical, about what it 'means'.
But really, NYTimes ... can we get a little closer to actual philosophy rather than pop-psych and feel-good commentary? (Again... YES! I liked the article, was 'nice' ... but not rigorous... not philosophy.)
24
Now write something comforting about taxes.
118
How often these questions arise from the back seat while I'm driving!
I answered: when I was pregnant, all the food I ate came from the soil and our special planet. You grew inside me just like the trees, plants and beautiful flowers around us and you still do. When we die, we have the choice for our bodies to be buried back in the earth to provide nourishment for further life. In the meantime, we have the gift of being alive, choosing how we live and what has meaning for us. Death is a gift because it reminds us not to waste too much time - to concentrate and participate. I hope as you grow up you have the opportunity to know love and be a dad and understand how life is so magnificent.
He was happy with that.
He has been reminded a few times over the years - as tears have been shed, realising his parents are "old" and will die one day. We've added that we'll always be with him because he will have such full memories of our time and teachings. I explained my parents still talk to me although long gone. It will be the same for him - whether he likes it or not!
I answered: when I was pregnant, all the food I ate came from the soil and our special planet. You grew inside me just like the trees, plants and beautiful flowers around us and you still do. When we die, we have the choice for our bodies to be buried back in the earth to provide nourishment for further life. In the meantime, we have the gift of being alive, choosing how we live and what has meaning for us. Death is a gift because it reminds us not to waste too much time - to concentrate and participate. I hope as you grow up you have the opportunity to know love and be a dad and understand how life is so magnificent.
He was happy with that.
He has been reminded a few times over the years - as tears have been shed, realising his parents are "old" and will die one day. We've added that we'll always be with him because he will have such full memories of our time and teachings. I explained my parents still talk to me although long gone. It will be the same for him - whether he likes it or not!
8
Someday my child will die. I hope it will be a long time from now at the end of a happy life, but that life will end. This fact saddens me far more than certainly of my own death, but it is the truth.
11
Well said. To which I might add that the tapestry which we weave in life that is our life continues in the memories of our family and friends long after our deaths.
2
Way too young to be even considering such topics. I wonder what he has been exposed to that would explain this.
3
I had a conversation like this with one of my daughters when she was about 6.
She asked that when we die can they please drill holes in the side of our caskets so that we would be able to hold hands forever.
14
We were not alive for an eternity before we were born, so what is there to fear? Enjoy being alive, and consider doing something meaningful with your time.
5
What a great article.
Our society today seems so obsessed with youth and the immediate moment, making no room to contemplate the scope of life and what awaits us. It's important to broach this outside of religion. Religion is the "easy way" to deal with death. So enjoyable to believe in a savior and "know" that you've got eternal life.
Reality is... well... unknown. It does seem tragic and even unfair for us to have these amazing minds that can see so much, so far beyond the scope of our lives. Because we'd all like to keep going. Do more. Help more. Enjoy more. What a horrible, miserable waste if it were all for naught.
I think religion has its place. It's important for children to feel that safety, because they cannot possibly comprehend anything else that would bring solace. Do we continue? I really, really hope so... in some form of conscious energy, merged into a greater field that binds everything together. Quantum physics brings tremendous mystery and HOPE that it does. :-)
Our society today seems so obsessed with youth and the immediate moment, making no room to contemplate the scope of life and what awaits us. It's important to broach this outside of religion. Religion is the "easy way" to deal with death. So enjoyable to believe in a savior and "know" that you've got eternal life.
Reality is... well... unknown. It does seem tragic and even unfair for us to have these amazing minds that can see so much, so far beyond the scope of our lives. Because we'd all like to keep going. Do more. Help more. Enjoy more. What a horrible, miserable waste if it were all for naught.
I think religion has its place. It's important for children to feel that safety, because they cannot possibly comprehend anything else that would bring solace. Do we continue? I really, really hope so... in some form of conscious energy, merged into a greater field that binds everything together. Quantum physics brings tremendous mystery and HOPE that it does. :-)
5
One of my favorite Woody Allen quotes: “I don't want to achieve immortality through my work; I want to achieve immortality through not dying. I don't want to live on in the hearts of my countrymen; I want to live on in my apartment.”
22
Although I've lost family so close that the blow and the bitterness was almost too much to survive,- about my own passing I don't feel as bad. I think I am rather a nice, pleasing little sparkle in the universe, briefly, when I'm not being a jerk, and to be eternal would be a bit overblown, even pompous. Why would this existence need to be crowned with immortality?
10
Important dialogue about a vital fact to ponder...this body, this life being lived that animates this body; at some point in time, will no longer exist. will end.
will die...
The juicy question for me remains: How then shall we live? This death that we all will be experiencing, is actually the container holding and informing this precious life. It actually highlights for me, the preciousness of living, and encourages me to give my best to living fully, and with gratitude..In truth, no one knows what awaits us after the last breath is taken. It's a great mystery. However, in some way, in some form or non form, the life force that we embody, the energy of the "big bang" that we carry, will continue. Recycle...maybe into stardust. who knows? What an adventure!
I reccommend reading Stephen Jenkinson's book "Die Wise" and his website:
orphanwisdom.com There's deep deep wisdom coming from his Well...Peace, appreciation, and kindness to all~
will die...
The juicy question for me remains: How then shall we live? This death that we all will be experiencing, is actually the container holding and informing this precious life. It actually highlights for me, the preciousness of living, and encourages me to give my best to living fully, and with gratitude..In truth, no one knows what awaits us after the last breath is taken. It's a great mystery. However, in some way, in some form or non form, the life force that we embody, the energy of the "big bang" that we carry, will continue. Recycle...maybe into stardust. who knows? What an adventure!
I reccommend reading Stephen Jenkinson's book "Die Wise" and his website:
orphanwisdom.com There's deep deep wisdom coming from his Well...Peace, appreciation, and kindness to all~
1
I tell my kids that we go to heaven when we die. I do this so that they are not tormented by fear of nothingness the way was as a child. When I couldn't even rock myself to sleep deep into the mourning hours, I sought consolation from my atheist mother who told me that when I'm dead, I won't even know that I'm dead, and so there is nothing to fear. Her "reassurance" terrified me out of hours of sleep on most nights for years. By my teen years, I had eventually trained myself to shut out scary thoughts so that I could sleep. Now, as a parent, I don't see any value in telling kids the truth if wishful fantasy saves them from anxiety.
14
Thank you for your perspective on this, Gabe. I see I was not the only one afraid of obliteration at night as a kid. In addition to sharing these deeply personal thoughts, you also provide brilliant analysis to something seldom addressed. Facing death is something that's been on my mind a lot lately since both my parents died this year. My seven year old son, who was present at the hospital when my father passed, told me once that he wouldn't mind dying since it mean making way for a new baby, just as someone had done for him. Not sure how he got that notion but it is a nice way to think about it.
6
I think that Socrates gave the simplest answer to this using the argument from opposites in Plato's "Phaedo":
"The state of sleep is opposed to the state of waking, and out of sleeping waking is generated, and out of waking sleeping, and the process of generation is in the one case of falling asleep and in the other waking up.
Is not death opposed to life? And are they generated from one another? What is generated from life? And what from death? Then the living, whether things of persons, Cebes, are generated from the dead? Then the inference is, that our souls are in the other world."
It is like a gigantic recycling system.
"The state of sleep is opposed to the state of waking, and out of sleeping waking is generated, and out of waking sleeping, and the process of generation is in the one case of falling asleep and in the other waking up.
Is not death opposed to life? And are they generated from one another? What is generated from life? And what from death? Then the living, whether things of persons, Cebes, are generated from the dead? Then the inference is, that our souls are in the other world."
It is like a gigantic recycling system.
9
Fear no death, it is all an illusion.
Religion and civilization are incompatible.
Enjoy your life.
Religion and civilization are incompatible.
Enjoy your life.
8
I had a different childhood in the Bronx more concerned about meeting Godzilla and King Kong in my dreams than pondering the meaning of oblivion. Today when I see how many children in the world tragically never live to adulthood, I feel pretty grateful and uncomplaining in my retirement.
7
As an agnostic atheist, I happen to believe Albert Einstein when he said, “Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.” But, in attempting to answer the question, “What happens when you die?” The important thing to focus on is the “when.” We know that time itself is relative. Einstein’s Theory of Special Relativity has been proven many times. Time is relative to the point where your physical death already exists. It is only your consciousness that is struggling to understand it.
11
There must be something wrong with me.
I never had that fear, don't understand it. I seem to have been born a stoic. If I vanish into nothingness, so what, as there will be no me to feel it?
The only thing that scars me is the slight possibility there IS something after death, some other reality, that is unpleasant, as some cultures envision it. Some kind of hell, or some kind of limbo where you just exist in a cold, grey nothingness, depending on rituals from your descendants for meagre sustenance, maybe between reincarnations, as some Hindu and Buddhist beliefs have it.
I hope it's just over, period.
I never had that fear, don't understand it. I seem to have been born a stoic. If I vanish into nothingness, so what, as there will be no me to feel it?
The only thing that scars me is the slight possibility there IS something after death, some other reality, that is unpleasant, as some cultures envision it. Some kind of hell, or some kind of limbo where you just exist in a cold, grey nothingness, depending on rituals from your descendants for meagre sustenance, maybe between reincarnations, as some Hindu and Buddhist beliefs have it.
I hope it's just over, period.
8
I remember as a small child laying awake and thinking that I was back again, that I had actually lived before but I couldn't remember who I was. For some of us believing in reincarnation helps us to get through the fear of death.
4
Another piece of wisdom came from Albert Einstein. This, from a letter he wrote to a friend, a rabbi who was grieving the loss of his teenage daughter.
"A human being is a part of a whole, called by us “universe”, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest… a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness.
This delusion is a kind of prison us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and whole of nature in its beauty.”
"A human being is a part of a whole, called by us “universe”, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest… a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness.
This delusion is a kind of prison us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and whole of nature in its beauty.”
8
Central to the paralyzing fear of death is the religiosity that surrounds individualism, the idea that each of our lives is disconnected from the broader phenomenon of life that is cyclical and inclusive over the generations. When I was a young man I was an organizer for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee in Mississippi. Death or the possibility of death was an ever present companion. One of the outcomes of this, along with the awareness that death could come any moment, brought me a peace of mind and an awareness that my own life's meaning was only significant in relation to the lives of others, past, present, and yet to come.
Later, as I studied history, and eventually became an historian, I encountered Ideas and outlooks that put the end of one's personal life in perspective. An example of this is found in the story of Pachamama, as told by Eduardo Galeano in his Memoria del Fuego, Memory of Fire. In this legend lies a fundamental truth about life as an ongoing process. He writes:
"In the Andean highlands, the Virgin is mama and the land and time are also mama. Earth, mother earth....To her is offered the placenta of the newly born, which is buried among the flowers so that the child may live...The goddess earth takes into her arms the weary and the broken who once emerged from her, opens to give them refuge at the journey’s end. From beneath the earth, the dead make her flower."
Later, as I studied history, and eventually became an historian, I encountered Ideas and outlooks that put the end of one's personal life in perspective. An example of this is found in the story of Pachamama, as told by Eduardo Galeano in his Memoria del Fuego, Memory of Fire. In this legend lies a fundamental truth about life as an ongoing process. He writes:
"In the Andean highlands, the Virgin is mama and the land and time are also mama. Earth, mother earth....To her is offered the placenta of the newly born, which is buried among the flowers so that the child may live...The goddess earth takes into her arms the weary and the broken who once emerged from her, opens to give them refuge at the journey’s end. From beneath the earth, the dead make her flower."
2
We people, from scientists and medical doctors to spiritual "priests" of any and all faiths to regular human beings, understand very little of our consciousness, our feeling and thinking existence. It is conceivable that within our visible(to us) physical bodies we indeed to have an energy, a "spirit" (or soul to use the Christian idiom) that is of another energy and physical mode, one we can neither see nor measure but which does indeed hold our consciousness in a very real way.
There are many energies we cannot see but can manipulate and measure. It is a matter of we cannot know what we do not know--yet we can imagine and suspect it, we can look for it. In time we may find it--and indeed it is quite possible that our awareness and even our individuality will in fact exist beyond and after our physical bodies(the ones with heart rate, breathing and all the orht things the medical experts regularly measure and manipulate) have reached their limit of functioning.
wE leave wakes through the universe when we live our lives in the physical realms of earthly existence. WE take our existence out to space with increasing frequency. Yet in the realms of existence we cannot see and so far cannot measure we may still remain individual and aware. A hopeful and sometimes intimidating thought, yet still a real possibility.
There are many energies we cannot see but can manipulate and measure. It is a matter of we cannot know what we do not know--yet we can imagine and suspect it, we can look for it. In time we may find it--and indeed it is quite possible that our awareness and even our individuality will in fact exist beyond and after our physical bodies(the ones with heart rate, breathing and all the orht things the medical experts regularly measure and manipulate) have reached their limit of functioning.
wE leave wakes through the universe when we live our lives in the physical realms of earthly existence. WE take our existence out to space with increasing frequency. Yet in the realms of existence we cannot see and so far cannot measure we may still remain individual and aware. A hopeful and sometimes intimidating thought, yet still a real possibility.
4
I told my children (based on my own terror) that it is very common to have an existential fear of death if you are clever. So its a point of pride. And to go through this when young will give them strength when older. Because they will be able to look death squarely in the face and not push it out of their minds. They will be able to get on airplanes, get an illness, face the death of a parent or friend with a courage that comes from finding a philosophical atheist framework to face not just death but life.
And give the sensitive clever little honey a huge hug from me. He will make an interesting adult.
5
Quite a few comments here about the several billion years of non-existence we all experienced prior to life, so what's the big deal about returning to that state. The big deal, I'd argue, is life itself. It may be momentary, painful, jarring and loud, but it's a something punctuating the nothing. It has heft and demands permanence even as it fades. Non-existence is not the same as death. The former is equilibrium, while the latter is a dependent clause made possible only by its prerequisite. In a trillion years we'll all be dead far longer than we've been anything else, and I'm wondering what that much compost might produce.
4
I have clear memories of being overcome by the terror of my own death. Those thoughts came to me while sitting in the bathtub as my mind slowed and turned to deeper places. I would launch myself out of the tub in a panic- induced explosion. I would grab the towel, run from the room, and sit until I calmed down.
Those panics are now just a memory as I near my retirement years. Spiritual growth and a resolute conviction that love is the matrix undergirding all reality has replaced the yawning abyss with a clear sense that death is merely the passage into something greater.
Those panics are now just a memory as I near my retirement years. Spiritual growth and a resolute conviction that love is the matrix undergirding all reality has replaced the yawning abyss with a clear sense that death is merely the passage into something greater.
2
1. I am of the belief that when good people pass on their spirit and good works remain alive in the world, as long as they are remembered.
My good grandparents and 27 year old uncle, whom I never had the joy and privilege of meeting, were murdered at Auschwitz.
I pray for them daily.
Responsibility for remembering and honoring victims of the Holocaust passes along from generation to generation, always until the end of time.
2."Do not try to live forever. You will not succeed."
George Bernard Shaw, The Doctor’s Dilemma (1906).
My good grandparents and 27 year old uncle, whom I never had the joy and privilege of meeting, were murdered at Auschwitz.
I pray for them daily.
Responsibility for remembering and honoring victims of the Holocaust passes along from generation to generation, always until the end of time.
2."Do not try to live forever. You will not succeed."
George Bernard Shaw, The Doctor’s Dilemma (1906).
3
Dogs and chimpanzees don't commit suicide. Only humans.
And we do so because of this terrible burden we bear, this knowledge of death, knowing that no matter how bravely and courageously we strive, all our efforts will one day prove in vain. But to be true to our hearts, we must strive to persevere all the same. Like all other of earth's creatures, we are survival machines. We sin against ourselves and our kind when we fail to embrace the struggle. It was what God was trying to tell Cain when he said, "Sin is crouching at the door, timshel (thou mayest) overcome it."
I, too, feared the abyss as a child, wondering at the meaning of it all, thinking just like Rockhill that religion was nothing more than contrived mythology and rationalizations meant to help us carry the heavy existential load. I tarried down many paths, philosophy included, to see if anyone anywhere had the meaning of all this figured out. And what I found is that there isn't anyone because there is no answer.
All we can know is that for some cosmic reason unascertainable to the human intellect, the universe decided to plant mankind on an insignificant planet in a humdrum solar system in a forlorn corner of the cosmos. Each little ripple in the fabric of the stars that is a human being has to have arisen for some reason but we can't know it. All we can know is that we exist today, and all the tomorrows without us can't change the truth that we once were.
And we do so because of this terrible burden we bear, this knowledge of death, knowing that no matter how bravely and courageously we strive, all our efforts will one day prove in vain. But to be true to our hearts, we must strive to persevere all the same. Like all other of earth's creatures, we are survival machines. We sin against ourselves and our kind when we fail to embrace the struggle. It was what God was trying to tell Cain when he said, "Sin is crouching at the door, timshel (thou mayest) overcome it."
I, too, feared the abyss as a child, wondering at the meaning of it all, thinking just like Rockhill that religion was nothing more than contrived mythology and rationalizations meant to help us carry the heavy existential load. I tarried down many paths, philosophy included, to see if anyone anywhere had the meaning of all this figured out. And what I found is that there isn't anyone because there is no answer.
All we can know is that for some cosmic reason unascertainable to the human intellect, the universe decided to plant mankind on an insignificant planet in a humdrum solar system in a forlorn corner of the cosmos. Each little ripple in the fabric of the stars that is a human being has to have arisen for some reason but we can't know it. All we can know is that we exist today, and all the tomorrows without us can't change the truth that we once were.
9
Strangely, I struggled to avoid contemplating the same suffocating terror of oblivion before falling asleep, and when I was nearly as young (I was closer to 11). Night after night I fought off panic attacks, silently; the eternal alternative seemed just as frightening. It was around then that I had my first experience with depression. I remember thinking during 7th grade football practice: Why strengthen and train a body that will one day become frail, and eventually decay. I don't know why, but intellectual exercises never seemed so meaningless.
Anyway, this is a moving and powerfully written piece, and brings to mind several conversations through the years with a beloved uncle, now passed.
Anyway, this is a moving and powerfully written piece, and brings to mind several conversations through the years with a beloved uncle, now passed.
4
When my daughter was very young, she once asked me if everything dies (meaning the animals we had just watched on a TV program, as well as us). I told her yes, and we started to talk about our fears and our human predicament. And I shared with her the only thought that really gives me any consolation, or even hope. No one, no matter how brilliant, knows what life is. No one has absolute knowledge. I don't believe in religious mythologies that try to "explain" the initial awe of awareness; but we have reached a point in the history of science at which the scientific experience is providing more spiritual insight than "spiritual" teachings. No one knows, absolutely, what life itself is.
4
The day we stop evolving personally as a human being, and resist the inevitability of constant change in our lives, from one moment to the next, we have already chosen the path of a slow, unconscious, death.
If the goal is to not die, seize all the precious moments of time that we have, and instead of merely existing - live!
If the goal is to not die, seize all the precious moments of time that we have, and instead of merely existing - live!
3
Your thoughts on the perseverance of the artifacts and effects of life, after death, certainly agree with my perception of the end that confronts us. I'm not sure that they offer any relief from the finality of the outcome, but they do provide solace and a justification for life, that in a real way makes it all worthwhile. You may know about Paul Newman's role in the film Hombre, as a self-absorbed, resentful, but also selfless and honorable native American, who sacrificed himself so that others, whom he had no relationship with, could live. We may never learn about the effects of our existence on the lives of our descendants, our friends, and people that we don't even know. But, as you point out, our (hopefully good) contributions to this world will live on.
4
“If biological death appears to some as an endpoint to existence, there is nevertheless a longevity to our physical, artifactual and psychosocial lives.”
Your thoughtful reflections remind me John Donne's famous sermon, Never Send to Know for Whom the Bell Tolls, and of the opening lines in Nabokov’s Speak, Memory:
The cradle rocks above an abyss, and common sense tells us that our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness. Although the two are identical twins, man, as a rule, views the prenatal abyss with more calm than the one he is heading for….
I am a 67 year old man. I have metastasized prostate cancer and won’t have any more treatments. I’m not wedded to longevity in life. I think often about death. I’m not afraid of death. But dying scares the hallelujah out of me.
I’ve had a great run, from out of the working class, to a professor at a major university, loves, travel, adventure, writing, dreams, and dreams fulfilled. Words and music give me great solace.
So, from Yeats:
Wine comes in at the mouth. And love comes in at the eye;. That's all we shall know for truth. Before we grow old and die.
Then, wine in hand, headed for eternal darkness, I would love to hear Monteverdi’s Nisi Dominus from the 1610 Vespers. It will take me with a glow in my heart to the end.
Anyway, why fret? The Fates cut the threads of human destiny at their whim.
May you and your son, your beloved, love and live well, the best foils to death.
16
As a young person I was terrified of dying and more than that, of non-being. I would feel the horror approaching and could do nothing to stop it. After the feeling began to subside I would turn on the radio to dull the sensation and return to "life." In college I came across Paul Tllich's, The Courage to Be, which astonishingly described the exact feeling of non-being that I had experienced.
2
None of what I’ve read here satisfies me. The overwhelming sense that I have about my own death is that it involves a mystery no one has come close to explaining, like the dark matter or energy scientists think constitutes most of the universe but cannot be seen or understood. The only choice we have is to get the most out of life, as best we can, without thinking that we’ve come even close to knowing what life, and death, are ultimately about. We must take comfort in the belief that somehow death will open the door to that understanding, if we don’t achieve that before death.
5
Materially we live forever (we are all stardust billions of years old reshaped into different forms, in itself an amazing fact to absorb). Biologically we live for a fleeting moment and death is quite final. It’s this evanescence of life, its existence against all probabilities, that gives life its greatest meaning. Promising an after life, as most religions do, robs life of this significance, Whatever wake we leave behind will also subside in time but may survive for a while despite the odds in unpredictable ways — it’s not something to count on. Love, laughter, beauty, warmth all acquire utter significance from the thought that our consciousness of all this is finite.
13
This line of thought is a consoling fiction, if the most etiolated consolation I have ever seen. If I'm his son I might say:
Come up with something better than that or let me do my own thinking. I have already seen evidence that there are highly intelligent and educated people who profess faith in another, higher order of being and live their lives, not in certainty, but with a serene kind of trust. I believe I will investigate their learning and thoughts. I might not be so ready to settle for the kind of faux continued existence you enjoy contemplating. No offense, Dad.
Come up with something better than that or let me do my own thinking. I have already seen evidence that there are highly intelligent and educated people who profess faith in another, higher order of being and live their lives, not in certainty, but with a serene kind of trust. I believe I will investigate their learning and thoughts. I might not be so ready to settle for the kind of faux continued existence you enjoy contemplating. No offense, Dad.
8
As a child, I asked my mother how long people live. Somehow, I interpreted whatever she answered as a literal 100 years. I clearly remember being seven, with my newly acquired math skills, fearfully thinking I only have 93 years left! Now that I am in the last quadrant of my life, I have no such fear, and I no longer count. Why should I continue the erroneous thinking of my childhood into my maturity? Why should we go through such tortured mental gymnastics to conjure up a way of eking out some sort of continued existence? What is wrong with the cycle of life the way it is?
4
My great terror as a child, from about the age of 7 through a long march of years afterward, was being alive. I can't describe the emotions that went through my head and body when this awareness hit me, nor do I care to. Those feelings are too important to my life and too buried at the moment as well. Besides, they are somewhat beyond understanding by others. No one wants to grasp the truth of others existence fully. We see others lives as jokes and our own as tragedy. Fully understanding what another experiences in ultimately an impossibility. We reduce the value and meaning of others and inflate our own, so silence is the more becoming option, by far.
As for death, we experience some of it by sleeping every day. Once it happens, death is no longer meaningful to the person who went through it. It is kind of a nothing, albeit an eternal nothing. The sadness, horror and necessities of life continue only for those who are still alive, waiting and hoping to find some internal peace while they wait.
As for death, we experience some of it by sleeping every day. Once it happens, death is no longer meaningful to the person who went through it. It is kind of a nothing, albeit an eternal nothing. The sadness, horror and necessities of life continue only for those who are still alive, waiting and hoping to find some internal peace while they wait.
5
I've always been someone who's mind has drifted towards thoughts of death. I don't find that I think of death always in it's stereotypical, dark and doom-like way. Death, in my mind, is accompanied more with a general curiosity. As I don't subscribe to the idea of an afterlife, I find death hard to comprehend. I recently lost a close friend. As I am only 20, this was one of my first real experiences with the death. His passing only made my confusion thicken, and death to me became immediately darker than I had before perceived it. Perhaps death, at least to me, will never be understood in its entirety. But every so often, some semblance of understanding emerges from the haze. The comment on a psychosocial dimension surviving beyond our physical demise, in particular, gave me pause. Although I doubt I will ever reach a point of comprehension in regards to my friend's death and death as a whole, this article raised ideas that provided some comfort and a glimpse at cognition.
5
I might have a different perspective as death has visited my family more frequently than most, or so I've been told. Beloved 6 year old nephew; beloved brother-in-law; one beloved older sister; another beloved older sister murdered by a drunk driver; beloved 39 yr old niece; most beloved 39 yr old daughter and my Mother. It's been an especially difficult week as former son-in-law has met a lovely young lady and moved out of the home he shared with our daughter for almost 18 years. Our daughter had a keen insight into her impending death and she often blogged about her thoughts. We included one of her musings on her memorial card ~ "These threads that run throughout our lives are the most important pieces in the puzzle that is us. How we connect to people who connect to other people who connect us to even more people. This band of beautiful ribbons just spreading some kind of peace through the world." Her words bring me comfort. She died at home with her beloved husband, beloved brother, her beloved parents and her dog by her side. Her hospice nurse said "you gave her a good death". I hope so.
17
this moment of 'now' is one of an infinite series of moments. the chances of us being here in this moment - encompassing our life spans -and in no other previous or future moments are obviously astronomicallly impossible to calculate . yet we are here. so, to me, that is an indication that we must have always been and will always be 'here'.
4
Isn't this the same point Parfit made in the 80's?
It's not death that is the conundrum, the real object of fear. We are all grown-up modern readers of the NYT. We easily infer the truth about death empirically. The real question is why we exist at all--and, ultimately, why anything exists at all. If it weren't for all the beauty and mystery of existence and love, dying would not be such a threatening incomprehensible. It is the painful contrast of life and death that is so startling, the painful contrast this writer tries to ameliorate. Hidden in the fear of death is the even more mysterious love of life. Not a fearfully clutching ego. A love.
2
I do quiet battle with death every day in the hospital where I work. It is an inevitably losing battle. Within myself, I do quiet battle with thoughts of my own mortality. I do not possess the courage of the staunch materialist, with their fatalism and acceptance. I have fear. I think I lack the faith of a spiritual person, who is not to be ridiculed for clinging to a story that comforts in the face of nothingness. I am amused by the insistence on an afterlife by some religions, while others simply endorse reincarnation and seek to escape the cycle of existence and suffering permanently- as if the Western cannon's greatest fear is the Eastern cannon's greatest yearning. I have not resolved this fear, and I fear I never will, but would take great solace in either the infinity of the present moment, crystalized somewhere in a perspective outside of time, or the possibility that consciousness could persist in some form after the extinction of the physical body. The only thought a living person can have that offers comfort is, I am not dead, yet.
2
My namesake died very young in World War II and I thought growing up with his name that I could not outlive him, which I turns out I have by 40 years.
But, having said that, I wouldn't call what I felt fear as much as resignation. I grew up with the philosophy that I would live each day the best I could and whatever time I was given was, to a great degree, beyond my control. Worrying about death seemed pointless.
He was a carefree child, like me, but his country called him to service to ultimately die in the Phillipines. He had no more control over the time and manner of his death, I thought, than do I.
When my young son raises the issue of death, I calmly tell him that all of my grandparents are dead; that a brother was killed by a drunk driver; that his mother and I will eventually die; and that he, too, will die, but that it is the existence of death, with all of its unknowns and unknowables, that gives life its meaning.
How would we ever know happiness, I ask him, without sadness? How would we ever know health without illness? It is death that makes life so precious, I say, so live it.
I close our discussions, which seem to give him comfort, by reciting the 118th Psalm: "Today is the day the Lord has made. Rejoice and be glad in it."
But, having said that, I wouldn't call what I felt fear as much as resignation. I grew up with the philosophy that I would live each day the best I could and whatever time I was given was, to a great degree, beyond my control. Worrying about death seemed pointless.
He was a carefree child, like me, but his country called him to service to ultimately die in the Phillipines. He had no more control over the time and manner of his death, I thought, than do I.
When my young son raises the issue of death, I calmly tell him that all of my grandparents are dead; that a brother was killed by a drunk driver; that his mother and I will eventually die; and that he, too, will die, but that it is the existence of death, with all of its unknowns and unknowables, that gives life its meaning.
How would we ever know happiness, I ask him, without sadness? How would we ever know health without illness? It is death that makes life so precious, I say, so live it.
I close our discussions, which seem to give him comfort, by reciting the 118th Psalm: "Today is the day the Lord has made. Rejoice and be glad in it."
6
Whatever you do, just keep "god" out of it.
6
I'm not so afraid of what may be after death, as I figure, how bad can it be? ;-) Some may say that the 'unknown' is in and of itself scary, but the way I see it, each and every moment of our lives is 'unknown', for we can never predict what may happen on any given day...when we might step off the curb and be hit by a car, or witness the same befalling someone else...or the day we get a phone call we'd rather not get from a family member...the day we were shamed on social media for the entire world to see...the day we headed to the office like every other only to witness 9-11 up close and personal.
Think of all the living beings, animal and human, that have passed on before us. I find some comfort in knowing I'll one day join this amazing collection of beings, who all somehow managed to get through it. And compared to animals in the wild, and humans who were on the earth 100+ years ago, think of how much better we have it with access to pain meds, hospitals, etc.
The one thing that does concern me however is that moment when I realize that 'this might be it'. Will I be ready to let go? How must it be for someone that's young but the victim of a sudden medical trauma vs an older person who struggled through a long-term illness/complications and is truly ready to move on?
Check out Death Cafes on Meetup.com, where you can talk about such things. Very cathartic. ;-)
Think of all the living beings, animal and human, that have passed on before us. I find some comfort in knowing I'll one day join this amazing collection of beings, who all somehow managed to get through it. And compared to animals in the wild, and humans who were on the earth 100+ years ago, think of how much better we have it with access to pain meds, hospitals, etc.
The one thing that does concern me however is that moment when I realize that 'this might be it'. Will I be ready to let go? How must it be for someone that's young but the victim of a sudden medical trauma vs an older person who struggled through a long-term illness/complications and is truly ready to move on?
Check out Death Cafes on Meetup.com, where you can talk about such things. Very cathartic. ;-)
1
My husband did not die. His ashes are certainly not him. It took his material departure for me to discover immortality. Our immortality is in the memories we leave behind when we depart. It is really much simpler than Mr. Rockhill makes it.
2
I have always been more afraid of losing those around me more than my own death. How can I live without my parents, siblings and closest friends? How would I fill those holes? My parents are in their 80s and I still panic when they don't answer the phone. However, having lived long enough to see my parents live through the death of their parents, and seeing my friends live through the death of their children, I realize that regardless of who dies, life goes on and so shall I.
2
I have been obsessed with death forever. I am 69. My father died when I was 3. Do not remember him at all. Never stops bothering. I have lost a lot of people over the years and every night I say who is next. What will get me?
1
You have intelligent children, so they are already pondering life's imponderables. Thank you for treating your children with respect by discussing their concerns seriously, and especially for being honest and not feeding them some line of supernatural claptrap.
I remember similar moments of dark angst in my youth. Instead of obsessing about death, however, I was tormented by the realization that each of us is essentially alone; that even my beloved parents could not love me enough to overcome life's existential loneliness.
I am happy to report I feel much better about all those things at my current stage of life; quite cheerful, in fact.
I remember similar moments of dark angst in my youth. Instead of obsessing about death, however, I was tormented by the realization that each of us is essentially alone; that even my beloved parents could not love me enough to overcome life's existential loneliness.
I am happy to report I feel much better about all those things at my current stage of life; quite cheerful, in fact.
3
As a parent, I have these hard life-death conversations at twilight with my kids, too. We're coming off a really intense one last week, in fact. I am excited to read this tonight at dinner, to carry on our conversation with the kiddos. Thank you for such an eloquent piece on the abyss or falling into slivers of infinity.
Life, to me, seems like a television series that has run for many, many years. Several times, my individual "show" seemed on the verge of cancellation, only to be unexpectedly renewed. And so, here I am.
I have never been able to find solace in the fairytale simplicity of an all powerful "man in the sky" who might choose an eternal "afterlife" for me on the basis of my mere mayfly existence and those acts I have committed or chosen not to. Similarly, the idea that the consequences of such actions, arbitrarily labeled "good" or "bad," can themselves be rendered irrelevant should I counterintuitively "accept" the divinity of the afore mentioned "man in the sky" makes the whole religious construct seem even more contrived.
Thus, for me, the logic of solipsism, the idea that all "reality" springs forth from the wellspring of my consciousness, seems to enjoy the simplicity of Occam's Razor. Perhaps my current life is nothing more than a fever dream of my greatly more complex existence. Certainly the candidacy of Donald Drumpf, possesses the ridiculousness of a bad dream.
I have never been able to find solace in the fairytale simplicity of an all powerful "man in the sky" who might choose an eternal "afterlife" for me on the basis of my mere mayfly existence and those acts I have committed or chosen not to. Similarly, the idea that the consequences of such actions, arbitrarily labeled "good" or "bad," can themselves be rendered irrelevant should I counterintuitively "accept" the divinity of the afore mentioned "man in the sky" makes the whole religious construct seem even more contrived.
Thus, for me, the logic of solipsism, the idea that all "reality" springs forth from the wellspring of my consciousness, seems to enjoy the simplicity of Occam's Razor. Perhaps my current life is nothing more than a fever dream of my greatly more complex existence. Certainly the candidacy of Donald Drumpf, possesses the ridiculousness of a bad dream.
2
My 4-year old went through this death-question phase recently, a phase I fully expect to return again at various periods throughout his childhood if he is anything like me. He became very upset at the idea of his 'great-grandfather' not being alive anymore even though he never knew him, and kept asking questions about which people in our family or famous characters from history were already dead and which were alive.
We came to the conclusion that people could only die when they are 100-100 when they had to pass on to make room for the new people coming into the world. 100-100 is a long time away so there's no point worrying about it right now. When asked where the dead people are, I suggested they might be out there somewhere in the universe exploring stars or new planets but nobody knows for sure.
My son decided that they are all in Neptune Pancakes, a planet made entirely of pancakes. That cheered him up a lot. I have no doubt that the death question will get much more complex and troubling as he grows older though.
We came to the conclusion that people could only die when they are 100-100 when they had to pass on to make room for the new people coming into the world. 100-100 is a long time away so there's no point worrying about it right now. When asked where the dead people are, I suggested they might be out there somewhere in the universe exploring stars or new planets but nobody knows for sure.
My son decided that they are all in Neptune Pancakes, a planet made entirely of pancakes. That cheered him up a lot. I have no doubt that the death question will get much more complex and troubling as he grows older though.
4
My son died at the age of 3 yrs (in 2011) and since that time I have reflected on death number of times. Somehow our mind is not equipped to comprehend a simple basic fact of life: that it will come to end one day. What is the point of worrying about it if we know it's going to happen anyways. Better use the time we have on this planet to make the folks around us happy as we can only live in the memories of our loved ones.
Being an atheist I don't believe in eternal life and so I don't have an insurance for my afterlife. That might buy a piece of mind for a religious mind and definitely a way to go, but I have happily accepted the only truth: valar morghulis! Plus, the acceptance of death may help us to become a better folks, as we can than really focus on using our time wisely.
The goal is to live a happy, fruitful and moral life, what happens after the eternal sleep does not matter.
Being an atheist I don't believe in eternal life and so I don't have an insurance for my afterlife. That might buy a piece of mind for a religious mind and definitely a way to go, but I have happily accepted the only truth: valar morghulis! Plus, the acceptance of death may help us to become a better folks, as we can than really focus on using our time wisely.
The goal is to live a happy, fruitful and moral life, what happens after the eternal sleep does not matter.
5
"As a child, I was terrified of death." I cannot relate to this. Particularly from someone who grew up on a farm. The young child might fear the loss of his/her parents, but should not be fearing death itself. I lost my father as a young child, so I found out about impacts on my life that I could not have imagined. The child should be told that, yes, we all ultimately die, but that parents try to live careful lives so that they can be there for the children they love. If the child fears his own death, then try to make it less threatening by comparing it to sleep from which one simply does not awaken. There's no pain and no awareness of "the void" or the passage of time. Here, the promises of afterlife embedded in most religions can be invoked if the parent wants to pass on a religious tradition. If you live a reasonable life, prepare your loved ones for independence, and have few regrets for how you have lived, there is little to fear in death, only in how you die.
3
Cheer up. Your sense of self is an illusion anyway.
3
Haven't we already been dead, all that time before we were born?
2
Do not fear death and suffering.
Fear war...
Wars pointlessly impose death and suffering on innocents, deceptively elevating illusions of power among those who seek to deny their own humanity.
"Even the great cannot master their death...the first teaching." Tao te Ching
Fear war...
Wars pointlessly impose death and suffering on innocents, deceptively elevating illusions of power among those who seek to deny their own humanity.
"Even the great cannot master their death...the first teaching." Tao te Ching
3
I am grateful that as a child I grew up reading the tales from Ramayana and Mahabharata where birth and death played equally important roles. Once I accepted death as a stage of life, I had no fear of death.
19
Great suggestion. Thank you.
1
Beautifully written. Thank you.
6
I am 85 years old and in good health, but I'm not afraid to die. That's partly because I lost my daughter to a devastating illness not long ago. She was the light of my life, and although I go on, I still cry when I think of her and imagine one day joining her. Apart from that, I feel distraught, just as she felt, over the way our species is destroying the planet and, in this election cycle, about the previously unimaginable evil and mendacity that are now coming to light. It saddens me and makes me wish that I could offer my life and energies to saving the planet Earth from the destruction our species is wreaking on it, all in the name Mammon, the god of money. If we are to have a religion, we should dedicate our lives to saving our children and saving our planet.
132
Well the planet will be just fine, it has endured way worse than anything you could imagine. Now some humans won't be so lucky.
3
Very well said.
I share your thoughts. You are very wise. God bless
1
Dr. Lewis Thomas (Lives of a Cell) provided great consolation to me as a young person and now as well, in middle age. After death, we are "drawn like an easy breath into the consciousness of the Earth." As a Buddhist, I believe that elements of our consciousness do go on after our physical death. Our task is to cultivate peace in our minds and in the world. Death is a fact. But we can bring meaning to the life we share.
www.ravichandramd.com
www.ravichandramd.com
12
As a Buddhist I so agree. We live on as spiritual beings, then choose the lessons we have yet to learn and return to " get it right." I'm told I'm an old soul and I do hope this is right. I have not crossed over, but as a much younger person I was very sick and experienced total bliss at one point. I'm told I was in a way station. I fought to come back bc I had children to raise. I had that choice bc I had not crossed over completely. I have no fear of death, only illness and pain leading to it.
3
I am also a Buddhist. Have you read zen mastery, Thomas Cleary? Many of the zen masters are quoted. Quite profound and peaceful. That was a beautiful phrase.
2
This article, but especially the Comments, have brought me to figuring out who has continued in my heart for the longest - an interesting process. I remember my paternal grandparents very clearly and warmly - they were in their 90's when they died and they've been gone for 70 years, adding up to 160 years they were here/or still remembered lovingly! I have a cousin a few years younger than I am, so perhaps she will live longer than me so those memory years may increase somewhat, but after she and I both die there won't be anyone left who actually knew them. I'm writing our family history so our descendants will at least know these people existed, see their photos, and know something about them, so they will live on in that way for many years!
12
In my early teens I read a statement by Henry Miller, that only when you conquer the fear of death can you live freely. In my 20's I saw a contemporary in a casket and at that moment I realized that the event was real. A long life is a wonderful experience not to be repeated. Why should we be any different from all other forms of life around us? Some dread the imaginings they will miss, I regret all the people and events that happened before my birth.
7
After my very large and powerful father got lung cancer, he stayed at home a lot with oxygen and family close by. It was unusual to be so close to him. He even liked it when I'd massage his chest near the cancer. It was a terrible and beautiful time that led me to join Hospice a year later. I've done Hospice volunteer work for over 1 years. Grace is in life, and grace is in leaving life. Grace all around us.
I believe we never die because of who we influence while here. My parents are both still very present in who I am. Their spirits became a part of my spirit over a period of many decades and 'they' are definitely part of who I am. I expect the same thing may happen with my son.
Usually, death takes much less time than life does. I choose to focus on people's lives (usually decades) rather than their deaths (usually over a period of months or suddenly). Death is a part of who we are; but life is a far bigger and more important part, for part of our life prepares us for our death.
Love is the merciful jewel of existence. Beauty, too. Laughter, also. So much to treasure, enjoy and share here. Death will come. Such is the way. So, while here, love every minute, person, thing.
I believe we never die because of who we influence while here. My parents are both still very present in who I am. Their spirits became a part of my spirit over a period of many decades and 'they' are definitely part of who I am. I expect the same thing may happen with my son.
Usually, death takes much less time than life does. I choose to focus on people's lives (usually decades) rather than their deaths (usually over a period of months or suddenly). Death is a part of who we are; but life is a far bigger and more important part, for part of our life prepares us for our death.
Love is the merciful jewel of existence. Beauty, too. Laughter, also. So much to treasure, enjoy and share here. Death will come. Such is the way. So, while here, love every minute, person, thing.
47
Well, I guess there was a way to cope in the old days. I made my first communion in 1955, and I remember the nun telling us (all of 6 years old!) that when we took the first host of the body and blood of Christ, we became part of his immortal life. It sounded like a good deal to me, since I could barely breathe at night when the light went out, thinking that Death would snatch me from my bed! What happened then was the fear was downgraded to monsters in the furnace, who would rise from the flames and suck me down there with them. My father would come up and scream at them for me "Get the hell out of here! My son needs to sleep". It always worked.
28
Not relating so much to the fear of dying, but of night terrors, is my experience as a woman in my 60s.
I noticed in the last few years that I wake nearly every night just after I first go to sleep, and when I wake I feel panicked. Not afraid of any particular thing, just in a general panic. I suffer from anxiety, and so when I experienced this I talked to my primary physician.
She said she researched it, and found it is normal, which I doubted.
I have since begun taking a low-dose of Xanax for my anxiety, and I have found that I still have these panicked wakings. So I think my doctor must have been right.
You don't need to be specifically afraid of death for this to happen. Perhaps it is built into us evolutionarily as a way of checking on our safety one more time before sleeping?
I noticed in the last few years that I wake nearly every night just after I first go to sleep, and when I wake I feel panicked. Not afraid of any particular thing, just in a general panic. I suffer from anxiety, and so when I experienced this I talked to my primary physician.
She said she researched it, and found it is normal, which I doubted.
I have since begun taking a low-dose of Xanax for my anxiety, and I have found that I still have these panicked wakings. So I think my doctor must have been right.
You don't need to be specifically afraid of death for this to happen. Perhaps it is built into us evolutionarily as a way of checking on our safety one more time before sleeping?
3
I recommend Zen Essence Thomas Cleary. Buddhist thought helps us to detach, to go beyond to find clarity and peace. Easier, deep breathing quiets the mind. Stay with the breath and cut off all thoughts.
1
Does a hypnic jerk describe what you experience when falling asleep and then waking suddenly? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypnic_jerk
If so, it is indeed hypothesized to be an evolutionary mechanism that prevented our arboreal ancestors from falling out of trees while sleeping...
If so, it is indeed hypothesized to be an evolutionary mechanism that prevented our arboreal ancestors from falling out of trees while sleeping...
1
Have you done a sleep study? I had the same thing from sleep apnea when my oxygen was getting down below 70%.
2
What were you before you were born? If the time before you were born was not horrible, neither will be the time after death.
10
Completely agree...
I, such as "I" was before my conception, was dead (read "non-existent, and therefore totally lacking in the slightest bit of any conscious awareness whatsoever") from the instant of the Big Bang until at least a few weeks after my conception. The biological processes that facilitate my current awareness will cease when the relevant parts of my brain tissues cease to function, and no matter how well my corpse might be embalmed, essentially every molecule in my remains will dissociate when the sun expands to become a red giant (if not millions of years before that).
The imagination of human beings and their evolutionary successors will persist as long as the relevant species does, but there is NO credible scientific evidence whatsoever that I (or anyone) will feel pain, pleasure -- or anything in between -- after death. Tragically, dying can be a horrible experience for the unlucky, but there is absolutely no reason for anyone to fear the return to non-existence that follows death.
Of course, if you are someone who somehow managed to be “aware” before you were conceived, you should be congratulated for your unimaginably superior powers of imagination. May you use them to imagine an absolutely wonderful post-death future for yourself… and for all of the rest of us, too!
The imagination of human beings and their evolutionary successors will persist as long as the relevant species does, but there is NO credible scientific evidence whatsoever that I (or anyone) will feel pain, pleasure -- or anything in between -- after death. Tragically, dying can be a horrible experience for the unlucky, but there is absolutely no reason for anyone to fear the return to non-existence that follows death.
Of course, if you are someone who somehow managed to be “aware” before you were conceived, you should be congratulated for your unimaginably superior powers of imagination. May you use them to imagine an absolutely wonderful post-death future for yourself… and for all of the rest of us, too!
9
Excellent point. We will be as unaware of our own deaths as we were unaware of our own non-existences before our births.
Also, when it comes to the fear of the actual dying (as opposed to death and 'after death'), I find it interesting that...I wonder what we felt as we were first coming out of our mother's wombs, into this strange new world full of suddenly loud sounds and bright lights and people handling us and feelings of cold or excessive warmth, an upset belly that makes us cry but which the adults around us are clueless as to how to correct, etc? Did we go thru our infancy thinking 'wow, this really sucks?' ;-) And why is it that most of us have no memories of those early years, or specific moments in those years? Is the capacity for memory in and of itself, something that only comes at a certain age? And is it the fear of actual memories (i.e, possibly unpleasant ones) that we are more afraid of, than the duration of an unpleasant experience? Somehow the body manages to 'get through' some pretty unpleasant experiences, but it seems it's the memory of those experiences, or the imagination of such experiences, which can in some ways be worse than the reality.
Not that any or all of what I say above necessarily explains any of the other...just random musings I've had, as I myself think about death and dying...
Also, when it comes to the fear of the actual dying (as opposed to death and 'after death'), I find it interesting that...I wonder what we felt as we were first coming out of our mother's wombs, into this strange new world full of suddenly loud sounds and bright lights and people handling us and feelings of cold or excessive warmth, an upset belly that makes us cry but which the adults around us are clueless as to how to correct, etc? Did we go thru our infancy thinking 'wow, this really sucks?' ;-) And why is it that most of us have no memories of those early years, or specific moments in those years? Is the capacity for memory in and of itself, something that only comes at a certain age? And is it the fear of actual memories (i.e, possibly unpleasant ones) that we are more afraid of, than the duration of an unpleasant experience? Somehow the body manages to 'get through' some pretty unpleasant experiences, but it seems it's the memory of those experiences, or the imagination of such experiences, which can in some ways be worse than the reality.
Not that any or all of what I say above necessarily explains any of the other...just random musings I've had, as I myself think about death and dying...
2
One day when I was driving my four-year-old daughter to nursery school, the subject of death came up because a relative of a family friend had died recently. She calmly turned to me and observed that "Nobody wants to die but everybody has to." Not a question, just a statement. It struck me that in seven words she had summed up a large part of the human dilemma. Years later I reminded her of words, but she said couldn't remember ever saying them.
41
On the other hand think what it would be like not to die. An endless existence could be torturous. There's an old folk tale about how somebody caught death in a sack and hung it from a tree. For a hundred years nobody died and old decrepit people were actually begging to die. Finally someone released Death again, thank all the gods.
1
Last evening I chose at random a movie with Maggie Smith 'From Time to Time' and it may offer some solace, not only to our young ones, but those of us, young at heart. At the end of WWII, a young boy visits his grandmother at her estate in the country. He firmly believes his father is still alive, and it addresses not only Death, but has some wisdom about the passage of time.
I have nothing to contribute on the question of what to say to a child who is afraid of dying. But on the question of death, I would posit that Dr. Rockhill's assertion are colossally useless. Suppose you take a book and shred it to pieces and scatter it all over. Would you say that the book has "survived" somehow? In what sense exactly the book has survived?
In order to understand death, you have to understand life. Since philosophers have failed us by not being able to tell us the meaning of life, it is counterproductive to invite them to tell us about fear of death.
By the way, Mark Twine quote is utterly pointless too. He informs us that since death is nothingness and before being something, there was nothing, and that nothingness was not so bad, there is nothing to be afraid of. That is glorified nonsense. Death is not just nothingness, death is the end of being something. That ending is what displeases us. But in order to make sense of the ending of something, you have to first understand what that something was.
To make matters clearer, we observe that death is not terrifying to people who commit suicide. They see their life so meaningless and painful that they embrace the ending of it.
So what is the meaning and purpose of this life, whose ending is so unacceptable to some of us?
In order to understand death, you have to understand life. Since philosophers have failed us by not being able to tell us the meaning of life, it is counterproductive to invite them to tell us about fear of death.
By the way, Mark Twine quote is utterly pointless too. He informs us that since death is nothingness and before being something, there was nothing, and that nothingness was not so bad, there is nothing to be afraid of. That is glorified nonsense. Death is not just nothingness, death is the end of being something. That ending is what displeases us. But in order to make sense of the ending of something, you have to first understand what that something was.
To make matters clearer, we observe that death is not terrifying to people who commit suicide. They see their life so meaningless and painful that they embrace the ending of it.
So what is the meaning and purpose of this life, whose ending is so unacceptable to some of us?
23
The search for meaning *is* the purpose...
1
Darius - Leaving aside the question of whether your hypothetical book was ever alive . . . Mr. Bradbury answered the first issue you raise in Fahrenheit 451. Destroyed books can "live on" in the memories of those who have read them. In that way, what we remember of books - just as what we remember of persons - "survives." But, if you want to push your hypothetical further consider this: many (all?) of the books that comprise the Bible existed in oral, memory form first and THEN were written down. The [hysical destruction of a Bible (or all Bibles), therefore, simply returns us to the origin point. I also believe you assume a case without sufficient facts for those who commit suicide. Is it not possible that one can be terrified by two things: life AND death? But, terrified of life MORE than death??
2
Darius says, 'To make matters clearer, we observe that death is not terrifying to people who commit suicide.'
Have you ever committed suicide, Darius !?!
You sound like the many people who say to me, 'well your HARSH DIFFICULTY in life is better than the alternative - the alternative being death as compared to the harsh difficulty in life. And I always say I don't know that because I have never experienced the alternative. I have never died.
Have you ever committed suicide, Darius !?!
You sound like the many people who say to me, 'well your HARSH DIFFICULTY in life is better than the alternative - the alternative being death as compared to the harsh difficulty in life. And I always say I don't know that because I have never experienced the alternative. I have never died.
I am pleased to see discussions like this about death and the dying process. Our society needs greater exposure to how other cultures grapple with death. For me, it is all about achieving a measure of peace for myself and for those I will leave behind.
23
Where is thy sting, O Death!
Grave! where thy victory?
The clod may sleep in dust beneath,
The spirit will be free!
Both Man and Time have power
O'er suffering, dying men;
But Death arrives, and in that hour
The soul is freed again.
'Tis comforting to think,
When sufferings tire us most,
In the rough stream the bark will sink,
And suff'ring's power is lost.
Then, Death! where is thy sting?
And where thy victory, Grave?
O'er your dark bourn the soul will spring
To Him who loves to save.
- John Bowring
Or -
O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?
1 Corinthians 15:55
(I'd quote the remainder of that verse - but since this is the God-hater's forum - maybe not...)
Grave! where thy victory?
The clod may sleep in dust beneath,
The spirit will be free!
Both Man and Time have power
O'er suffering, dying men;
But Death arrives, and in that hour
The soul is freed again.
'Tis comforting to think,
When sufferings tire us most,
In the rough stream the bark will sink,
And suff'ring's power is lost.
Then, Death! where is thy sting?
And where thy victory, Grave?
O'er your dark bourn the soul will spring
To Him who loves to save.
- John Bowring
Or -
O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?
1 Corinthians 15:55
(I'd quote the remainder of that verse - but since this is the God-hater's forum - maybe not...)
7
Who Are These People?
I have read many of the comments to this "essay," and am struck by the number who say, "Tell him this" or "Tell him that."
He's six-years-old for god's sake. It's not likely that he will appreciate the great wisdom of Aristotle ... or C.S. Lewis ... or Søren Kierkegaard ... or Buddha ... or even Glenn Beck for that matter.
My advice: At bedtime, give him a steady diet of Maurice Sendak. Throw in "The Bravest Knight" and "There’s a Nightmare in My Closet" by Mercer Mayer ... lots of books of that nature. Graduate to Roald Dahl.
I'm almost overwhelmed thinking of all of the great literature I could share with my thinking six-year-old.
In this country, "How do I protect my youngster from fears of dying?" takes second place to "How do I protect my youngster from the fears that constitute the tenets of religion?"
I have read many of the comments to this "essay," and am struck by the number who say, "Tell him this" or "Tell him that."
He's six-years-old for god's sake. It's not likely that he will appreciate the great wisdom of Aristotle ... or C.S. Lewis ... or Søren Kierkegaard ... or Buddha ... or even Glenn Beck for that matter.
My advice: At bedtime, give him a steady diet of Maurice Sendak. Throw in "The Bravest Knight" and "There’s a Nightmare in My Closet" by Mercer Mayer ... lots of books of that nature. Graduate to Roald Dahl.
I'm almost overwhelmed thinking of all of the great literature I could share with my thinking six-year-old.
In this country, "How do I protect my youngster from fears of dying?" takes second place to "How do I protect my youngster from the fears that constitute the tenets of religion?"
6
Mr. Rockhill, if you're good, you'll live forever. But if you're bad, you'll die when you die. GFR.
2
Talking about death without witnessing is the same as talking about a furnished room in pitch black.
I witness almost more than hundreds of death moment while people are giving their last breath ( ICU, ER, Army, etc)
You first witness a dying person in various conditions, their last moments.
Nothing consoles at that moment, God or atheist or anybody else. Some people die without to much hassle , others dies in agony.
Death is not what you are imagining if you never witness such as experience level, so seeing hundreds show you one thing.
The moment of the truth, death is impending on you and you know certainly it is imminent, nobody is there for you, no body can console you , no body can ease your stress.
Only you yourself decides how to pass that moment. But I advice anybody watch as much as documentary ( human or animal ) how living things die , experience it with those images stop the video digest the moment.
Death has many shapes and forms to come over you, you never know which one.
I am certain , we all die and forgotten.
I witness almost more than hundreds of death moment while people are giving their last breath ( ICU, ER, Army, etc)
You first witness a dying person in various conditions, their last moments.
Nothing consoles at that moment, God or atheist or anybody else. Some people die without to much hassle , others dies in agony.
Death is not what you are imagining if you never witness such as experience level, so seeing hundreds show you one thing.
The moment of the truth, death is impending on you and you know certainly it is imminent, nobody is there for you, no body can console you , no body can ease your stress.
Only you yourself decides how to pass that moment. But I advice anybody watch as much as documentary ( human or animal ) how living things die , experience it with those images stop the video digest the moment.
Death has many shapes and forms to come over you, you never know which one.
I am certain , we all die and forgotten.
'Oh wow. Oh wow. Oh wow.' - S. Jobs
1
It's fruitless for adults to fear death, but console and comfort fearful children any way you can. Instead of wondering and worrying about death, just be as kind as you can for as long as you can and do good whenever you can. That's real and worthwhile.
6
Hey, I'm still alive. What happened to my comment you said was here?
Omnia mutantur, nihil interit.
Everything changes, nothing is lost.
~Ovid
Everything changes, nothing is lost.
~Ovid
5
"If Christ has not been raised, your faith is worthless; you are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. If we have hoped in Christ in this life only, we are of all men most to be pitied."
1 Co 15:17
Death is very scary, even for believers, but we have faith, hope, and love.
How could you deny your child those?
1 Co 15:17
Death is very scary, even for believers, but we have faith, hope, and love.
How could you deny your child those?
6
Think you’ve got troubles? Does your son worry as much about what happened to him before he was born as about what will happen to him after he dies?
1
Well, this is one way of "Whistling past the graveyard".
6
Who am I? and Why am I here? We all ask these questions often. Also, we talk about soul quite often without really knowing what that means. When a person dies, people talk about his or her soul going to heaven or hell! We just don't think beyond these. WHY WE NEVER DIE would make sense if we really understand WHO REALLY WE ARE.
According to JAIN Scriptures which are thousands of year old, one would find the answers to these questions! In short, all leaving being is a soul living in this body. A soul is a different substance than the exterior body. Soul has unique qualities that body doesn't have. Soul which can not be seen like air, is the one who has conscious and is eternal and thus never dies. Body is formed of infinte number of particles. When a person dies, these body paricles just change their forms because Matter never gets destroyed and the soul, other matter leaves and take another birth. Jain scriptures, in minute details explain this amazing journey of life. How do you explain this to a child? I guess you have to teach a child this same as other facts of life. Hope this helps!
According to JAIN Scriptures which are thousands of year old, one would find the answers to these questions! In short, all leaving being is a soul living in this body. A soul is a different substance than the exterior body. Soul has unique qualities that body doesn't have. Soul which can not be seen like air, is the one who has conscious and is eternal and thus never dies. Body is formed of infinte number of particles. When a person dies, these body paricles just change their forms because Matter never gets destroyed and the soul, other matter leaves and take another birth. Jain scriptures, in minute details explain this amazing journey of life. How do you explain this to a child? I guess you have to teach a child this same as other facts of life. Hope this helps!
9
Tell him that barring any accident or fatal disease, in something like 70 to 80 years, he'll probably die. Get over it.
3
Gabriel Rockhill sounds like a well-meaning dude, but honestly. Blah blah blah. My father had the best answer: It's like going to the dentist. No one wants to but you have to anyway.
6
Reading this, took me back to my childhood. After thinking and thinking about death, and never buying into the fairy tale of heaven...I would wake my mother up to tell her how I was afraid of dying. The nuns at my once a week Catholic "instructions" did more to make me afraid. "Most of you are going to Hell"...and the kindly old nun explained what hell was like. Thankfully, my mom, in the midst of my nighttime agonies, didn't tell me a fairy tale, but she somehow told me something that got me back to sleep. I hate that I'm still afraid of dying. I hate that I pretty much know that I'm no different that another thing that dies. I think it's silly to believe we go up somewhere and get to talk to all those old friends who predeceased us. That's a fairy tale.
I'll just become part of the earth again, like every other living thing. Which is no solace. Because I love being here. My energy will go forward in the earth but my consciousness won't. That scares me and makes me incredibly sad.
I'll just become part of the earth again, like every other living thing. Which is no solace. Because I love being here. My energy will go forward in the earth but my consciousness won't. That scares me and makes me incredibly sad.
7
Two suggestions:
1) Rent the DVD "What About Bob?" with Bill Murray, especially if you can catch it during these last days of August. It's a really fun summer comedy from the early 90s, and offers a strategy for overcoming this fear that worked for the kid in the movie.
2) Study what Christian Science has to say about life and death: man, made in God's image, lives as the eternal reflection of God: never born and never dying.
1) Rent the DVD "What About Bob?" with Bill Murray, especially if you can catch it during these last days of August. It's a really fun summer comedy from the early 90s, and offers a strategy for overcoming this fear that worked for the kid in the movie.
2) Study what Christian Science has to say about life and death: man, made in God's image, lives as the eternal reflection of God: never born and never dying.
1
'Nothing' is unstable.
Existence is therefore emergent, not created.
An emergent Creator is nonsense.
Here once; why not twice?
Eternity is such a drag.
Existence is therefore emergent, not created.
An emergent Creator is nonsense.
Here once; why not twice?
Eternity is such a drag.
1
"Since I recognized eternal transcendence as nothing more than a comforting illusion, the only thing left was my finite life in the here and now, which was destined to disappear forever in an instantaneous blackout."
Post-modern America is gripped by this fear. Because we cannot face it without succumbing to both it and a hopeless despair that follows, we distract ourselves with other more pressing pursuits, numb ourselves so that we don't feel it, or run (consciously or unconsciously) before it.
Are our attempts to extend our physical, artifactual, and psychosocial lives truly anything more than continuing to run from the fear that our existence will cease to be? The only practical difference appears to be the false solace we take in the understanding that we won't be conscious in that moment our existence ceases to be. In reality, this is nothing more than a psychological anesthesia. It does nothing to address the fear, only provide another of a multitude of options for distraction.
Instead of finding alternative forms of diversion, our thinkers can once again turn their attentions towards addressing the ultimate question. Why am I afraid of death to begin with? Why is, or at least, why does it seem to be that, death is unnatural? Before rejecting eternal transcendence as a mere "comforting illusion," perhaps another look beyond the illusion to the claims of the one crafting it are warranted.
Post-modern America is gripped by this fear. Because we cannot face it without succumbing to both it and a hopeless despair that follows, we distract ourselves with other more pressing pursuits, numb ourselves so that we don't feel it, or run (consciously or unconsciously) before it.
Are our attempts to extend our physical, artifactual, and psychosocial lives truly anything more than continuing to run from the fear that our existence will cease to be? The only practical difference appears to be the false solace we take in the understanding that we won't be conscious in that moment our existence ceases to be. In reality, this is nothing more than a psychological anesthesia. It does nothing to address the fear, only provide another of a multitude of options for distraction.
Instead of finding alternative forms of diversion, our thinkers can once again turn their attentions towards addressing the ultimate question. Why am I afraid of death to begin with? Why is, or at least, why does it seem to be that, death is unnatural? Before rejecting eternal transcendence as a mere "comforting illusion," perhaps another look beyond the illusion to the claims of the one crafting it are warranted.
4
The interested reader will find Thomas W. Liqueur's book "The Work of the Dead: A Cultural History of Mortal Remains" a good read on topics related to Gabriel Rockhill's "Why We Never Die."
1
Do not fear death. The Buddhist priests telle us real Life begins
after Death. Even the late Maestro Mazur in a brief lecture
on explaining Strauss's Death & Transfiguration told the audience
"do not fear Death". That settled the question for me as I have
never feared death only suffering of others as well as my own.
after Death. Even the late Maestro Mazur in a brief lecture
on explaining Strauss's Death & Transfiguration told the audience
"do not fear Death". That settled the question for me as I have
never feared death only suffering of others as well as my own.
7
I am not religious but am certainly spiritual. My friend was killed in a traffic hit-and-run accident a few months after he turned 30. At that time I was very upset. Today, 10 years later, I am convinced of the presence of his spirit around me. We were in different continents when he passed. I feel closer to him now and think more often about him now than I did before he passed.
And so somehow when I think of "being with" his spirit and those of loved ones who have passed before me, I don't find death the slightest bit scary. It is the not knowing of what lies ahead that scares most people about death. So I am going to continue believing that I will be going back to my loved ones once I leave this prison/hotel/world. And I think if my kids are scared of death I will explain it in that same way to them.
And so somehow when I think of "being with" his spirit and those of loved ones who have passed before me, I don't find death the slightest bit scary. It is the not knowing of what lies ahead that scares most people about death. So I am going to continue believing that I will be going back to my loved ones once I leave this prison/hotel/world. And I think if my kids are scared of death I will explain it in that same way to them.
23
There are ways of saying things to kids.....
I started with "In our family we believe, blah blah blah" but we don't know for sure, and opted for the more positive variation of death, afterlife and a God. As they got older, we morphed into "this is what makes sense to me, but what do you think?".....
.....and when they became teenagers we said "You are free to believe or not believe but we believe..." It did not hurt that by then I had experienced enough "weird stuff" as to make me realize that maybe there is more to life than meets the eye.
Our kids are incredibly moral, well adjusted and spiritual in their own way--but not religious. So far, so good.
I started with "In our family we believe, blah blah blah" but we don't know for sure, and opted for the more positive variation of death, afterlife and a God. As they got older, we morphed into "this is what makes sense to me, but what do you think?".....
.....and when they became teenagers we said "You are free to believe or not believe but we believe..." It did not hurt that by then I had experienced enough "weird stuff" as to make me realize that maybe there is more to life than meets the eye.
Our kids are incredibly moral, well adjusted and spiritual in their own way--but not religious. So far, so good.
4
"...that had my brother and I chiseling shallow graves...". Agh! And this man is a professor of philosophy. I guess good grammar is not required.
5
Live in the moment, because that is all there is. If you think about the future ( e.g. death), you will have terror. If you think about the past, you will have regrets. The moment now is all there is. I learned this from Byron Katie at thework.com....and it is constant work to stay in the moment and be grateful.
1
Kierkegaard had an idea which may subtly shift the angst of the uncertainty of death. The fear of "what happens after you die" is something which everyone experiences. What happens if we turn the question on it's head: where, and what were we BEFORE we were what we are now?
1
Just Don't Rush Me.
This discussion reminds me of something I wrote a long time ago ...
"I have not met anyone yet who claimed to having any recollection at all of his birth. Nor do I.
On the other hand, the act of dying is something that is part of the lives of most of us for decades ... we know it’s in our future ... many of us spend a great deal of time preparing for it ... and for some of us who are lucky enough, we will be intimately aware of it while it’s happening. I’ve heard people say, “Oh she died quietly in her sleep.” Well I don’t want to be asleep when I die ... I want to be keenly aware of the experience."
P.S. When I die, I want to die like my grandmother ... who passed away peacefully in her sleep ... and not screaming uncontrollably like all of the passengers in her car.
This discussion reminds me of something I wrote a long time ago ...
"I have not met anyone yet who claimed to having any recollection at all of his birth. Nor do I.
On the other hand, the act of dying is something that is part of the lives of most of us for decades ... we know it’s in our future ... many of us spend a great deal of time preparing for it ... and for some of us who are lucky enough, we will be intimately aware of it while it’s happening. I’ve heard people say, “Oh she died quietly in her sleep.” Well I don’t want to be asleep when I die ... I want to be keenly aware of the experience."
P.S. When I die, I want to die like my grandmother ... who passed away peacefully in her sleep ... and not screaming uncontrollably like all of the passengers in her car.
3
"If you cannot understand what it is that causes fear and be free of it, then it does not matter very much whether you are living or dead." http://www.jkrishnamurti.org/krishnamurti-teachings/view-daily-quote/201...
1
In a very real way all living things including humans were once dead.....before birth. We simply return to our pre-birth state. Any horrible memories or experiences from our pre-birth state......No.
3
Clearly our DNA remains behind. Who's to say that's all.
2
But, death is inevitable ,
I have a trilobite fossil on my desk, it is grey color half square inch rock , a trilobite image ( just like our selfies) embellished on it with minute details. Since that photo 350 million years past. un-imaginable time for us a conscious mortals.
Who can disprove trilobite doesn't have any consciousness about time.
Inevitably , that particular Trilobite individual died eons ago, no body knows at the moment of enact , how was the earth, or bottom of the sea, what was the day: Tuesday or Friday, was it a sunny day or a rainy day.
It was absolutely forgotten except that fossilized image, that also soon be disappear from the any living person mind or it self will be destroyed because it is not protected under the rock anymore.
So death is inevitable, forgotten is inevitable, vanishing eternally inevitable. nothing can change this.
Death is what we call , in fact it is anot a death, it is the moment entropy stops your being-ness but still hundred of thousands years your bones will stand then your last complex structures will disintegrates its elementary forms. This is not death, this is the way everything living or inanimate is.
If you check a timeline of universe from Wikipedia, you will see one moment in the future everything will be liquid but not even element form. everything will go back subatomic particles like photons than things will get loose more
heat and dark universe will remain until ..............?
I have a trilobite fossil on my desk, it is grey color half square inch rock , a trilobite image ( just like our selfies) embellished on it with minute details. Since that photo 350 million years past. un-imaginable time for us a conscious mortals.
Who can disprove trilobite doesn't have any consciousness about time.
Inevitably , that particular Trilobite individual died eons ago, no body knows at the moment of enact , how was the earth, or bottom of the sea, what was the day: Tuesday or Friday, was it a sunny day or a rainy day.
It was absolutely forgotten except that fossilized image, that also soon be disappear from the any living person mind or it self will be destroyed because it is not protected under the rock anymore.
So death is inevitable, forgotten is inevitable, vanishing eternally inevitable. nothing can change this.
Death is what we call , in fact it is anot a death, it is the moment entropy stops your being-ness but still hundred of thousands years your bones will stand then your last complex structures will disintegrates its elementary forms. This is not death, this is the way everything living or inanimate is.
If you check a timeline of universe from Wikipedia, you will see one moment in the future everything will be liquid but not even element form. everything will go back subatomic particles like photons than things will get loose more
heat and dark universe will remain until ..............?
2
Before you can fix anyone else, brother you need to fix yourself.
As long as you are identified with the forms you inhabit,and every word of your piece indicates that you are, your going to die. Forms are mortal.
I don't suppose that you could take a simple step and realize that you are not your body. Your simply the consciousness that is hanging out in it for a while.
Toiler, when the energy is transmuted into an ocean of light,
does thy consciousness quiver or expand?
Toiler, is thy heart fearful or exultant
when before thee looms Infinity?
New Era Community, 1926
As long as you are identified with the forms you inhabit,and every word of your piece indicates that you are, your going to die. Forms are mortal.
I don't suppose that you could take a simple step and realize that you are not your body. Your simply the consciousness that is hanging out in it for a while.
Toiler, when the energy is transmuted into an ocean of light,
does thy consciousness quiver or expand?
Toiler, is thy heart fearful or exultant
when before thee looms Infinity?
New Era Community, 1926
5
Death......It's perfectly safe. Not to worry.
7
after death, you will be what you were before your birth - nothing
1
And you know this how?
1
Philip Larkin brilliantly ellucidated this fear in his poem "Aubade."
https://allpoetry.com/poem/8495769-Aubade-by-Philip-Larkin
https://allpoetry.com/poem/8495769-Aubade-by-Philip-Larkin
1
Just one stanza (if you hadn't already posted the whole poem, I would have):
This is a special way of being afraid
No trick dispels. Religion used to try,
That vast, moth-eaten musical brocade,
Created to pretend we never die,
And specious stuff that says No rational being
Can fear a thing it will not feel, not seeing
That this is what we fear: no sight, no sound,
No touch or taste or smell, nothing to think with,
Nothing to love or link with,
The anesthetic from which none come round.
If we can't pretend or philosophize the terror away, maybe we can habituate ourselves to it, with the help of memento mori like Larkin's poem. (And try to aestheticize the terror away with poetry's "moth-eaten brocade"?)
This is a special way of being afraid
No trick dispels. Religion used to try,
That vast, moth-eaten musical brocade,
Created to pretend we never die,
And specious stuff that says No rational being
Can fear a thing it will not feel, not seeing
That this is what we fear: no sight, no sound,
No touch or taste or smell, nothing to think with,
Nothing to love or link with,
The anesthetic from which none come round.
If we can't pretend or philosophize the terror away, maybe we can habituate ourselves to it, with the help of memento mori like Larkin's poem. (And try to aestheticize the terror away with poetry's "moth-eaten brocade"?)
1
Professor Rockhill writes: "...winter diseases that had my brother and I chiseling shallow graves..." Were you an only child, would you have written "...winter diseases that had I chiseling shallow graves...", Professor Rockhill? The pronoun "me" is not a vulgarity.
4
wow, i hadn't thought about this in years...... i need a drink or two now.
basically live your life to its fullest, have no regrets- there are no do-overs- whats done is done, learn from it, forget it and move on. it is easy - just like that old farmer. he lived his life, impressed others with his existence, and now- still lives on in the smells and feelings of the author.
basically live your life to its fullest, have no regrets- there are no do-overs- whats done is done, learn from it, forget it and move on. it is easy - just like that old farmer. he lived his life, impressed others with his existence, and now- still lives on in the smells and feelings of the author.
"There's no time to lose I heard her say
Catch your dreams before they slip away
Dying all the time, lose your dreams
And you will lose your mind..."
Catch your dreams before they slip away
Dying all the time, lose your dreams
And you will lose your mind..."
1
...and this would be Buddhism.
You both need help.
3
its always so droll that people beg another life from th same guy who gave them th one they want to escape from
why do you think god will give you a better afterlife than he did in this one ?
1
Tell your son that everyone will die, eventually, but it probably feels like it did BEFORE he was born, which of course he can't remember. Don't tease him with a promise of life after death. NOBODY knows what happens after death, only people who have been told by OTHER people THINK they "know." When we get an actual personal message from "God," maybe we'll know more. But, right now, don't lie to him, comfort him with the truth.
3
religion uses th fear of death for control and money
give me money and you wont die
do these things and you wont go to hell
its worked for millennia
6
In such an erudite, well considered treatise--so thoughtfully reminiscent of so many philosophers of death--I'm amazed that a simple grammatical error was left to fester in the fourth paragraph. Professor Rockhill, it's ". . . diseases that left my brother and ME. . . "
1
Le Ton beau de Marot: In Praise of the Music of Language, a splendid 1997 book by Douglas Hofstadter, ends with some very wise musings along these lines as the author deals with the death of his wife.
And to the degree that our writings are immortal, we need to watch out for grammatical howlers like "...winter diseases that had ... I chiseling shallow graves." Sigh.
And to the degree that our writings are immortal, we need to watch out for grammatical howlers like "...winter diseases that had ... I chiseling shallow graves." Sigh.
3
As a suggestion, accept that there is little that you can do regarding this fear. Your child will come to an acceptance of it as all have. You can't take the fear away. Best you can do is be there to stand by him and support him. Show him you share his fear and are also sad. That can help. Don't give him empty platitudes. Those really don't help anyone.
2
My goodness! Can we please leave this crazy competition to achieve at the door of death?! Do we really need to classify the dead by the size of the "material and cultural vestiges" they leave behind? The more "vestiges' you leave behind, the less "dead" you are! Sheesh...
5
Advaita Vedanta, which means non- duality and indeed all the mystics through the ages have pointed and still do point to a sudden disapearance of the phantom entity.. the illusory I which believes in birth and death. One cannot know truth, only be truth. It is our birthright while still in this body to penetrate and see the false as false so the whole can rush in . It has been said in so many ways.. Nirvanna means the candle has blown out... the disapearance of the ego. It is the message of Zen, Of The Sufi's, All religions were based on this profound realization but were distorted due to misunderstanding of the Masters words and of course the cooption by so called religious leaders and politicians in order to gain and hold on to power.
Don't believe! be a seeker and finally realize that the SEEKER IS THE SOUGHT. You ARE The TRUTH!
Don't believe! be a seeker and finally realize that the SEEKER IS THE SOUGHT. You ARE The TRUTH!
3
Tell your son his fear of death will not last forever.
3
Death.
Language.
The human 'being' evolved to be the animal trapped into attempting to express experience symbolically. But our experience is so limited that we confuse language explanations for the experiences.
As Mr. Rockhill's essay shows, we have knowledge, or we have belief. We are required to move from one, belief, to the other, knowledge, second by second, and confuse the latter for the former, and visa-versa.
I believe I'll be alive tomorrow. I may not be. I know I'm alive while I type this.
The anxiety expressed by the child oppressed by coming to know that death is certain is a permanent loss of innocence; up until that point the child is inside a world entirely safe in mistaking belief for knowledge. Religion succeeds because it provides that very structure for those who need to regain that safe footing.
Those who can't accept as knowledge the shifting vagaries of religious belief structures, or can't submit to the often authoritarian nature of religious belief that becomes ideology, learn to live with what amounts to an agnostic submission to the life experience. Others form what amount to new religions whose belief structures they can accept.
Death is still there, regardless. Death is unexplained, and for those who face it, intellectually outfitted with just knowledge, death is perhaps inexplicable.
Perhaps an ultimate faith is accepting life and death, and continuing to live as constructively as our flawed natures allow.
We don't know. We believe.
Language.
The human 'being' evolved to be the animal trapped into attempting to express experience symbolically. But our experience is so limited that we confuse language explanations for the experiences.
As Mr. Rockhill's essay shows, we have knowledge, or we have belief. We are required to move from one, belief, to the other, knowledge, second by second, and confuse the latter for the former, and visa-versa.
I believe I'll be alive tomorrow. I may not be. I know I'm alive while I type this.
The anxiety expressed by the child oppressed by coming to know that death is certain is a permanent loss of innocence; up until that point the child is inside a world entirely safe in mistaking belief for knowledge. Religion succeeds because it provides that very structure for those who need to regain that safe footing.
Those who can't accept as knowledge the shifting vagaries of religious belief structures, or can't submit to the often authoritarian nature of religious belief that becomes ideology, learn to live with what amounts to an agnostic submission to the life experience. Others form what amount to new religions whose belief structures they can accept.
Death is still there, regardless. Death is unexplained, and for those who face it, intellectually outfitted with just knowledge, death is perhaps inexplicable.
Perhaps an ultimate faith is accepting life and death, and continuing to live as constructively as our flawed natures allow.
We don't know. We believe.
18
A perhaps ultimate irony in the case of the knowledge of death is that the knowledge of death is at one and the same moment belief in that the knowledge of the fact of death can't explain with certifiable certainty what death is.
When Isaac Newton presented his lengthy treatise on gravity a question he was often asked was, what is it? This gravity, what is it? Newton could explain it (although Einstein later showed with Relativity that Newton was not completely right) but he had not the intellectual capacity to offer a description of its nature. In effect, Newton knew what gravity would do, with but was left in the end with a belief in it.
That's the state of humanity. We know we die.
But we believe what death is; there is no information from beyond the moment of death, except that contained in belief(s).
.
When Isaac Newton presented his lengthy treatise on gravity a question he was often asked was, what is it? This gravity, what is it? Newton could explain it (although Einstein later showed with Relativity that Newton was not completely right) but he had not the intellectual capacity to offer a description of its nature. In effect, Newton knew what gravity would do, with but was left in the end with a belief in it.
That's the state of humanity. We know we die.
But we believe what death is; there is no information from beyond the moment of death, except that contained in belief(s).
.
I just read: "or winter diseases that had my brother and I chiseling shallow graves..." No, please, it should be "my brother and me," as in "had us chiseling." The Times is a rare refuge from bad grammar, and I would hope the editors will be more helpful to their writers.
29
Oh Al, did you need to do that? It was an otherwise fine essay that should be immune to the quibble.
1
Thank you!! This is a huge pet peeve of mine...the fact that 'I' is being more and more commonly-used as an Object of the Preposition (which is patently Wrong), almost as a way to sound more 'intelligent'. I witness this all the time at my corporate job where I am surrounded by supposedly educated people. I constantly hear things such as '...why don't you set up a conference call for you and I to discuss?' or '..please send a copy of the report to Mike and I....'
When people don't get why this is wrong, I give the follow simple examples:
Would you ever say 'Thank you for making dinner for I.'? No, you'd say 'Thank you for making dinner for ME.' So similarly it would be 'Thank you for making dinner for Tim and (for) ME.'
Would you ever say 'Please return the book to I'? No, you'd say 'Please return the book to ME.' So similarly it would be 'Please return the book to Tim and (to) me.'
People seem to make this mistake when there are multiple pronouns involved...
When people don't get why this is wrong, I give the follow simple examples:
Would you ever say 'Thank you for making dinner for I.'? No, you'd say 'Thank you for making dinner for ME.' So similarly it would be 'Thank you for making dinner for Tim and (for) ME.'
Would you ever say 'Please return the book to I'? No, you'd say 'Please return the book to ME.' So similarly it would be 'Please return the book to Tim and (to) me.'
People seem to make this mistake when there are multiple pronouns involved...
2
Glad someone spoke up about that. We noticed that, too.
Tell him when he dies he goes off to dinosaur land. If hes like every other 6 year old that should be just dandy.
2
"It is a good thing there is not an afterlife. What would one do with it throughout eternity?"
- Robert Motherwell
- Robert Motherwell
6
You might want to read 'The Denial of Death,' a seminal work by Ernest Becker (1973). It is a profound work and could give you some insight into the origins of the fears that you are describing.
Or perhaps, some Camus?
Or perhaps, some Camus?
7
The fellow who wrote this is a philosophy professor at Villanova. Presumably, he has read a good deal of material about this. I remember feeling crushed as a small child when I realized that my parents would one day die. That bothered me. I wasn't worried about myself.
2
Oh lord, if you want to intensify the nightmares, by all means turn to Camus for solace.
1
I was going to recommend the same book. Coincidentally, I'm reading it now. The terror of my mortality didn't hit me until I was 20 years old. I had the same reaction as Rockhill's son; They must be working on a cure for this. Acceptance is the only rational choice. Once one moves beyond religious faith, there is no turning back.
1
Having been raised a Roman Catholic, I was taught to say the "Now I lay me down to sleep ..." prayer, and when it came to "If I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take." I was so terrified I could not sleep. Night after night of trying to hide under the blankets. No sympathy from my religious mother. I made sure my children NEVER learned such foolishness & now live a worry-free atheistic life.
32
Worry free? Is there a manual for "Atheistic 'worry-free' living? Can I get a subscription?
3
That is a bit of a creepy prayer for little children. I like the Guardian Angel prayer for children at bedtime, as it offers a sense of protection and safety as one drifts off to sleep.
1
I went through this with my son at this exact age and could only mouth a few platitudes and cliches while seeking counseling (also of no use). Having survived well beyond expectations to the age of 65, this is what I would tell my son and my 6-year-old self:
You can't stay at the carnival forever, nor would you want to. Remember how tired you were and ready to go home after we had spent all day riding the rides and walking for miles through the amusement park? You were ready to go home, right? You were tired and wanted to go to sleep, right? Well, that's the way you will feel when you've had enough of life. When the time comes, you will be ready. In the meantime, enjoy the carnival!
You can't stay at the carnival forever, nor would you want to. Remember how tired you were and ready to go home after we had spent all day riding the rides and walking for miles through the amusement park? You were ready to go home, right? You were tired and wanted to go to sleep, right? Well, that's the way you will feel when you've had enough of life. When the time comes, you will be ready. In the meantime, enjoy the carnival!
134
Thank you for that comparison. It brings a good feeling to observation about the experience of life.
2
Shocked! I am genuinely shocked to encounter this level of insight in the comments section, especially after the column was so tentative, and unconvincing.
I think your approach is excellent for children 6 or older. It's a good analogy, it speaks to children's limited experience, and it's quite a humane view. In fact, it's a good approach for children of all ages. Thanks.
I think your approach is excellent for children 6 or older. It's a good analogy, it speaks to children's limited experience, and it's quite a humane view. In fact, it's a good approach for children of all ages. Thanks.
1
I would work to separate the idea of death from sleep. There's no resolution to the question of death, unless you want to share some religious belief with your son.
4
Not understanding all this apprehension over sleep as some sort of link to death.
Death is death with all its mystery and certainty.
Drifittng off to sleep is like going to adventureland with all sorts of twists and turns bubbling up from your subconsious in dreamland. You can, to some degree, direct where your dreams take you, focusing on an idea you want to dream about as you fall asleep. Fun actually.
Death is death with all its mystery and certainty.
Drifittng off to sleep is like going to adventureland with all sorts of twists and turns bubbling up from your subconsious in dreamland. You can, to some degree, direct where your dreams take you, focusing on an idea you want to dream about as you fall asleep. Fun actually.
2
Your son is experiencing the same existential fears because you transmitted them to him, just as your younger son is now picking up the same fears listening to his older brother and you.
There are fears born of idle minds of bourgeois ennui (sons of tenure track professors), and there are fears born of real life and live threats (sons of blacks in inner cities, sons of refugees).
One father has the luxury of a long philosophical digressive musings to fall asleep to, the other father cannot be more succinct in his advice: try to sleep, but don't fall off the boat, you will drown.
One brother can play dead while listening to the discourse, the other's brother is really dead, too late to benefit from any words now.
The two fears are not the same, not phenomenologically, not philosophically, not metaphysically. And the answers are not the same.
There are fears born of idle minds of bourgeois ennui (sons of tenure track professors), and there are fears born of real life and live threats (sons of blacks in inner cities, sons of refugees).
One father has the luxury of a long philosophical digressive musings to fall asleep to, the other father cannot be more succinct in his advice: try to sleep, but don't fall off the boat, you will drown.
One brother can play dead while listening to the discourse, the other's brother is really dead, too late to benefit from any words now.
The two fears are not the same, not phenomenologically, not philosophically, not metaphysically. And the answers are not the same.
10
Poetic, but big eye roll here. So what you're saying is, what? That only "privileged" six year olds ponder existential questions in the abstract? I doubt it.
1
It seems to me the fears are indeed the same, even if the dragon might be closer to the urban child. This fear units all humankind and drives all religions. In death we are equal, be we sons of street sweepers or sons of tenured professors. Agree that the answer to the child with death all around her must be calibrated differently than the answer to the child who is conducting life's scariest, most eternal thought experiment. Be ultimately, as that child grows older she will learn there is no satisfactory answer, only, if they are lucky, a dulling of the senses by inevitable aging that may make the exit more bearable. And if they are unlucky, an end which will come regardless of their preparedness for it. Best for sanity to flip the question: why life? What beauty, love and joy can be shared while we do exist?
I did my master's thesis on the development of the child's concept of death. Children fantasize about death a lot, in different ways. But many children under six think that death is reversible or that the dead can move, The experience of a loved one dying often changes this; such children have a very realistic view of death. Piaget said that it is questions about death that lead to an understanding of physical causality.
When my daughter was two, our cat died. Two months later she asked me, "When will kiki come back from die?"
At six, she asked me, "If I have to die, will you go with me?" I said, "Of course."
My Nanny had died earlier. I spent the night of her dying in her hospital room meditating on oneness: our oneness. When I felt her last heartbeat, I said "You know I'll always be with you." I swear she said "Mmhm" and nodded her head. I don't know why I said this, but it seemed to be true.
I don't believe in an afterlife, but there is something in our sharing life and death. People should not die alone.
As I have gotten older, I am no longer afraid of death. I am afraid of dementia and other wasting processes. I hope for a good death.
When my daughter was two, our cat died. Two months later she asked me, "When will kiki come back from die?"
At six, she asked me, "If I have to die, will you go with me?" I said, "Of course."
My Nanny had died earlier. I spent the night of her dying in her hospital room meditating on oneness: our oneness. When I felt her last heartbeat, I said "You know I'll always be with you." I swear she said "Mmhm" and nodded her head. I don't know why I said this, but it seemed to be true.
I don't believe in an afterlife, but there is something in our sharing life and death. People should not die alone.
As I have gotten older, I am no longer afraid of death. I am afraid of dementia and other wasting processes. I hope for a good death.
15
As a hospice nurse -- from a spiritual point of view. Sometimes the opposite of fear is not faith or knowledge, but love. Your love for your son will never die. His love for you will not die either and in some mysterious, inexplicable manner there is a great love that is the source of all love that wins. It's bigger even than death. Madeleine L'engle children's series A Wrinkle in Time is a great imaginative story of this.
As a school nurse -- from a psychological and development view, some of us deal more with anger, some more with shame, guilt, and low-self esteem, and others deal more with anxiety and fear. You might note when your child has "little" anxieties. Maybe he doesn't feel comfortable or gets nervous or is shy. Maybe working on "little fears" will be fruitful in someday coming to terms with the big fear of death.
As a school nurse -- from a psychological and development view, some of us deal more with anger, some more with shame, guilt, and low-self esteem, and others deal more with anxiety and fear. You might note when your child has "little" anxieties. Maybe he doesn't feel comfortable or gets nervous or is shy. Maybe working on "little fears" will be fruitful in someday coming to terms with the big fear of death.
8
Wonderful. Thank you.
1
Wonderful piece. Six does seem to be a key age -- my six year old and I are having similar conversations. The one message that seems to help provide some comfort (to him and to me) is my belief that as we get older we become less afraid of death. That it may be hard to accept now, but, like when we go for ice cream and can't imagine having ever had enough, at some point we really are ready to stop.
1
If we all lived forever, we would run out of food to eat
2
"Who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life;
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscover'd country from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?"
William S.
To grunt and sweat under a weary life;
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscover'd country from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?"
William S.
1
I have always loved American movies as a source of inspiration. I am grateful to the movie script writers for what they wrote and how they inspired me.
On this topic, I recall two instances where Andy says to his friend Red in "Shawshank Redemption" the following:
Andy: Remember Red, hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies.
Andy: I guess it comes down to a simple choice, really. Get busy living or get busy dying.
And so, I try to enjoy the work that I do. I try to get busy living.
On this topic, I recall two instances where Andy says to his friend Red in "Shawshank Redemption" the following:
Andy: Remember Red, hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies.
Andy: I guess it comes down to a simple choice, really. Get busy living or get busy dying.
And so, I try to enjoy the work that I do. I try to get busy living.
4
It felt as if I was re-experiencing my existential beliefs when, as a child I would wonder what the end of it all would be like. Would my mother and father come back from the party they they had gone to? What would it be like without anyone? As age and, perhaps wisdom have impressed me, a sense of spirtual awakening has given me comfort that our bodies are not our lives.
Yes, I remember those childhood pre-sleep fears well. As a father of two young boys, much like yours, I find myself exquisitely sensitive to their experience and inquisitions into the nature of being and non-being. I, like you, did not and do not feel religion provides a safety net. I found myself exploring philosophy, the arts, and now medicine seeking answers to my own questions. Only with retrospection do I locate the impetus of my search to the nights fearing my own existential demise.
In the contemporary world, marketing and materialism seek to derail our quest of an examined life, but there have always been distractions. As a practicing physician I strive to sooth these twilight fears in my children and I also seek to comfort the dying and their families by highlighting the "wake" we trace among those we touch.
I now find myself confronting an even more foreboding fear that death might take me before I can impart my knowledge/experience to my boys as their innocence of the world at large is lost. Perhaps this is just vanity. My only hope is that they, like ourselves, seek with the same fervor and that they too will have a chance to make meaning from the delicate strands we call consciousness.
Thank you for articulating such a difficult topic.
In the contemporary world, marketing and materialism seek to derail our quest of an examined life, but there have always been distractions. As a practicing physician I strive to sooth these twilight fears in my children and I also seek to comfort the dying and their families by highlighting the "wake" we trace among those we touch.
I now find myself confronting an even more foreboding fear that death might take me before I can impart my knowledge/experience to my boys as their innocence of the world at large is lost. Perhaps this is just vanity. My only hope is that they, like ourselves, seek with the same fervor and that they too will have a chance to make meaning from the delicate strands we call consciousness.
Thank you for articulating such a difficult topic.
2
In my opinion, early childhood fear of death is at its base a fear of being abandoned, alone or unloved, isolated and no longer connected to others.
Origins of early obsessive fears of death:
Children who grow up in families where relationships are more distant (read more task and intellect oriented than warm and relationship oriented) and parental love is intermittent or rule based as opposed to unconditional and ever-present will be more likely to have night terrors about death. The tenuousness of their early experiences of parental love leads to an early sense of the tenuousness of life....and thus the concept / reality of death can take on a far greater weight at a far earlier age.
When deeply relational, unconditional love is there for a child...their world is complete and safe and nurturing...death as a concept is troubling but not overwhelming because it is more abstract.
On the other hand, when love is tenuous or rule-based or absent...the loss of love becomes the easily amplified in the obsessive fear of death....
Just a thought...
Origins of early obsessive fears of death:
Children who grow up in families where relationships are more distant (read more task and intellect oriented than warm and relationship oriented) and parental love is intermittent or rule based as opposed to unconditional and ever-present will be more likely to have night terrors about death. The tenuousness of their early experiences of parental love leads to an early sense of the tenuousness of life....and thus the concept / reality of death can take on a far greater weight at a far earlier age.
When deeply relational, unconditional love is there for a child...their world is complete and safe and nurturing...death as a concept is troubling but not overwhelming because it is more abstract.
On the other hand, when love is tenuous or rule-based or absent...the loss of love becomes the easily amplified in the obsessive fear of death....
Just a thought...
8
I like to look at life as something we gain, not something we lose. Death is the predominant state of things, and thus life is a gift, not an entitlement. I once heard that life is like a book - the characters don't concern themselves with what is outside the book. They have a beginning and an end to their story, and it's what's inside the pages that matter.
4
We are not dying all the time. Life is first a process of growth and assimilation, then a period of decline and decay. But even in this later period, new cells are constantly forming in the blood and other systems to replace those which are dying. This can best be explained by the idea that life consists of the complex organization of biological materials, not in the materials themselves.
As we are conscious but finite beings, an endless life would be a meaningless
one. We would always be putting off projects and tasks till tomorrow. Bounds give our lives shape and meaning.
As we are conscious but finite beings, an endless life would be a meaningless
one. We would always be putting off projects and tasks till tomorrow. Bounds give our lives shape and meaning.
2
Speak for yourself. Many lives have no shape, nor meaning.
2
One day we will each die. But every other day, we will not.
33
That was also a great comment.
3
My faith teaches me that the bone deep need to feel like something of us is eternal is one proof that there is such a thing as the eternal that we are a part of. Why in the world would natural selection select that for humans? We don't need it in any way to survive or thrive physically. It's a false dichotomy to say that religion and reason are in opposition. It might not be true, but it isn't irrational to believe that the deep need to think we go on was placed there for a reason.
11
"My faith teaches me that the bone deep need to feel like something of us is eternal is one proof that there is such a thing as the eternal that we are a part of."
This is circular reasoning - we have evolved these brains, so we may as well use them to the best of our abilities, seeking actual proof based on real evidence to tease out how the universe works. That need you mention is what motivates people to join into groups - family, tribe, now city, state, and country. It's not mysterious.
Anyway, a desire, or even a need for a deity and the eternal does not make it any more real.
This is circular reasoning - we have evolved these brains, so we may as well use them to the best of our abilities, seeking actual proof based on real evidence to tease out how the universe works. That need you mention is what motivates people to join into groups - family, tribe, now city, state, and country. It's not mysterious.
Anyway, a desire, or even a need for a deity and the eternal does not make it any more real.
Survival mechanism. Every creature is afraid of dying in its own way.
I have gone through varies phases where death was concerned. When I was very young there were times I wished for death, especially when I experienced the insecurity & hostility that my parents exhibited in my presence, or when I struck out instead of getting a hit, & my team mates looked upon me with disgust.Of course, I knew my wishes fell on deaf ears, because only the old die, or so I thought.I’m in my final phase of life where death is becoming a realty. My heart has lost it’s rhythm, my joints hurt, my hair and vitality has waned, but i am holding on to life as beat I can. You would think that my multitude of operations would have by this time worn me out, but I still cling to life with all the strength I have left, after all there is still so much more to see, such as watching my Grand Children grow up,which rejuvenates my will to live.I soften the fear of death by convincing myself that some of my genes are inherited by my Grand Children, they even have my neuroses, sensitivity & love for me, it’s so hard to give that up.
10
It's all in how you view yourself and others.
There's this basic scientific concept that any kind of energy can neither be created nor destroyed, only changed in form. Couple that with the basic concept that when the Universe was created (The Bing Bang) all the energy it would ever have was created in that moment. Since we have evidence that all humans are unique in their own way, that suggests that the energy that we associate with each life (some call it our soul) is also unique. You see where I'm going here?
So, if the life energy of every person is unique and can't be created, or destroyed, we never really die since our unique life energy continues in much the same way that it existed since the moment of the big bang. In other words, we have always been here and will always be here until the Universe ends and even then.....
Maybe a bit much for a 6-year to wrap his mind around but its very simplicity and idea of continuity may give him a certain comfort as it may give you.
There's this basic scientific concept that any kind of energy can neither be created nor destroyed, only changed in form. Couple that with the basic concept that when the Universe was created (The Bing Bang) all the energy it would ever have was created in that moment. Since we have evidence that all humans are unique in their own way, that suggests that the energy that we associate with each life (some call it our soul) is also unique. You see where I'm going here?
So, if the life energy of every person is unique and can't be created, or destroyed, we never really die since our unique life energy continues in much the same way that it existed since the moment of the big bang. In other words, we have always been here and will always be here until the Universe ends and even then.....
Maybe a bit much for a 6-year to wrap his mind around but its very simplicity and idea of continuity may give him a certain comfort as it may give you.
14
Thank you....that was the idea I was looking for in the article but could not find.
1
Death is utterly acceptable to consciousness and life. There has been endless time of numberless deaths, but neither consciousness nor life has ceased to arise. The felt quality and cycle to death has not modified the fragility of flowers, even the flowers within the human body. Therefore, one's understanding of consciousness and life must be turned to that utter, inclusive quality, that clarity and wisdom, that power and untouchable gracefulness this evidence suggests. We must cease to live in our superficial and divided way, seeking and demanding only consciousness and life in the present form we grasp, avoiding and resisting what appears to be the end of consciousness and life in death.
The Heart is that understanding, that true consciousness, that true life that is under the extreme conditions of life and death. Therefore, it is said, that One that is is neither born nor come to death, not alive as the limitation of form, not rendered in what appears, and it is the living One, than which there is no other, appearing as all of this, but eternally the same. -- Adi Da Samraj
The Heart is that understanding, that true consciousness, that true life that is under the extreme conditions of life and death. Therefore, it is said, that One that is is neither born nor come to death, not alive as the limitation of form, not rendered in what appears, and it is the living One, than which there is no other, appearing as all of this, but eternally the same. -- Adi Da Samraj
2
Is it fear of death, or the fear of dying that grips us? More and more I think it's the latter.
About 20 years ago I developed an outsize fear that a good friend and mentor was going to die before me. He was 65 at the time...Several decades older than I. He chuckled at my concerns. "What's the big fear? Death is the next great adventure! Who knows what's out there?"
His words and attitude have taken root in me, and I find that while I'm not rushing towards the River Styx I'm pretty comfortably curious and hope that attitude will stay with me.
About 20 years ago I developed an outsize fear that a good friend and mentor was going to die before me. He was 65 at the time...Several decades older than I. He chuckled at my concerns. "What's the big fear? Death is the next great adventure! Who knows what's out there?"
His words and attitude have taken root in me, and I find that while I'm not rushing towards the River Styx I'm pretty comfortably curious and hope that attitude will stay with me.
18
I once posited on these pages that at death the essence that is the "YOU" (not your physical remains, of course) returns to its original form and state: stardust is the form and peaceful describes the place. In time, this substance recycles. New life, regardless of the form it takes, must come from somewhere.
Parents lie to their kids all the time. But this is not really a lie, because we simply do not know. No one, really, "knows" there is a god, upper- or lower-case "g" type.
Here's a question for you. Is death known unknkown or an unknown known?
Parents lie to their kids all the time. But this is not really a lie, because we simply do not know. No one, really, "knows" there is a god, upper- or lower-case "g" type.
Here's a question for you. Is death known unknkown or an unknown known?
No more presidential election cycles to endure, or their outfall to be tolerated. Now there's a consummation devoutly to be wished.
14
“I do not fear death. I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born, and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it."
Mark Twain
Mark Twain
143
"It's only oblivion. We had it before, but it was going to end."
- Philip Larkin
- Philip Larkin
6
What I told my children about death is that by the time they are very old, it probably won't feel so bad to them to die, just as you are ready to stop eating after a feast. You've had your fill. I hope there is truth to this. (btw, I'm a philosopher too).
11
@RMW
Quite profound, and I think quite true...
Quite profound, and I think quite true...
1
At around the same age, 6 or 7, I also began to fear death and would sit bolt upright in bed in panic. When I came out of bed one night to talk to my father about my overwhelming fear I saw, maybe for the first time, that he really didn't have anything to say that could comfort me because there isn't anything really that you *can* say - it is simply true that we will all die. So I pretended that what he actually did say (about how it's a natural part of life, etc.) had made me feel better, and went back to bed. I realized that I was on my own to deal with the fear and I figured out a series of soothing words and images that I could see and say to myself when I had those panic attacks before sleeping. I still have those attacks 40 years later every so often and still find those childish words are what can bring my pounding heart rate back down. When my children express their own fears to me, what can I really do but say what my father said to me all those years ago, knowing that in many ways, though true, they are inadequate.
6
What is wrong with you people? You can't make up a fairy story for a child? Religion was created to get people through a life that was unimaginably more perilous and tragic than we know now. Without it, I doubt society would have continued. He's a child, he's got big fears and little irony, let him feed on any myth he needs to mature.
2
Ayn Rand has a strange approach to her demise. She said she would not die, only that the world would end. You cannot get more subjective than that.
7
Her interest and concern did not extend further than her own fingertips. I personally would find it profoundly depressing not to believe the world will flourish after my death. Why else plant trees and fund universities?
5
Absolutely correct. Ayn Rand's concern in no way extended further than her own fingertips. And she has millions of followers who are exactly the same, such as Paul Ryan and Alan Greenspan (to name only two).
1
Some of us are able to see beyond the edge and into the other eternal world, the world we already live in. Others cannot. For me, there is a deep knowingness that we transition into the next world after this one, and when you get right down to it, we are already living in that next world at this moment as well. More and more people are getting this...
10
I always return to Mark Twain: "“I do not fear death. I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born, and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it.”
11
Is it Death that he's really afraid of? Or is it an elaborate stand-in for something more palpable, about his life? Maybe a little old-fashioned 20th century psychology is in order: deal with the question he wants to ask, not the one he's asking.
7
My son-in-law was killed in an automobile accident the first day of summer. He went to work one morning, was said to have had a good day there, and we attended his funeral that night. My five year old granddaughter has her own way of dealing with this trauma most days: while everyone speaks of his smile, and his good humor, she recalls the personal result. "Do you remember when he used to . . . . ?" she asks rhetorically, while smiling at the memory of a humorous comment he made. "He made me laugh," she says, and she laughs at the memory of the earlier laughter he triggered in her. Her father left her with a sense of joie de vivre, an affirmation of life, warm and pleasant memories that will hopefully carry her through. Although he was in debt at the time of his death, he left her this beautiful bequest: the gift for getting through life cheerfully (most days) all tied up in ribbons of special memories.
38
We are born. We die. We make room for others. And if we have contributed a little to the well-being of others, we will be remembered for it.
19
for a while then everything will disperse and absolutely forgotten.
think that 100 million years later, who remembers what?
think that 100 million years later, who remembers what?
2
You fall out of your mother’s womb, you crawl across open country under fire, and drop into your grave.
Quentin Crisp
Quentin Crisp
The thing is, it is actually pretty appropriate to be afraid of death. Even if you sincerely thought we were all going to heaven, there would still be all the realities of going away for a long time, and all the experiences of dead pets and road-kill and family funerals, and Halloween and books and movies and so on. The whole human race hasn't been wrong all these thousands of years - like they say, timor mortis conturbat me. Or, where are the snows of yesteryear? And so on...
I imagine the best thing one could do for a little kid would be to come up with some comforting and true stock phrases like "Nothing is ever really lost" - I don't think you are going to teach a little kid to really understand death and face it stoically, but you can give him a sense that it is a recognized part of life - I suspect that when a kid seems really too obsessed with fearing death, there may be something else going on - which he'll probably get over in due time...
I imagine the best thing one could do for a little kid would be to come up with some comforting and true stock phrases like "Nothing is ever really lost" - I don't think you are going to teach a little kid to really understand death and face it stoically, but you can give him a sense that it is a recognized part of life - I suspect that when a kid seems really too obsessed with fearing death, there may be something else going on - which he'll probably get over in due time...
6
I'm not afraid of death at all really because it is absolute nothingness, but I am very concerned about dying. I want to be alive or dead but not dying. I want to have the choice of ending my life on my own terms. I wish there were an OTC drug, i.e. pill that one could slip under one's tongue and die painlessly in a minute or two. That would ease my mind tremendously. Meanwhile at 75 I'm enjoying my life. And I also had those childhood fears of rolling around in a dark eternity but I outgrew them.
8
Regarding death. I know people fear dementia. Having a mother who had dementia and having worked in a nursing home, to me, there is nothing to fear. I take comfort in knowing that as the dementia progresses you become less and less aware of this issue. In fact many people with dementia seem happy. Altho of course there are those who are angry and depressed. My mother was very calm and accepting even tho she wasn't aware that she had dementia. At a later stage I'm not sure if she could take in any information. But she continued to be content as far as I could tell. She was a very controlling person prior to her having dementia (as well as many positive qualities) If she hadn't had dementia I believe she would have feared death and would want to control it. It comforting
for me to know that she didn't have to suffer at the prospect of death.
As far as my outlook, I try to live fully in the moment. It helps me not to fear death.
Both my parents are gone now. I loved them dearly and they were two of the most important people in my life, aside from my children. When my father died, after my mother, I comforted myself by saying my parents were not gone. They are reside vividly in my heart as well as in my genes. It's fun to think about the different characteristics, and values, that I inherited from them. I am very lucky.
for me to know that she didn't have to suffer at the prospect of death.
As far as my outlook, I try to live fully in the moment. It helps me not to fear death.
Both my parents are gone now. I loved them dearly and they were two of the most important people in my life, aside from my children. When my father died, after my mother, I comforted myself by saying my parents were not gone. They are reside vividly in my heart as well as in my genes. It's fun to think about the different characteristics, and values, that I inherited from them. I am very lucky.
3
It seems to me that the fear of death expressed by some who profess to not believe in an afterlife (including this author) is based on imagining not that one's self will cease to exist upon death, but that it will actually continue to exist while nothing else does -- the idea that one will be consciously aware of a void, rather than that consciousness will simply end. To exist as a conscious being absolutely alone is terrifying, but to no longer exist as a conscious being should not be frightening, because suffering would then no longer be possible. It is nice to think that the material parts that made your self-consciousness possible will continue on after that self is gone and become a part of other lovely things like a tree, just as it is nice to think about how we are made of matter that came from a star, but I think the best antidote to a fear of death is to realize that pain, fear, anxiety and loneliness are things that we experience while alive, and no more once we are dead.
5
That the H or O will be used again by other organisms or become part of a cosmic junkyard is hardly the comfort your son was looking for. He had(finally-6 is pretty old) reached a stage at which he saw himself as a separate and ideal identity-his absence from the universe would be a tremedous loss- to him but, he knows, also to his mom, his dad and his friends.
Humans fight so hard not to die because there is much in life they are positive is of value and most of us are positive that the absence of life will be worse. No one needs the absurdities of the Catholic Church to fear it. In fact, the idea of hell and similar places are actually a comfort to many religious-the idea being that even the worst (of us) is not lost to God's notice, an existence that the big controller of things might possibly forget, or cruelly exclude them from future existence-even if the existence is to be repeatedly torn apart by mad dogs or to perpetually walk a circuit wearing a lead overcoat or to have one's feet burned perpetually standing, upside down, until Satan decided on something more colorfully awful.
The elixer, when it is found will never be be a real permanent fix-at best a temporary jiggering of the DNA. Arctic moths can stay development and eventual death by forestalling their growth into final adult reproductive stage. Some have been seen to do so for 6 extra years-an eternity in moth time-so it is possible.
Humans fight so hard not to die because there is much in life they are positive is of value and most of us are positive that the absence of life will be worse. No one needs the absurdities of the Catholic Church to fear it. In fact, the idea of hell and similar places are actually a comfort to many religious-the idea being that even the worst (of us) is not lost to God's notice, an existence that the big controller of things might possibly forget, or cruelly exclude them from future existence-even if the existence is to be repeatedly torn apart by mad dogs or to perpetually walk a circuit wearing a lead overcoat or to have one's feet burned perpetually standing, upside down, until Satan decided on something more colorfully awful.
The elixer, when it is found will never be be a real permanent fix-at best a temporary jiggering of the DNA. Arctic moths can stay development and eventual death by forestalling their growth into final adult reproductive stage. Some have been seen to do so for 6 extra years-an eternity in moth time-so it is possible.
2
You hit the nail on the head with the article and what a perfect timing because only yesterday my 6.5 years old expressed a huge fear of death. He asked me what happens when people die, said he was scared of it, and was inconsolable. I tried to explain the reincarnation to him to calm him down a little bit and it seems to have worked, however, he was still not 100% OK. I asked him what I could do to make him feel better and he said "Spend more time with me". And then he suggested that the best time together would be for him to sleep in our bed from which we finally were able to move him to his own bed 3 months ago! So now I am wondering whether my question prompted him to try and manipulate the outcome of the discussion, or he truly feels that I am not there enough due to long hours at work.
3
As an astronomer, I understand the satisfaction, such as it is, afforded by the knowledge of commingling atoms with the rest of the universe. But I (and my 98-year-old father) also appreciate the sentiment expressed by the author and in Thomas Campbell's words in "Hallowed Ground":
To live in hearts we leave behind
Is not to die.
To live in hearts we leave behind
Is not to die.
7
A wonderful piece which speaks to the human condition of having finite capacity and capability to comprehend the infinite. At 57 (grown kids, happy life), I have just finished another round of existential angst, my first occurring as a child. Fear of death, fear of eternity, fear of infinite space (what's beyond the edge of space, and where is the end of nothing? And so what and whatever either way?), fear of life--of being attached to something that will seem to end as suddenly as it began. What keeps me sane is the thought that my temporal mind, no matter how well developed and disciplined, is in its physical form incapable of understanding reality beyond its constraints, and that death may actually resolve much of the confusion. One thing that has helped is to go outside on a clear night, find a place with no artificial light, and stare into the inky black sky where first a dozen then a thousand then millions of stars reveal themselves to me. At these moments I feel part of something big, and vast, and significant, and forever. At peace for a moment.
12
Thank you for this piece. Your opening paragraph beautifully articulates my childhood experience. I had been curious about death. When I questioned the adults in my life, the answer was always: Don't worry. When we die, we go to heaven where we will live forever. That is when the terror set in. I wouldn't sleep as I tried to wrap my brain around the concept and horror of forever. The fear lingered as I aged. Around 18 I found a quote from Socrates (?) that basically said: to fear death is to pretend you know what you can't know. I felt a bit ashamed and somehow began the pivot away from my obsession with death. Soon after I was introduced to the idea of reincarnation - life as an energy that never dies. Life is an energy in flux...transforming itself again and again. I am thrilled by this idea even though I (as this current incarnation) won't live on. Each round is brand new. Every living moment is progress. What an adventure! Of course, I know that my philosophy is just a wild guess, but man oh man, I sure like the way it illuminates my life!
7
"This life is a persistently stubborn illusion", said Albert Einstein. The transcendental idealists (Kant, Schopenhauer, et al.) thought that the world, including ourselves, is empirically real, yet simultaneously transcendentally ideal. The notion that existence can be both real and ideal is bolstered by Kierkegaard (in Either, Or), who rejects the Marxist and Hegelian assertion that out of a thesis develops its antithesis, which is resolved by a synthesis.
If we can accept Kierkegaard's awareness that thesis and antithesis do not resolve themselves but instead coexist unresolved simultaneously, then we can more easily accept a reality that even in this seemingly material world, we can habitually experience a transcendent immaterial infinity, unbound by temporal and spatial aesthetics.
In such experience death dies.
If we can accept Kierkegaard's awareness that thesis and antithesis do not resolve themselves but instead coexist unresolved simultaneously, then we can more easily accept a reality that even in this seemingly material world, we can habitually experience a transcendent immaterial infinity, unbound by temporal and spatial aesthetics.
In such experience death dies.
1
Yes, agreed, we leave a wake in the physical dimension, and there is comfort in knowing that we have made some degree of lasting contributions. However, what is rarely expressed in broad public forums is a conscious view of the physical dimension from the next dimension. Those who have experienced this, through the ages and increasingly today, no longer see death as an end, but the natural transition of what we are, consciousness.
4
Maybe I did't focus on the text as well as I should have, and I'm certainly not one of those" grammar police"- I've learned from experience to curb my tongue when it comes to grammar, but I do teach elementary school and I can't believe that the writer, let alone the editors of the NYT, didn't notice that "had my brother and I cringing." Take away "brother" and see if "had I cringing" sounds appropriate. I know that it's an arcane point, and I hear it all the time in conversations, but when I see it in print from well-educated college professors, it makes me think that the old fashioned term "grammar school" had some meaning. By the way, I loved the article. Particle physics and Superstring Theory gives one another perspective on matter, energy, and consciousness.
6
I noticed the same thing. I thought the article a worthy one and thank you for printing it, and I will be sending it to some people with whom I correspond.
But I did notice that phrase: "had my brother and I cringing". Instead of using the objective case: the word "me", the author uses the subjective case.
I rarely if ever see this in the NYT. But using the pronoun "I" as the direct object or the object of the preposition jumps out at me all over the internet and in spoken conversation, mostly on television even on local newscasts! I don't understand why most people don't "hear" the mistake and find myself starting to think that this is becoming acceptable to either the younger generation or a certain part of the population.
Again, I very much appreciated the article and this particular word order did not detract from it. Sure hope I got all my grammar right in this post.
But I did notice that phrase: "had my brother and I cringing". Instead of using the objective case: the word "me", the author uses the subjective case.
I rarely if ever see this in the NYT. But using the pronoun "I" as the direct object or the object of the preposition jumps out at me all over the internet and in spoken conversation, mostly on television even on local newscasts! I don't understand why most people don't "hear" the mistake and find myself starting to think that this is becoming acceptable to either the younger generation or a certain part of the population.
Again, I very much appreciated the article and this particular word order did not detract from it. Sure hope I got all my grammar right in this post.
You enjoyed the article, as did I, and your concerns have merit. Words that are shaped into thoughtful, intelligent essays have meaning because of the rules we insist upon when we are putting them together. Beyond original thought and opinion, the rules of grammar in the written and spoken form also determine important things like: what actually was, what actually is, and what actually is missing, collectively, for a people,. If a society listens only to an emotionally charged parsing of words that appeal to its' biases and fears without understanding the artfulness of nuance behind their specific construction, it not only (in the immediate sense) fails to understand fact from fiction, but it is also unconsciously hijacked further into submission by those whom it thinks are its' leaders. Does anyone or anything come to mind here?
Noam Chomsky is alive and well and matters more than ever.
Noam Chomsky is alive and well and matters more than ever.
1
Living longer by replacing biological life with "other dimensions of life" sounds no less delusionary than extending life with afterlife. It's just an obsession to birth, life and death, delusions born of the notion of self. You destroy those delusions by recognizing that self itself is a delusion instilled in us by the evolution, for the purpose of self preservation and species proliferation, not by propping it up with more delusions. So, if someone asks me about death, my answer would be that there is no such a thing as death. I admit though, it's probably not an easy concept for 6 year olds to grasp.
2
From my point of view the way in which we never die is from the ways in which we have touched others and been a healing or loving presence in the lives of people we have known. When someone dies I think of the ways in which they have been a gift to me and the world and how much richer I am as a result of knowing them. Sounds corny but truly think this is what is important.
2
Worrying about death is a bit of a self-centered experience. As is natural, we are concerned about our own demise and not so much about the end of others.
But life goes on without us after our own life ends. We are just one little facet of total life. And isn't it the total life that truly matters?
Since life appears to be a virtually unending process, made up of dying and beginning finite processes which are our individual lives, it is best to look at the total process and not focus strictly on the individual processes which end rather quickly. Of course, this is easier said than done.
Still, to divorce one's view from one's own short life to the total ongoing process of life may be worth the effort.
But life goes on without us after our own life ends. We are just one little facet of total life. And isn't it the total life that truly matters?
Since life appears to be a virtually unending process, made up of dying and beginning finite processes which are our individual lives, it is best to look at the total process and not focus strictly on the individual processes which end rather quickly. Of course, this is easier said than done.
Still, to divorce one's view from one's own short life to the total ongoing process of life may be worth the effort.
3
Quoted from "No Death, No Fear" by Thich Nhat Hanh:
"The day my mother died I wrote in my journal, "A serious misfortune of my life has arrived." I suffered for more than one year after the passing away of my mother. But one night, in the highlands of Vietnam, I was sleeping in the hut in my hermitage. I dreamed of my mother. I saw myself sitting with her, and we were having a wonderful talk... When I woke up it was about two in the morning, and I felt very strongly that I had never lost my mother. The impression that my mother was still with me was very clear. I understood then that the idea of having lost my mother was just an idea. It was obvious in that moment that my mother is always alive in me.
I opened the door and went outside. The entire hillside was bathed in moonlight... Walking slowly in the moonlight through the rows of tea plants, I noticed my mother was still with me. She was the moonlight caressing me as she had done so often, very tender, very sweet... wonderful! Each time my feet touched the earth I knew my mother was there with me... Together my mother and I were leaving footprints in the damp soil.
From that moment on, the idea that I had lost my mother no longer existed. All I had to do was look at the palm of my hand, feel the breeze on my face or the earth under my feet to remember that my mother is always with me, available at any time."
"The day my mother died I wrote in my journal, "A serious misfortune of my life has arrived." I suffered for more than one year after the passing away of my mother. But one night, in the highlands of Vietnam, I was sleeping in the hut in my hermitage. I dreamed of my mother. I saw myself sitting with her, and we were having a wonderful talk... When I woke up it was about two in the morning, and I felt very strongly that I had never lost my mother. The impression that my mother was still with me was very clear. I understood then that the idea of having lost my mother was just an idea. It was obvious in that moment that my mother is always alive in me.
I opened the door and went outside. The entire hillside was bathed in moonlight... Walking slowly in the moonlight through the rows of tea plants, I noticed my mother was still with me. She was the moonlight caressing me as she had done so often, very tender, very sweet... wonderful! Each time my feet touched the earth I knew my mother was there with me... Together my mother and I were leaving footprints in the damp soil.
From that moment on, the idea that I had lost my mother no longer existed. All I had to do was look at the palm of my hand, feel the breeze on my face or the earth under my feet to remember that my mother is always with me, available at any time."
20
I think that the death of one's parents is the ultimate change in one's relationship to life and death. Reality as one has known and thought about it changes swiftly with their passing. This particularly true for me with the passing of each of my parents. The night my father died at 69, after struggling from a massive heart attack about two months earlier, I felt the universe became a different place. I felt this chnage even as I was free to walk out of the hospital. He had been a very powerful and enigmatic person. The traces that he left upon this earth were not even a shadow of his power as a living human being. The money, over 50 million, quickly dwindled to so much less in the great recession, and now we give gifts to institutions in his name. They are meaningful gifts. Some provide solace and support. Thru others we hope to spark another human being to greatness. But I have learned that there is a great abyss. The difference between life fully embraced and lived and death is everything. The world changed on this day my father died, and that has been with me ever since. The fear of the child is real and warranted. The ephemorality of existence is all around us. We just find ways to pretend it doesn't exist. We try to find comfort in our children, in longevity, in tv and movies and books and philosophy.
1
life itself never ends...
the manifestations of it only change little by little...
those currently in-the-present share an awareness of it
that will pass to yet-another stage when the biological
tissues are no longer useful.
be as whole as possible,
recognize and respect all life-forms,
do minimal harm,
remain forever curious.
3
This sometimes consoles me: if you think of time as a line, I exist for part of it and I don't exist for other parts of it. Why should that bother me? It's not as though the thought that there are some points in space that I won't exist at bothers me, so why should it bother me that there are some times at which I won't exist? Well, the difference is that we don't think that there is some absolute Here in reference to which we judge all of the other points in space. But we do treat time as though there is one Now in reference to which all other moments can be ordered. But why should I place so much significance on the Now? I'm either a temporally extended being or I'm not. If I'm not, if instead I'm a bunch of time-slices of a person, then I also don't exist in the past or in the future, never passing from moment to moment (in which case, existentially, I have bigger things to worry about than the death of the organism I'm associated with). If I am a temporally extended being, then I always exist at exactly the points in time that I exist at. And then I don't see why it should bother me so much that the Now passes over my temporally limited existence, any more than it bothers me that there are points in space that I may not be able to get back to. I might want my life to be long, pleasant, and experientially rich, in the same way that I don't want to be spacially confined to a small cell, but the idea that the Now will one day leave my life behind isn't a great tragedy.
2
Tell him that death is scary, but that at age 6--as long as he stays healthy and safe--he's got a LOOONG way to go. Unless you're worried it'll freak him out even more, relay your own fears about mortality; it may be curiously reassuring that he's not alone in his fear. After all, the reason religion exists is because of the human dread of death. Most of all, inculcate a sense of making as much as he can of his limited life, celebrating simply being alive.
Incidentally, slightly off topic, but you may have noticed that even people who advocate plain, non-euphemistic, call-a-spade-a-spade language will often refer to "my dad, who passed away," rather than "my father, who died."
Incidentally, slightly off topic, but you may have noticed that even people who advocate plain, non-euphemistic, call-a-spade-a-spade language will often refer to "my dad, who passed away," rather than "my father, who died."
1
Why presume that that religion is motivated by one concern? (death?). A little more thought will reveal evidence to the contrary. People of faith have given their lives for their beliefs. Jesus says that he who seeks to preserve his life, should be prepared to lose it. Death is the ultimate crisis for the self-made man. It turns out that we can't control everything. That is a good place to be, character wise.
4
My husband died over a year ago at age 93. At age 92 he said to me one day, "I'm feeling very sad." When I asked him "why", he replied, "Because I'm going to die soon, and I don't want to leave you!" Thanks to Hospice, he was able to die peacefully at home. I do not think that he is missing me now, but I do miss him! It seems we conjure up various stories to relieve ourselves of our fears of the unknowable about death. Whatever story works for you - go for it!!
98
be here now
30
CLEARLY our fears of death are more immediate : the absolute death of consciousness forever. However lovely the idea of our lingering and gradual absorption into the greater universe are, they do not compensate for this stark and unrelenting reality.
Death IS horrible.... Horrible to members of the first world with all manner of toys and distractions, horrible to the rest of the planet,struggling against all manner of deprivations and injustice.
Suggesting that abstract bits of us linger in chemical compounds and residual memories among our survivors is not the issue and not much in the way of consolation.
Death IS horrible.... Horrible to members of the first world with all manner of toys and distractions, horrible to the rest of the planet,struggling against all manner of deprivations and injustice.
Suggesting that abstract bits of us linger in chemical compounds and residual memories among our survivors is not the issue and not much in the way of consolation.
9
Mr. Rockhill, you and your child might enjoy the movie Kubo, playing in theaters just now. Probably closer to a 6 year old mind than your (by no means unworthy) philosophical reflections.
Do read "Why You Want a Physicist At Your Funeral". This essay does give dimensional hope, at least to those who are left behind.
7
Even if we somehow transcend the physical body and live on as some kind of "spirit" or at least coherent energy, will we survive the ultimate death of the universe, when the last electron decays and the universe becomes cold and dead?
1
At what moment, in a progressive history of Alzheimer’s dementia, does death occur? The “scandal” of death, as Rockhill’s excellent article makes clear, is that after so many years no one really knows what death is. Is it biological? Physical? Mental? It is easier to dread death than to understand it. Faced with the extinction of the self, it is as tempting to invent stories about the survival of the “spirit” after death as it is to deny the existence of the self altogether, as the eliminativist does, since “selfhood” eludes the scientist’s reductive definitions. One thing seems clear: facing up to the dread of death and facing up to the dread of life are one and the same.
5
I completely sympathize with your dilemma. I suffered from the same kind of anxiety when I was a child (probably triggered by the death of a beloved grandmother; my father grieved her loss so deeply that we were never allowed to so much as mention her name--which meant she "disappeared" completely from our lives except as a photo on my parents' dresser). I still have these fears late at night, and neither religion nor philosophy have helped me overcome them.
My niece also suffered (and perhaps still does) from them, which to my mind, suggests either a biological reason or family patterns that evoke this response.
I'm not sure what I would tell a child, but for me, I am trying to accept them. They seem to be less acute when I do that. I'm a writer, and so I just think that whatever it is that makes me view the world so keenly is the same thing that makes me fear death. But one thing I know is that my relationship with those who came before me, such as mine with my grandmother, continues. It hasn't died, even if she has. I have tried to learn things about her, about the way she was, her values, the things she liked and disliked.
So maybe you can tell your son that: that no matter what, your relationship with him and his with you and everyone who is important to him will still continue.
My niece also suffered (and perhaps still does) from them, which to my mind, suggests either a biological reason or family patterns that evoke this response.
I'm not sure what I would tell a child, but for me, I am trying to accept them. They seem to be less acute when I do that. I'm a writer, and so I just think that whatever it is that makes me view the world so keenly is the same thing that makes me fear death. But one thing I know is that my relationship with those who came before me, such as mine with my grandmother, continues. It hasn't died, even if she has. I have tried to learn things about her, about the way she was, her values, the things she liked and disliked.
So maybe you can tell your son that: that no matter what, your relationship with him and his with you and everyone who is important to him will still continue.
6
If your life is spent helping people your life's work will be permanent like the mountains. The results of your actions will be forever felt.
If your life is wasted on selfish pursuits your life's impact will be ephemeral and insignificant like a fruit fly's .
It is your choice.
If your life is wasted on selfish pursuits your life's impact will be ephemeral and insignificant like a fruit fly's .
It is your choice.
3
Nobody with half a brain fears death.
Only the 3 original monotheistic religions preach fear of death an an instrument of thought control. The Hindus and Buddhists preach reincarnation. But John Donne has the last word:
Holy Sonnets: Death, be not proud
By John Donne
Death, be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so;
For those whom thou think'st thou dost overthrow
Die not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill me.
From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be,
Much pleasure; then from thee much more must flow,
And soonest our best men with thee do go,
Rest of their bones, and soul's delivery.
Thou art slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men,
And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell,
And poppy or charms can make us sleep as well
And better than thy stroke; why swell'st thou then?
One short sleep past, we wake eternally
And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die.
Only the 3 original monotheistic religions preach fear of death an an instrument of thought control. The Hindus and Buddhists preach reincarnation. But John Donne has the last word:
Holy Sonnets: Death, be not proud
By John Donne
Death, be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so;
For those whom thou think'st thou dost overthrow
Die not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill me.
From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be,
Much pleasure; then from thee much more must flow,
And soonest our best men with thee do go,
Rest of their bones, and soul's delivery.
Thou art slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men,
And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell,
And poppy or charms can make us sleep as well
And better than thy stroke; why swell'st thou then?
One short sleep past, we wake eternally
And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die.
9
Life is a manifestation of organic chemistry, if there is a God, it is the carbon atom.
7
The structure of an atom alone is so astounding that the thought of our atoms being disbursed throughout the universe when we die is thrilling.
1
After dropping in to read the posts and comments on The Stone for some time now, I would make the following request of the NY Times: change the name from "The Stone" to "The Altar."
1
i dont believe in immortality, but just in case im taking along a change of underwear
i dont want to have immortality through my works, i want to have immortality by not dying
woody allen
4
How fortunate your children are to have you! You don't deny or belittle their thoughts and feelings. You have entered into a dialogue, a profound dialogue and because you are a guide and a seeker they will learn trust and remain open to life and its many cycles. Death is not to be feared, is confronted each day and gives meaning on so many levels. Thank you! One of the best essays ever in The Stone.
1
This article should be sent to the dead letter office.
9
There seem to be two discussions here. One is how to comfort a 6 year old who seems to have a preoccupation if not a phobia about his death. The other is about the adult Rockhill who never seems to have gotten over his fear of death. To to the adult I would say "Age 6 is NOT the time to have deep philosophical discussions about death - and for heaven's sake, why are you dragging his younger sibling into it? You need to a) get some help yourself b) quit feeding your child's obsession with our own uncertainty. He wants comfort not a treatise on the meaning of life." For the six year old I would say honesty is important but one needs to size it to the capacity to understand. I would say yes, everyone dies. There are many opinions about what happens after we die. I believe the good we do lives after us, and that perhaps our energy lives on in the universe. Mommy believes that God takes care of us all. Some people believe we just wink out like a candle. No one really knows but the important thing is how we live because that's what we can do something about every day. I will sit with you a while as you fall asleep. You're safe tonight we me.
86
The author is most insightful about death, confused about how to comfort a six-year-old, and oblivious to grammar: "...winter diseases that had my brother and I chiseling shallow graves for animals into frozen earth as young children." That had "my brother and I chiseling"? NO. That had my brother and ME...
2
As a small child, I almost drowned, lying on the sea floor, unable to lift myself up. During that time, I had an experience in which I flew past dark robed humans that emanated kindness until I reached. . what?. . ..a being who said, "not yet". The feeling that whole time was intense and blissful, to the point where I didn't want to return, even as my mother lifted me up. So this much (and only this) can I tell you: "there is more in heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your (our) philosophy." - Shakespeare
40
As a physician I have seen many elderly people, close to the end of their lives, afraid of death, and afraid of life. They say they believe in a hereafter, but clearly, they do not as evidenced by their anxiety. They do want to live forever, or at least a little while longer, but they are not interested in doing anything for themselves that will prolong their health and their lives (assuming complaining is not a useful act). I have never found much that is helpful to say to them; their obituary is the only thing they leave behind, and that in a small town rag.
8
Ouch.
2
Your comment is so lacking in compassion and empathy that I wonder how and why you decided to go into medicine.
2
It must be hard for you having to take care of people you think so little of. Have you given any thought of retiring?
My son was upset and angry about death as a young child. But being the youngest child, he was also upset and angry about times he missed before he was born, a time he referred to as "when I was dead." So I guess missing out in the future is really no different than having missed out on the past.
31
why do th religious beseech god to give them a second, better life, when he gave them th one they want to be saved from ?
sounds to me like this god fellow cant be trusted doling out existences
12
I can count at least twice in my 60 plus years that I was very close to dying, once when stupidly wearing headphones while driving (my car radio had been stolen) that I almost turn unknowingly right into the path of screaming fire engines. Some late nights in the dark I feel like maybe I really did die that day and that these 36 years since have all been a dream. maybe they have but in the end what difference does it make.
The feeling in my youth that death was far away and unreal has given way to the knowledge that my best years are behind me and my walk into the unknowable in closing in, all I can do is smile take another breath and enjoy the moments I still have.
The feeling in my youth that death was far away and unreal has given way to the knowledge that my best years are behind me and my walk into the unknowable in closing in, all I can do is smile take another breath and enjoy the moments I still have.
12
Turgid prose has become the hallmark of NYTimes op-eds and essays lately. "Engulfed in ineradicable darkness", "devoid of any point of apprehension" just gets things started, and it doesn't quit.
11
Maybe you're reading the wrong op-eds and essays. Here's a suggestion: Begin with simpler prose. Your neighborhood newspaper articles might be a good place to start. Good luck, Longue Carabine!
As for " . . . devoid of any point of apprehension", I'd say it's devoid of sense, which is another problem entirely.
As for " . . . devoid of any point of apprehension", I'd say it's devoid of sense, which is another problem entirely.
The man is a philosopher and writes like one in a beautiful and dare I say, poetic way as well. I, for one, enjoy this kind of writing and am glad it is a part of NYTimes. How about the Daily News? (Does it still exist?)
Great response! Thanks for the laugh!
no other animal fears death, bd it doesnt know about it, it can only instinctively flee from it
we alone have that knowledge
proving once again that knowledge is th source of suffering
thanks a lot, big brain (apologies to kurt Vonnegut )
What about the elephants, who seem to pay their respects to their dead?
1
Einstein said (proved, actually) that all time happens at once. Think about what that does to your musings about death.
1
This is not what Einstein said or proved.
1
A number of months ago, my 94 year old sister-in-law moved from her small apartment in a converted garage behind her daughters house to a retirement home, because she felt she might become a burden to her kids. She just moved back so she can regularly have dinner with her daughter and son-in-law as well as have her grandchildren and great grandchildren come as regular visitors. And she just got tired of being around people who were just waiting to die instead of living. Good on you, Ruthie!
The writer started throwing around a bunch of gobbledygook in the last few paragraphs to try to explain the unexplaineable.
Expose yourself to your deepest fear, and you will never feel fear again.
But when your deepest fear is death, then that seems pretty extreme.
The Zen philosophy of Being in the here and now will help overcome fear of death if you can do it. Rod Serling had some interesting ideas on death. Perhaps a binge watch session of The Twilight Zone, might help.
Expose yourself to your deepest fear, and you will never feel fear again.
But when your deepest fear is death, then that seems pretty extreme.
The Zen philosophy of Being in the here and now will help overcome fear of death if you can do it. Rod Serling had some interesting ideas on death. Perhaps a binge watch session of The Twilight Zone, might help.
Tell your child that the length of anyone's life is unpredictable but the value of living a life full of kindness, happiness and integrity is everlasting, no matter how short or long.
4
you (conveniently) left out the death of consciousness. That's what I, as a 6 year old, worried about, and I suspect you and your son worried about. In my opinion, the 6-year-old's fear is basic and wins out.
2
I noticed the author of this piece teaches at Villanova,a Catholic University. How do the Catholic leaders reconcile their absolutist views of death with the Professor
1
those Jesuits get a pass
theyre actually allowed to think
but they do believe in transubstantiation, i can vouch for that
3
Most 'Catholic" (or for that matter other denominational) universities transitioned to a more tenuous relationship described as "in the Catholic/Christian/etc tradition" long ago.
Sometimes it is a good balance for "freedom of inquiry". Other (most) times the catholic part is only kept as good for website pictures and fundraising materials.
For @Andromeda, Villanova is (in the) Augustinian (tradition!), not Jesuit.
Sometimes it is a good balance for "freedom of inquiry". Other (most) times the catholic part is only kept as good for website pictures and fundraising materials.
For @Andromeda, Villanova is (in the) Augustinian (tradition!), not Jesuit.
1
Your earliest recollections of death, Gabriel, seem permeated with both terror and desire. Summoning memories of your childhood, you picture death as a power which threatened to "seize upon" you, yet also "silently beckoned." You see yourself as both passive and active before the power of death, vulnerable to seizure yet capable of responding to death's silent appeal.
Your "restless mind" with its "unsettling thoughts" oscillates between its contradictory motives. Is death to be resisted or sought? As a child, you saw how death "attacks" and how close to the "slaughterhouse" we dwell. But you also saw death gently bestow on his "docile" body the rest for which "an old farmer" with a "peaceful demeanor" may have been grateful.
In your six-year-old you hear -- perhaps not his concern, but rather -- "an echo" of your own "conviction that I would die young." What children hide from themselves, however, and what you seem to have glimpsed, is that your childhood conviction arose from your childhood desire. Death appeals to children when they discover (at about age six) that their parents will die. That, for them, is a fate worse than their own death.
Your six-year-old is not thinking of death in the singular: Does everyone die? Couldn't "the entire family" live forever? His concern is not his own death so much as who will die first, you or him. Your youngest lays this truth before you when he "plays dead" himself rather than contemplate the deaths of his father and brother.
Your "restless mind" with its "unsettling thoughts" oscillates between its contradictory motives. Is death to be resisted or sought? As a child, you saw how death "attacks" and how close to the "slaughterhouse" we dwell. But you also saw death gently bestow on his "docile" body the rest for which "an old farmer" with a "peaceful demeanor" may have been grateful.
In your six-year-old you hear -- perhaps not his concern, but rather -- "an echo" of your own "conviction that I would die young." What children hide from themselves, however, and what you seem to have glimpsed, is that your childhood conviction arose from your childhood desire. Death appeals to children when they discover (at about age six) that their parents will die. That, for them, is a fate worse than their own death.
Your six-year-old is not thinking of death in the singular: Does everyone die? Couldn't "the entire family" live forever? His concern is not his own death so much as who will die first, you or him. Your youngest lays this truth before you when he "plays dead" himself rather than contemplate the deaths of his father and brother.
4
Science and spirituality are coming together on this subject. Medical technology is bringing people back from death, as attested to by more and more people who "die" and live to tell about it. These are Near Death Experiences or NDE's. One of the primary sources for more information on these can be found at the IANDS website. http://iands.org/home.html
near death is not death, as a near collision is not a collision
1
Many NDE people were legally dead, as in no heartbeat and no brain activity, even if it was just for a matter of minutes.
th belief in immortality is a win win for th believer
if hes right, well then hes jake
if hes wrong he never knows it, and he gets to spend his life being deluded in th certainty he will one day go there
3
Precisely why my most fervent wish is that I had some faith. Alas, I am simply incapable of it.
2
"We are consciousness, not life and form." Sri Aurobindo
When ideation evolves to the one that watches, immortality becomes a reality.
When ideation evolves to the one that watches, immortality becomes a reality.
5
LIFE Everlasting? The body is constantly eliminating dead cells and generating new ones. There are some specialized cells in the nervous system that do not regenerate completely, though it has been found that there is more regeneration of nerve cells than had been observed previously. As to living forever, archaeologists have repeatedly found the oldest human remains in Africa, meaning that all humans have some genetic material in common with those ancestors. In that sense, parts of ourselves are passed down through the generations. Still, everything that lives also dies. The oldest animals are tortoises who can live to be more than 200 years old. The oldest plants are trees that are thought to be a few thousand years old at the most. I'm 68 and thankful for having lived so long, especially since my two youngest siblings have died before me. All living things are born and die. In between is life. I have more fear of becoming dependent on others and unable to do things for myself than I have of dying. Of course, I wish to live as long as I can do the things that define me. I'd prefer to leave with dignity than to put my family through the agony of being drained emotionally and financially, only to have a severely diminished existence. I think that we children of the 60s have been surprised that we've aged, since we were supposed to be young forever.
2
When I had breast cancer about eight years ago, I thought a lot about whether I was afraid to die. I realized, at a very deep level, that no, I wasn't afraid of death itself, for we all die, and nothing in the world lasts forever. As Buddist thought tells us, all is impermance. What I was afraid of was that my death would be painful, prolonged with unneeded medical treatments, and/or very lonely (no family with me). I pray that I'll be in Hospice, at home, with family when my time comes, as it will.
1
We are atheists. From the first time my children discovered a dead bug on the sidewalk and asked me about it, I told them that all living things are composed of nature and when they die, back to nature they go to become another animal or plant again. It was not hard for them to grasp that themselves being part of nature, they are also on the same trip. We also have made a point of taking them to funerals when we can and generally talking about death as the inevitable thing that it is.
Having lots of little pets like fish and rodents, toads and snakes, butterflies and cicadas have also helped greatly to inform their perception of death.
Having lots of little pets like fish and rodents, toads and snakes, butterflies and cicadas have also helped greatly to inform their perception of death.
8
"As a child, I was terrified of death."
It seems the author began life with emotional problems - courtesy of his parents, or some specific experience? So, why not pass it on to the next generation?
It seems the author began life with emotional problems - courtesy of his parents, or some specific experience? So, why not pass it on to the next generation?
5
"Dead? What is that? A word to joy unknown,
Which love abhors, and faith will never own.
A word, whose meaning sense could never find,
That has no truth in matter, nor in mind.
The passing breezes gone as soon as felt,
The flakes of snow that in the soft air melt,
The wave that whitening curls its frothy crest,
And falls to sleep upon its mother’s breast.
The smile that sinks into a maiden’s eye,
They come, they go, they change, they do not die."
- Hartley Coleridge
Which love abhors, and faith will never own.
A word, whose meaning sense could never find,
That has no truth in matter, nor in mind.
The passing breezes gone as soon as felt,
The flakes of snow that in the soft air melt,
The wave that whitening curls its frothy crest,
And falls to sleep upon its mother’s breast.
The smile that sinks into a maiden’s eye,
They come, they go, they change, they do not die."
- Hartley Coleridge
2
As a minister, I can tell you from long experience that when I gather with families after the death of a loved one, there is a tremendous difference in the way that believers and non-believers face that loss. It is absolutely true what the Bible says: everybody grieves, but we do not grieve like those who have no hope (1 Thessalonians 4:13). There is a palpable difference in the feeling in the room, depending on the faith or lack of faith in that family.
Your love and concern for your son are very evident. My prayer is that someday you will find a better, more intellectually satisfying, and far more hopeful, answer to share with him, than you have come up with so far.
Faith in Christ, which is so quickly dismissed in a few sentences at the outset of the essay as a "fantasy," is actually deeply held by countless millions of thoughtful and intelligent people--even many PhDs like yourself. You might even find some of them at the Catholic University where you teach! I pray that as you continue grappling for answers, you will have conversations with some of these folks, and have enough of an open mind to consider what they have to say.
God bless you!
Your love and concern for your son are very evident. My prayer is that someday you will find a better, more intellectually satisfying, and far more hopeful, answer to share with him, than you have come up with so far.
Faith in Christ, which is so quickly dismissed in a few sentences at the outset of the essay as a "fantasy," is actually deeply held by countless millions of thoughtful and intelligent people--even many PhDs like yourself. You might even find some of them at the Catholic University where you teach! I pray that as you continue grappling for answers, you will have conversations with some of these folks, and have enough of an open mind to consider what they have to say.
God bless you!
9
Hooey!
1
If you live in or near New York, go down to Battery Park City and find the koi pond in the area between the Irish Famine Memorial and the ferry terminal. On the southern side, closest to the Mercantile Exchange, you will find Mark Strand's poem, The Continuous Life, carved into the low rock wall that encircles the seaward side of the pond. In it you will find these lines, which I am quoting here from memory:
"Tell them that they live between two great darks, the first with an ending, the second without one, and the luckiest thing is having been born..."
Read the full poem, and if you can, find a way to convey it to you child. Tears and hugs are as eloquent as words, and equally a part of our immense treasury of knowledge, connected as they are through this complex medium that we are briefly sharing.
"Tell them that they live between two great darks, the first with an ending, the second without one, and the luckiest thing is having been born..."
Read the full poem, and if you can, find a way to convey it to you child. Tears and hugs are as eloquent as words, and equally a part of our immense treasury of knowledge, connected as they are through this complex medium that we are briefly sharing.
2
We need death so as not to take the wonderful gift of life for granted. Ever notice photos of Tibetan buddhists? Smiling! And they meditate a lot on death; go to charnel houses to see dead bodies and realize the transience of life. Here are two references that I love: Mary Oliver's beautiful poem, "When Death Comes" and Maude (from the movie "Harold and Maude") telling Harold, "A lot of people enjoy being dead. But they are not dead, really They just back away from life. Reach out! Take a chance! Get hurt even" L'chiam!
3
Death is simply a permanent return to pre-birth oblivion. All the myths to the contrary make it fearsome.
7
We are made from star dust more than three billion years ago and we return to star dust
3
Belief in a Creator Who guides us to the good life of eternity is to hard to understand?
Rather live in meaningless fantasies and low expectations of a humanity that has lost all spiritual connections to their Maker.
1
As my time remaining decreases with age, and I am beginning to really know the world works, I don't fear death. What I do fear is not being able to pass along what I've learned to the next generation.
My younger brother said to his visiting and very concerned 2nd grade teacher, while in the midst of enduring a very serious disease, don't worry about me, I'm just going to laugh it off. And he did, and he survived to lead a full life that is not yet complete, from a stint in the U.S. Navy to the department head at a state university. He's always been the most upbeat optimistic person I've ever known and a complete pleasure to be around. We'll all live longer and be happier if we look for all the silver linings and ignore, or laugh away all the dark clouds.
1
this could all have been avoided if god almighty in his infinite wisdom had made just one set of people at th outset and made them immortal
but noooooooooooo, he had to make death
just living wanst enough of a shaft for his wonderfulness
1
An eternity before we are born, an eternity after our death, floods over us during our lives, unbroken and unseen.
4
This is sad. My only concern at age 6 was whether or not Santa was real.
I am on Medicare now and rarely think about death. I am too busy living.
I am on Medicare now and rarely think about death. I am too busy living.
6
Interesting topic. I enjoyed the clearly written comments much more than the article with all the fancy words.
6
few people seem to have a clear conception of immortality
many believe in it, but they have no idea what it will be like
id love to hear some more
Courageous, earnest stab at a difficult question. But you have the question wrong. We say it is death we fear, and you find meaningful ways to address it. But what we really fear is not exactly the loss of life, but the loss of consciousness and volition. Ask the next ten people you meet if continued life is better than death under these conditions.
1
read Schopenhauer
1
Tell the children the truth.
Be kind whenever possible.
It is always possible.
Be kind whenever possible.
It is always possible.
1
You'll be remembered only as long as the people who remember you are alive. And even then you'll be remembered only imperfectly. Those lucky enough to have their words and thoughts survive in books, movies and art are only a handful among the billions of striving lives. Sometimes I wish that I could stop time. But then I think if time stopped for me, odds are it would be at a stop light during a commute. Neither here nor there, in limbo for eternity.
1
I raised three children and never had this come up, ever. I grew up in the time when my parents thought we might go to war with Russia over Cuba, and we never had these problems or discussions. My siblings and I never had to be comforted because we were worried about dying. Sorry, I don't get it. If your children are fearing death so early in their lives, then you're doing something wrong.
7
Tell him by the time he's an adult unlimited lifetimes will be a reality, at least for some, and it is the old society and the death oriented forms of primitive belief that will die with it.
1
Religion or belief is not the answer to the ending of fear of death. If belonging to a religion, or holding a belief, were the answer, many would not fear death or life as most do now.
Look to the self to manufacture all ways of avoiding death.
Look to the self to manufacture all ways of avoiding death.
Permit me to recommend a book: "Denial: Self-Deception, False Beliefs, and the Origins of the Human Mind", by Ajit Varki and Danny Brower. It posits the notion that it is human's knowledge (apparently unique among all earthly species) of our impending death, and the resulting ongoing denial of that reality, which resulted in our optimism, confidence, and courage in the face of long odds - i.e. civilization, progress, and all that. [I have no personal connection to the book or its authors.]
2
This essay explains, in a different way, Hegel's "spirit of history." Whenever a father and son discuss existential questions late at night in the darkness, a spirit is created in the room—the spirit of grappling with fear through rationality and love—a spirit that cannot be destroyed.
2
"...Religion and spirituality were of little or no solace..."
Because religion and spirituality are the problem.
When my own son asked me if I would ever die, around age six, his younger sister beside him, I said, yes, someday I would, but the odds were good that it would not be until he was even older than me.
He then asked if he would die and I said everything dies, but the odds were good that it would not be for a long, long time.
When he asked what happens when we die, I told him that no one really knows, no matter what they say, but we were all made of atoms, star stuff (thanks, Carl Sagan!) and those atoms would always exist, nature wastes nothing.
Then I gave them science books for children.
Rather than worrying, my children took comfort I did not lie to them, about this or anything, as children can spot a lie a mile away and parents lying scares them much more than any truth.
Because religion and spirituality are the problem.
When my own son asked me if I would ever die, around age six, his younger sister beside him, I said, yes, someday I would, but the odds were good that it would not be until he was even older than me.
He then asked if he would die and I said everything dies, but the odds were good that it would not be for a long, long time.
When he asked what happens when we die, I told him that no one really knows, no matter what they say, but we were all made of atoms, star stuff (thanks, Carl Sagan!) and those atoms would always exist, nature wastes nothing.
Then I gave them science books for children.
Rather than worrying, my children took comfort I did not lie to them, about this or anything, as children can spot a lie a mile away and parents lying scares them much more than any truth.
28
I was also a child that has similar fears of death, and they also struck me when I would try to go to sleep. As a result, I can empathize with Gabriel Rockhill without necessarily agreeing with everything written.
But I don't need to agree! Professor Rockhill writes about experience and personal reflection, and that process, by itself, provides enlightenment.
Now is not the time to judge or criticize him; instead, we should reflect on our shared experience and the mystery of what lies beyond.
But I don't need to agree! Professor Rockhill writes about experience and personal reflection, and that process, by itself, provides enlightenment.
Now is not the time to judge or criticize him; instead, we should reflect on our shared experience and the mystery of what lies beyond.
1
When stating, "[M]oreover, the physical dimension of existence clearly persists beyond any biological threshold," we shouldn't forget that our children are the true sense of viable immortality. Offspring not only own half of our DNA in every one of their cells; but are also the embodiment, through their accomplishments (positive or negative), of the teachings and examples we provided, assuming we had the opportunity to do so.
3
My fear as a child was that my parents and others might die. As an adult, I lie awake sometimes with thoughts of my children. But I'm ok with the notion of my own demise.
2
There are two relevant phobias that attack young children -- fear of death, and fear of infinity. These are very specific phobias and some % of the population will suffer from each, and there is little to be done about it but bear it up. If we live forever, that sounds awful, if we cease to exist, that sounds awful. If there is a life after this one, we have to assume that somehow our ability to comprehend there will be greater than it is now. If there is not a life after this one, then we won't have anything to worry about. As for me, I have a fear of infinity, which started at a young age and which manifests itself still. I have learned to view it as something similar to a fear of snakes or fear of bleeding to death -- just something I need to put out of my mind instead of trying to figure it out, since there is no out or solution.
3
Should death be feared?
What is consciousness?
What is identity?
What would we be if we knew the answers to these questions? Surely not human. What a wonderful gift to be human.
Ask yourself if the mystery is there for a reason. Is it the answer?
Think about what infinity means. Remember that time is but a useful convention. It is not as we perceive it. Think about quantum entanglement and what that really means about the interconnectedness of everything and everyone.
"Merrily, merrily, life is but a dream."
P. S. I read somewhere that giving your life a mission, not an occasional errand, of spreading kindness and love will help tamper down the fear and isolation. We are not built to be so isolated. Rings true with me.
What is consciousness?
What is identity?
What would we be if we knew the answers to these questions? Surely not human. What a wonderful gift to be human.
Ask yourself if the mystery is there for a reason. Is it the answer?
Think about what infinity means. Remember that time is but a useful convention. It is not as we perceive it. Think about quantum entanglement and what that really means about the interconnectedness of everything and everyone.
"Merrily, merrily, life is but a dream."
P. S. I read somewhere that giving your life a mission, not an occasional errand, of spreading kindness and love will help tamper down the fear and isolation. We are not built to be so isolated. Rings true with me.
3
For many years, I shared your disdain for religion (although I was not, as a youngster, beset with the kind of death fear you described), and it was not until I discovered Buddhism that any kind of spiritual path made sense to me. In college, I was a Marxist/Anarchist, subscribing to the 'opiate of the masses' description of religion! Death was never really real to me - an intellectual, rather than existential experience.
Now, as I approach late middle-age, death is much more real - and I am truly thankful for my Buddhist teachings and sangha. For me, it is by far and away the most intelligent and useful way to approach and embrace our impermanence.
Now, as I approach late middle-age, death is much more real - and I am truly thankful for my Buddhist teachings and sangha. For me, it is by far and away the most intelligent and useful way to approach and embrace our impermanence.
3
which does more for you, buddha or th sangha
Many people have clinically died and come back. Some of them have shared what they saw on the other side to doctors who wrote "Life after Life". My uncle had that experience and after what he saw, he told me he had no fear of death. So, I think there is probably a better world waiting for most of us on the other side.
3
For me, it was the child's evening prayer that freaked me out. "Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep. If I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take."
Even now, typing it out, it sends a cold shiver down my spine. When I was five, it was terrifying.
Even now, typing it out, it sends a cold shiver down my spine. When I was five, it was terrifying.
6
terror training
for use later in life to control you by fear
Periodic Pew surveys show that in the USA, the two kinds of religion that are gaining market share are the two extremes: on one end the atheists and agnostics, and on the other end the evangelicals. Roman Catholicism is holding steady, the arithmetic coincidence of falling share of native-born Catholics and rising immigration of Catholics from other countries. Judaism and "mainline" Protestantism are losing share.
Why? The rise of atheists/agnostics is, I guess it's clear, the fall of superstition. It's been happening in Europe for a long time. No rocket science to understand that. But the shift from older, mainline religions to evangelism is more interesting. I think the answer is the fear of death. Evangelism promises eternal life in paradise, and all you have to do is embrace Jesus, you can sin and you will be forgiven, you will enjoy eternal paradise and nobody else will! What a deal!! Judaism and mainline Protestantism give you nothing like that. So, my theory continues, folks who for whatever reason (fear of death being one big one) are religious are going for the full Monty, and the others are just quitting.
Some asides: Roman Catholicism offers the same eternal paradise but the continuing sins of its establishment, from the Vatican down to the local pederast, have cut into its following. The Mormon religion also offers the same reward but is seen as a little too strange and unwelcoming for potential converts.
The opiate of the masses, indeed!
Why? The rise of atheists/agnostics is, I guess it's clear, the fall of superstition. It's been happening in Europe for a long time. No rocket science to understand that. But the shift from older, mainline religions to evangelism is more interesting. I think the answer is the fear of death. Evangelism promises eternal life in paradise, and all you have to do is embrace Jesus, you can sin and you will be forgiven, you will enjoy eternal paradise and nobody else will! What a deal!! Judaism and mainline Protestantism give you nothing like that. So, my theory continues, folks who for whatever reason (fear of death being one big one) are religious are going for the full Monty, and the others are just quitting.
Some asides: Roman Catholicism offers the same eternal paradise but the continuing sins of its establishment, from the Vatican down to the local pederast, have cut into its following. The Mormon religion also offers the same reward but is seen as a little too strange and unwelcoming for potential converts.
The opiate of the masses, indeed!
1
Gabriel Rockhill asks us to ponder the "psychosocial dimension that survives our biological withdrawal, which is visible in the impact that we have had — for better or worse — on all of the people around us."
Okay, but the human species is going to become extinct too -- perhaps sooner, perhaps later, but certainly sometime. So this merely puts off the date of death.
Instead of putting it off, embrace it: After death, no more committee meetings!
Okay, but the human species is going to become extinct too -- perhaps sooner, perhaps later, but certainly sometime. So this merely puts off the date of death.
Instead of putting it off, embrace it: After death, no more committee meetings!
1
Ah...some sanity in our world that is being strangled by religions that pit humans against humans, all in the name of some mysterious being that will promise eternal life someplace up in the clouds. Each time we smile at someone, or cut them off on the highway, we are building our "eternal" life. Even tho we no longer sit by the campfire to verbally keep our histories alive, a moment, however brief, shared with another, becomes a part of their story as well. My daughter is a nurse, and tho through the years many patients and their families will forget her name, each kind word or easement of pain or worry, becomes a part of their story in the telling.
It would be a better world if we could recognize the importance of our present moments and rejoice in them, celebrating the amazing lives we have, both the highs and lows, than to be concerned about the someday when our physical presence is no longer here. I am 69, and have had a full life, sometimes exciting and wondrous...sometimes fraught with pain and angst. But when I think of death, I realize that when I die, I won't know I have.
It would be a better world if we could recognize the importance of our present moments and rejoice in them, celebrating the amazing lives we have, both the highs and lows, than to be concerned about the someday when our physical presence is no longer here. I am 69, and have had a full life, sometimes exciting and wondrous...sometimes fraught with pain and angst. But when I think of death, I realize that when I die, I won't know I have.
1
I think like many I was afraid of death when I was young (by that I mean less than 40). Lately after much reading, thinking and life experience, I am not sure we ever do die. Our physical bodies die, but our essence may not. There is no way to know this for sure until one experiences "death" but I guess my attitude could be described as curious about what happens next. . . .
I do know one thing. After watching what happens to those who cling doggedly to life and are reduced to a drooling hulk, I will not allow that to happen to me.
I do know one thing. After watching what happens to those who cling doggedly to life and are reduced to a drooling hulk, I will not allow that to happen to me.
2
I do not fear death, as I'm certain I will not be aware of being dead. However, what I do fear is leaving life, whether it be via death or severe disability. That fear is not assuaged by the thought of any cosmic unity or effects of my heritage. I love life. I want it to go on forever, as long as I am mentally whole and not physically suffering without relief.
2
There is a new picture book for children published by the Feminist Press called Death Is Stupid. I made it for all the reasons Gabriel Rockhill describes, in particular, his vivid childhood memories of death fears at the edge of sleep. It encourages children and their parents or other adults who care for them to acknowledge the fear and pain of separation that comes with death, and, in Rockhill's words, to cultivate "the multiple dimensions of our lives", the parts that "never truly die because they do not belong only to us." Beautifully put! I like this piece very much.
1
The cloud picture made me think of the comment one of my 2nd grade students said to me several years ago. We had been studying the water cycle, and this student was a very intelligent and thoughtful boy. He looked at me and stated that we might be a cloud someday. He went on to explain that since our bodies were mostly water, when we die and are buried our bodies would evaporate and end up as a cloud. I thought it was a lovely picture.
1
I don't think these ruminations do much for a 6-year-old kid. They pale next to the fearsome reality of non-existence. A better description, I think, comes from a Buddhist thinker, who says each of us is a wave in a vast ocean. When we die, the wave subsides into the whole.
4
I doubt that young minds dwell long on dying. They are too busy chasing more interesting goals. I told my children that I'm not afraid of dying so long as I can feel that in my living I helped others along the way. I realize that people who died long ago still exist through their deeds.
It is amazing to me that we in the West are so proud of our tiny scientific achievements that we think we can make pronouncements on life and death. We have no clue what life is, how it comes about, what causes it, what if anything distinguishes it from objects that appear to lack life. We don't know wh.at dark matter is. We don't know jack. How can we possibly come to conclusions about "our finitude?"
Enlightened people, from the great Buddhist and Indian sages, to Christ, have said that the spirit is eternal. It is a fantasy of pride to imagine that science has disproved this. Moreover, science has literally enabled us to bring people back from the dead, and they report wonder ours things which absolutely cannot be debunked by science.
We want to think of ourselves as tough realists,who like Camus, have looked at the fact of our finitude and aloneness in a devoid universe with courage and have extracted meaning from it. It is way too soon to go there. The common sense perception, that we are spirits in a material world actually has as much evidence or more to substantiate it.
Enlightened people, from the great Buddhist and Indian sages, to Christ, have said that the spirit is eternal. It is a fantasy of pride to imagine that science has disproved this. Moreover, science has literally enabled us to bring people back from the dead, and they report wonder ours things which absolutely cannot be debunked by science.
We want to think of ourselves as tough realists,who like Camus, have looked at the fact of our finitude and aloneness in a devoid universe with courage and have extracted meaning from it. It is way too soon to go there. The common sense perception, that we are spirits in a material world actually has as much evidence or more to substantiate it.
3
The discussion about how we confront death is mostly about how we confront and overcome our fears in life. Tragically, many if not most of us are unable or incapable of adequately dealing with our fears. The reason may be because it is problematic to intellectually deal with an emotion.
The people who can conquer their fears generally live more rich and fulfilling lives. They are more focused on quality than quantity. Each of us try to find a balance between taking risks and facing our fears for doing so. I suspect we all wonder about the people who choose to take greater risks than ourselves and how they overcome fear in exchange for a greater sense of accomplishment.
I suspect the people who fail to face and manage their fears in life will ultimately die in fear, in which case, the sum total of their life was probably far less than what it could and should have been.
I just want to take this opportunity to again plug unlimited access to mental health care and counseling - the cost is minuscule compared to the potentially extraordinary benefits. Everyone deserves the opportunity to live a full and rewarding life. Good mental health is at least as important as good physical health in terms of living a good life - for however long it may last.
The people who can conquer their fears generally live more rich and fulfilling lives. They are more focused on quality than quantity. Each of us try to find a balance between taking risks and facing our fears for doing so. I suspect we all wonder about the people who choose to take greater risks than ourselves and how they overcome fear in exchange for a greater sense of accomplishment.
I suspect the people who fail to face and manage their fears in life will ultimately die in fear, in which case, the sum total of their life was probably far less than what it could and should have been.
I just want to take this opportunity to again plug unlimited access to mental health care and counseling - the cost is minuscule compared to the potentially extraordinary benefits. Everyone deserves the opportunity to live a full and rewarding life. Good mental health is at least as important as good physical health in terms of living a good life - for however long it may last.
Whenever a loved one died, my parents not only planned (or attended) the usual funeral service and shared favorite memories but also spoke regularly of their deceased parents, friends, aunts, uncles, siblings, etc.
They also shared stories and anecdotes- some humorous, some sad. They did not hide their tears when they learned that a cherished friend or relative had died.
Their actions comforted me -and my sibling. After I became a parent, I followed my parents' lead. My children, now adults, tell me that while they went through the natural stages of sadness and anxiety children feel when confronting the reality of mortality, they also felt comforted by the possibility that they too would not be forgotten.
Amid the hustle and bustle of life, it is natural to focus on what we want to accomplish -today and tomorrow- while forgetting to take time to look back at those we knew and loved along the way. It takes effort and determination to keep them alive in our memories and in our hearts. And even more effort to share those memories with our children.
But I am determined to do my best to remember those I've known, even when those memories stir grief. I hope that after I am gone, someone will do the same for me. That hope is a solace.
They also shared stories and anecdotes- some humorous, some sad. They did not hide their tears when they learned that a cherished friend or relative had died.
Their actions comforted me -and my sibling. After I became a parent, I followed my parents' lead. My children, now adults, tell me that while they went through the natural stages of sadness and anxiety children feel when confronting the reality of mortality, they also felt comforted by the possibility that they too would not be forgotten.
Amid the hustle and bustle of life, it is natural to focus on what we want to accomplish -today and tomorrow- while forgetting to take time to look back at those we knew and loved along the way. It takes effort and determination to keep them alive in our memories and in our hearts. And even more effort to share those memories with our children.
But I am determined to do my best to remember those I've known, even when those memories stir grief. I hope that after I am gone, someone will do the same for me. That hope is a solace.
As another commenter observed Epicurus (and undoubtedly countless others) had mortality figured out long ago. We die, our bodies decompose, and our lives only go on in the memories of others, our DNA if we have reproduced, and our impacts on the earth. So, what should we conclude? Life is short, it can be sweet, it can be hard, and then we die. Make the most of it. One admonition, try to leave humanity an earth that is as good or better than it was when you entered. To me at this moment that means shrinking my footprint and working on a sustainable style of living.
3
In 1994, Michael Newton, Ph.D., published a book called Journey of Souls. It was based on sessions with hypnotized patients who were providing details about their previous lives, and of their deaths. They all told very similar stories that boil down to this: life / death is a continuum, the soul is learning important lessions with each life, and we - with help from a guide - choose (or at least agree to) the lives we are currently living. Our souls but not our conscious being know what our next lesson is, we know when and how we are going to die, we know what our birth family and spouse/children family will be. We agree we're going to be great artists, or gay, or Republican, or whatever. After death, we review our lives with the guide and plan for the next life.
Until she was introduced to this life/death continuum concept, a woman who in a previous life was George Eliot's maid never understood why she, in this life, knew the whole story of The Mill on the Floss even tho she had never read the book.
This whole notion may seem a few bubbles off plumb, but it works for me. I do not fear death - it will be walking through to the curtain, greeting other souls I knew in life, and long chats with my guide. After that: on to the next adventure!
Until she was introduced to this life/death continuum concept, a woman who in a previous life was George Eliot's maid never understood why she, in this life, knew the whole story of The Mill on the Floss even tho she had never read the book.
This whole notion may seem a few bubbles off plumb, but it works for me. I do not fear death - it will be walking through to the curtain, greeting other souls I knew in life, and long chats with my guide. After that: on to the next adventure!
3
In my years till mid teens, my fear of death was more for my parents than myself. Mother especially.
I think the question, when I learnt to ask it, that has since been important is where was I X years (50 would be a good start for X) before I was born?
I think the question, when I learnt to ask it, that has since been important is where was I X years (50 would be a good start for X) before I was born?
As a child I had a strong fear of death, and also the desire to overcome that fear in this lifetime. But that's tricky if we're inclined towards seeing for ourselves rather than taking other people's word for understanding the world.
I strongly recommend traditional Eastern spiritual teachings, specifically Advaita or non-dualism. These teachings can be discussed and explained more or less in the following way: everything is one and it is only our mistaken belief that we are separate from the whole which gives rise to fear and suffering. Simultaneously, these teachings are meant to be practiced, experienced and realized first, and only second are they meant to be 'believed.' Because belief doesn't take us very far.
I strongly recommend traditional Eastern spiritual teachings, specifically Advaita or non-dualism. These teachings can be discussed and explained more or less in the following way: everything is one and it is only our mistaken belief that we are separate from the whole which gives rise to fear and suffering. Simultaneously, these teachings are meant to be practiced, experienced and realized first, and only second are they meant to be 'believed.' Because belief doesn't take us very far.
2
What happens when death becomes normal? When the violence in a country is so pervasive that the bodies floating down the main river on the outskirts of capital are viewed as normal, as happened in El Salvador during its civil war? Or when tens of thousands are disappeared by faceless forces tied to the government, as in Argentina during its dirty war? Or where violence becomes a part of nature where massacres, disappearances, assassinations and military ambushes come to define the national life for over 60 years, as is the case in Colombia?
On an individual level, the presence of so much death often negates death's power to instill fear. So many individuals work tirelessly, despite constant death threats, to overcome injustice, knowing that each day could be their last.
They are not necessarily courageous. Rather they have come to live lives filled with purpose, even if their lives might be be violently suspended. Prof. Rockhill's discussion of the multidimensionality of life, beyond the biological, helps us understand how ordinary people do what some might call heroic things.
In the situations described above, the horrors finally came to an end. The El Salvador Civil war ended. Most of the Argentine generals who are still alive are in jail for their crimes.
And here in Colombia, today is the first official day of peace. The war is over! So many died over a period of 70 years. And now maybe we can again begin to fear death - now as something which will happen later.
On an individual level, the presence of so much death often negates death's power to instill fear. So many individuals work tirelessly, despite constant death threats, to overcome injustice, knowing that each day could be their last.
They are not necessarily courageous. Rather they have come to live lives filled with purpose, even if their lives might be be violently suspended. Prof. Rockhill's discussion of the multidimensionality of life, beyond the biological, helps us understand how ordinary people do what some might call heroic things.
In the situations described above, the horrors finally came to an end. The El Salvador Civil war ended. Most of the Argentine generals who are still alive are in jail for their crimes.
And here in Colombia, today is the first official day of peace. The war is over! So many died over a period of 70 years. And now maybe we can again begin to fear death - now as something which will happen later.
2
What the wise words and interesting experiences shared here fail to address is for me a burning question: how do I as a father of young children respond to their questions about death and beyond? My oldest just turned 5 and so she naturally has little capacity for understanding such a weighty issue, but she certainly comprehends the concepts of the presence and absence of people and animals. With each month her questions become more nuanced and pointed, and I wonder--and agonize over--how one day I'll have a conversation with her that is wholly honest intellectually. I'm an atheist, but I confess that my answers for her now are those I was taught in my Catholic upbringing: God takes care of us all; all things that die go to heaven forever; and that we as a family will always be together. To tell her otherwise would, I feel, border on the ethically and parentally criminal--for now.
My definition of God changed late in life, when I realized I was worshiping a man high up in the clouds with his feet on Planet Earth. I now use the word God as a noun or modifier: God is the all of everything.
No one knows what everything is or how it all began. Through the millennia we continue learning a little more. Where it ends, no one knows. Neither do we know how it all began. We are here to learn to be kind and helpful; to stop the murder and mayhem.
Each person is a little bit different from all those who went before and from all those who will come after us. We are to learn there is no perfection.
No one knows what everything is or how it all began. Through the millennia we continue learning a little more. Where it ends, no one knows. Neither do we know how it all began. We are here to learn to be kind and helpful; to stop the murder and mayhem.
Each person is a little bit different from all those who went before and from all those who will come after us. We are to learn there is no perfection.
Typical gloomy western attitude towards death. Our religions teach us that life is one shot, and good luck, suckers! And this is postulated to be the plan of a loving god? Yikes!
Science teaches us that all matter is composed energy and energy is indestructible; it just changes forms. The automobile I drove 10 years ago is completely different from the one I drive now. Bodies are temporary; drivers are longer-lasting.
It is a tragedy for a young life to be cut short; but, the older I get, the more worn out my body becomes and the more I welcome death. It's planned obsolescence!
We can't learn everything in one lifetime anymore than we can be completely educated in the First Grade. Tell your son not to worry; he's been here before and will be back again. See you!
Science teaches us that all matter is composed energy and energy is indestructible; it just changes forms. The automobile I drove 10 years ago is completely different from the one I drive now. Bodies are temporary; drivers are longer-lasting.
It is a tragedy for a young life to be cut short; but, the older I get, the more worn out my body becomes and the more I welcome death. It's planned obsolescence!
We can't learn everything in one lifetime anymore than we can be completely educated in the First Grade. Tell your son not to worry; he's been here before and will be back again. See you!
This article is a well-articulated expression of the author’s belief in a particular concept – that he is his conscious experience. His conscious experience, however, is a result of his idiosyncratic learning history which, in turn, is shaped by his genetic capacity. Identified with this product of Darwinian and cultural evolution, he's terrified. “Vanishing completely”, “ineradicable darkness”, “a void so vast”, and “into the abyss” are all thoughts that reflect a confused learning history. Corrections in his learning history can eliminate erroneous beliefs. This will allow his conscious expressions/experiences to rise out of and return to the actual reality that is incorrectly represented by descriptors such as a void, darkness, and an abyss.
I was raised Catholic, so answers were available, if inadequate. What if you were born before Jesus? What if you were born before humans? Is their a heaven of dinosaurs? Flowers? What has stayed with me though is a sense of worlds beyond this one, energies beyond what we see, which is obvious, but what does that mean? I watch for coincidences. When my father was dying, my wife and I visited him in a hospital and then stopped for lunch at a busy restaurant. The waitress was handing me one of those buzzers for them to call us when a table opened. As I turned, I caught the eye of a man at a nearby table. He beckoned. We sat with him and his wife for lunch. He was an airline pilot and had a story to tell about his father, also a pilot. When his dad was dying, they worked out a code: 727 that his father would send in some way to say he was in a place that was ok after he died. He flew in for his dad's funeral, rented a car and glanced at the mileage as he started to drive away: it turned to 727. At a restaurant after breakfast with family, he paid his bill in cash and the change was $7.27. We had several experiences after my dad died that had us feeling there was a message from the afterlife, but nothing quite as mathematically precise as the pilot's story. For me this brings to mind Hamlet's line: "There are more things in heaven and on Earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy, Horatio."
4
Death is a difficult subject to brush-off that easily, given that our personal demise and disappearance 'must' be the price we pay for the survival of our species...at least until you discover that special potion of yours, for eternal life. Actually, if we could live passionately in the here and now, the future would never come, and we know our death must be roaming well into the future; so, when it comes, it may be considered a mere accident of nature. Meanwhile, we are each unique yet imperfect individuals, with virtues and faults, searching for relevance by shedding our egos to become one with nature. At least, that's the idea.
If we were able to harness our fears, especially the ultimate fear of annihilation of the self (and only very, very few -- perhaps mystics, those who've experience nde's, etc -- seem capable of that), we would realize that to live "eternally" with the same ego and identity would not be heaven on earth but hell on earth. I mean how many times can one eat at Lutece (showing my closeness to my own mortality), or ski in Gstaad or "enjoy" those 40 (or is it 75?) virgins (even if they constantly rotate) before one becomes so existentially bored that death would be a welcome antidote. It would be like "Groundhog Day" writ large except without the release from that hell which romantic love offered to Bill Murray in the movie.
The great paradox is that without pain, suffering and despair, then pleasure, joy and hope have no meaning. And without death, life would not be worth living.
That said, beyond the "longevity to our physical, artifactual and psychosocial lives" which the author describes, we should not be so quick to dismiss the possibility there is some ... well, one could call it "mind stuff" (or soul, if you prefer) that also reconnects to the cosmos upon our death. And, frankly, until our scientists can measure dark matter or dark energy or even gravitrons (let alone measure "outside" space/time of "before" the big bang or into the quantum foam) or simply explain what a "singularity" is, I'll leave my own mind open to the awe and wonder of what we will never know.
The great paradox is that without pain, suffering and despair, then pleasure, joy and hope have no meaning. And without death, life would not be worth living.
That said, beyond the "longevity to our physical, artifactual and psychosocial lives" which the author describes, we should not be so quick to dismiss the possibility there is some ... well, one could call it "mind stuff" (or soul, if you prefer) that also reconnects to the cosmos upon our death. And, frankly, until our scientists can measure dark matter or dark energy or even gravitrons (let alone measure "outside" space/time of "before" the big bang or into the quantum foam) or simply explain what a "singularity" is, I'll leave my own mind open to the awe and wonder of what we will never know.
Humans, for some reason, are obsessed with permanence. Even though we know nothing is forever, we instinctively seek forever. When we renovate a kitchen, we use quality products so it will last. Then we sell the house, and the new owners rip out the kitchen and put in quality products of their own choosing with no regard for the work, effort and values that mattered to us. As much as it bothers us to think that our values don’t matter to the new owners, we did exactly the same thing when we renovated the kitchen.
We hate the idea that we don’t have permanence, but the world would be an impossible place if we were permanent. For the short time we’re here, within what's possible, we get to decide how we want to impact our world. We don’t have to worry about to the values of billions of people who lived here before us, unless we choose to. The deal is that our lives are our own. But for that to work, future humans have to be able to live their lives their way without regard to our values or contributions. Some of us will leave something behind… children, works of art or historic events… that will extend our relevance. What future generations do with it… they will decide because it’ll be their turn. Mostly, our legacy will be that we go away and let future humans have their turn... as previous humans did for us.
We hate the idea that we don’t have permanence, but the world would be an impossible place if we were permanent. For the short time we’re here, within what's possible, we get to decide how we want to impact our world. We don’t have to worry about to the values of billions of people who lived here before us, unless we choose to. The deal is that our lives are our own. But for that to work, future humans have to be able to live their lives their way without regard to our values or contributions. Some of us will leave something behind… children, works of art or historic events… that will extend our relevance. What future generations do with it… they will decide because it’ll be their turn. Mostly, our legacy will be that we go away and let future humans have their turn... as previous humans did for us.
3
I had the death fear thing, too, but at an older age - 13, 14. After about a year I found the problem was that I was never able to completely, openly look my fear in the face. My body would revolt, cringe. My skin tingled horribly. Then I'd run away mentally. I forced myself to think about sex instead, or something else full of life. But soon I discovered that by forcing myself to look right at the monster, right into the total blackness... the fear rapidly began to lose its power. I developed a meditation where instead of fearing the fear, trying to avoid it, I consciously made an effort to look at my own death as I lay in bed in the darkness. And soon I found that there was actually nothing very big and dangerous lurking outside me; rather it rather something inside me - fear - which I could control if I focused my mind on it. Soon my fear of death went away (although I still meditate on it now and then) and I began to have great confidence in my power to fearlessly face life's fears. I have had a very wonderful and remarkably adventurous life.
So I would advise you to try, gently, to teach your son the art of meditating on death by focusing consciously on total blackness and non-existence as he's going to bed. What he's really dealing with is not fear of death (which none of us can comprehend), but fear of fear. Only when we look our fears straight on do we see them clearly enough to know that they're just another of life's problem to be dealt with. Good luck.
So I would advise you to try, gently, to teach your son the art of meditating on death by focusing consciously on total blackness and non-existence as he's going to bed. What he's really dealing with is not fear of death (which none of us can comprehend), but fear of fear. Only when we look our fears straight on do we see them clearly enough to know that they're just another of life's problem to be dealt with. Good luck.
No-one believes in their own death, and it is with a sound logic that we posit such a belief, so sound in-fact that the belief can be considered closer to factual observation than hopeful whimsy: we cannot experience our own death; we make a fallacious jump into nonsense when we imagine dying and equate this experience with death. So long as the individual avoids this fallacy, it is only suffering that can harm or scare us or leave us lying awake at night asking enigmatic questions of the dark. Moreover, suffering occurs throughout our lives and is received with far less trepidation when dying is not the result. If thinking of dying leads to existential crisis then I proffer the following caveat: you are thinking nonsensically.
1
You have comforted those of us who desire some measure of immortality, even if eventually that which is left behind, evolves, and is ours ultimately loses its identifiable link to us. Some artists appear to insure that specific type of identifiable eternity. What makes children shudder, and the fear of which we grow more accustomed as we grow old, is the unknown that is death -- the dread of eternal darkness. I suppose that is why some Christians' prayers for the dead conclude with the phrase, "and may light perpetual shine upon them."
1
The last paragraph of this piece is troubling. Isn't the author just transferring his death phobia onto his sons? An understanding of human mortality is fine for your children because it instills an awareness in youth that their presence is transitory. It may help to modify the id and the ego to a position of acceptance and harmony, rather than one of arrogance or superiority.
Excessive "twilight conversations" with your children about death are probably not enhancing their psychological development. I'd prefer that parents engage in an experiential existence with their children that will naturally yield memories less morbid.
Excessive "twilight conversations" with your children about death are probably not enhancing their psychological development. I'd prefer that parents engage in an experiential existence with their children that will naturally yield memories less morbid.
2
We are simply energy in a human form and the first law of thermodynamics states that energy can neither be created nor destroyed, only transferred or changed from one form to another.
“The nitrogen in our DNA, the calcium in our teeth, the iron in our blood, the carbon in our apple pies were made in the interiors of collapsing stars. We are made of starstuff.” - Carl Sagan
Not a bad outcome, that we all go back to being starstuff, from whence we came.
“The nitrogen in our DNA, the calcium in our teeth, the iron in our blood, the carbon in our apple pies were made in the interiors of collapsing stars. We are made of starstuff.” - Carl Sagan
Not a bad outcome, that we all go back to being starstuff, from whence we came.
10
when we die we go to a higher entropic state
another law of thermodynamics
And given the enormity or infinity of space and time who knows where or how our personal stardust will end up. A new reality could emerge in what seems like an instant.
2
dont bet on it bryan
When I was eight years old I remember lying in a grassy field on a bright, sunshiny summer day with bees buzzing around me and big white puffy clouds in the sky and "knowing" that I was part of it all. I was happy, content and felt safe. My first experience of death was when I was a teen and my uncle died after a prolonged illness. I was extremely angry and sad at the "unfairness" of my aunt being without her husband, my cousins being without their father and my Dad being without his dear friend. It was then I realized that everyone I loved was going to die and felt kind of hopeless. I wish someone had said that yes, we are all going to die, but the lesson is to LIVE fully and freely every single moment and think with every breath how to show others how much you love them.
Years later I took "A Course In Miracles" which renewed my understanding that everything in existence is made up of the same energy and that nothing dies but simply moves on to a new kind of energy in the great unknown. As the author says, our legacy is what we leave behind in the thoughts and hearts of others while we are in this space.
Years later I took "A Course In Miracles" which renewed my understanding that everything in existence is made up of the same energy and that nothing dies but simply moves on to a new kind of energy in the great unknown. As the author says, our legacy is what we leave behind in the thoughts and hearts of others while we are in this space.
7
Being a farm kid myself, life and death were just accepted as part of the entire continuum, no religion necessary. I felt no fear of dying and seeing an open casket of my grandfather at 7 had no adverse effects. During my lifetime, there were at least three times where life and death was a near thing (just missed an accident situation) and once, in a wilderness where it was me or the bear. By the time I reached mid adult hood, death had no hold on me Neither does an afterlife (although reincarnation is intriguing). We raised our children the same way and a recent talk with my granddaughter about my own mortality convinced me she will be just fine if I pass away. Spending time thinking about death takes away time living life. Live as if death could be any minute (and at my age, it is closer than it has ever been).
2
Some religions offer the promise of eternal life but the idea never held any appeal for me at all. Eternity is a long time. Half of the people sitting in church are probably bored before the Sunday sermon is over. Contemplate sitting at God's feet or whatever and listening to him drone on for, say, a billion years. I suspect that the average person would be begging for death well before the next century was out.
64
I agree with your condematiin of organized. They are primarilly money making machines. As the greatest comic of all time George Carlin once said since when did God need money. I have scientic proof not just faith,not that faith is unimportant tht we live beyond human death. My deceased wife visited once after her death. No I was not dreaming,drunk, or on drugs. She had a physical body. She was not a ghost. We did not talk. Her visit only lasted for about 2 minutes then she disappeared. Her physical death did not end her continuing to live. I know many will give many arguments against that I really did not see my deceased wife i.e. I had sometype of illusion or mental illness however I saw her just like I saw this article in the NY Times and the blue sky in LA i am watching right now. There is life after death not that a eternal sleep would be a bad idea would be a bad thing. There is a supernatural life. I have already seen it. Anthony Mastrandrea
2
modern religions are starting to offer divorce as an option
just make sure you get a good prenup
thats called an hallucination
th dead do not return in any form
th dead are gone
th sooner you accept that th better for you
Children also have a fear of abandonment. They also fear the death of those whose death would be abandonment of them, especially parents. If children tend to be self centered by reason of immaturity, this too is self centered.
3
When I was a child terrified of death, my mother helped me greatly by telling me that many people believed in reincarnation.
She explained it very simply, i.e., many people believe that you come back again and again, trying to evolve into a higher and higher spiritual form.
And that bad people come back as bugs.
Granted it was not comparative religion. But I found it vastly comforting.
She explained it very simply, i.e., many people believe that you come back again and again, trying to evolve into a higher and higher spiritual form.
And that bad people come back as bugs.
Granted it was not comparative religion. But I found it vastly comforting.
26
"The fear of death follows from the fear of life.
A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time."
--Mark Twain
A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time."
--Mark Twain
162
"He not busy being born is busy dying."
Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan
1
Little comfort to a child that has only begun to figure out how to "live fully". Skip the verbiage and demonstrate a "full life" and lack of fear. In the end, that speaks more to children (and adults as well).
A more long-winded way of saying 'my works will outlive me' I've never heard.
Excellent use of vocabulary. Many many ways of saying the same thing, and none to match the headline.
All this has been said before. What's more, recasting these thoughts in the personal is an indulgence.
People don't care about philosophy for a reason. This piece is one of them.
I'd rather believe in God than listen to another trite machination of self-pity enshrined in a po-mo poetry that doesn't even wish to achieve such.
Excellent use of vocabulary. Many many ways of saying the same thing, and none to match the headline.
All this has been said before. What's more, recasting these thoughts in the personal is an indulgence.
People don't care about philosophy for a reason. This piece is one of them.
I'd rather believe in God than listen to another trite machination of self-pity enshrined in a po-mo poetry that doesn't even wish to achieve such.
10
To someone unfamiliar with these concepts, they're new. Being honest about one's fears is not self-pity; trying to express them in the hopes of helping others (surely the fear of death is universal) is at least half altruistic.
What a beautifully crafted piece of writing. Allowing us to glimpse your current insights into the ultimately-unknowable realities was kind and generous.
7
Twaddle!
Before you existed was it frightening? Humans didn't exist for most of what we identify as existence? The simple truth is that oblivion awaits us all.
I don't understand eternity in either direction. That doesn't mean I can't enjoy a sun rise or the comfort of a warm hug. You can enjoy many things without understanding them.
Carpe diem! You'll be dead soon enough.
Before you existed was it frightening? Humans didn't exist for most of what we identify as existence? The simple truth is that oblivion awaits us all.
I don't understand eternity in either direction. That doesn't mean I can't enjoy a sun rise or the comfort of a warm hug. You can enjoy many things without understanding them.
Carpe diem! You'll be dead soon enough.
12
I was brought up in a very Catholic family, but was, from the moment I was born, a very pragmatic being. For example I was horrified to find that the wine did not really turn to blood at the altar during Mass and I obviously didn't have the same ability to suspend my understanding of the facts to "believe" as my mother would ask. "Just look at a flower" she would say, "and you'll believe in God." Well not me. Same with death. The idea of Heaven stretching out for ever seemed beyond boring, just nothing. And it was not until some wise person told me as a young teen to think about what I knew about the time before I was born, that acceptance of the continuum of life and death came clear. So it became my credo that we live for a while and influence those around us for good or for bad and that is the afterlife we leave behind. We don't take it with us.
Show your sons the photo of the Aleppo boy. There are a lot of things a lot worse than death in life.
8
From the moment we are born, we are slowly dying! It's just a matter of time and this life is just another chapter in a long process!
2
• As a child, I was terrified of death.
“We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light.” ~ PLATO
• The thought of vanishing completely from the world, of being engulfed in ineradicable darkness, would seize upon me and crush with it the very existence of the world.
"I do not fear death. I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born, and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it." ~ MARK TWAIN
• Today, my eldest child, at the age of 6, has fallen prey to these same fears.
You taught him. If you tense up the leash on a Dog every time another Dog approaches, you are YOUR fears instilling in yours. In the same way, you instill your fear of your child's fears into your child.
“Do not raise your children the way [your] parents raised you, they were born for a different time.”
~ ALI IBN ABI TALIB
(607 – 661 CE)
COUSIN of the prophet Muhammad
• Authentic existence is perhaps less about boldly confronting the inevitable reality of our own finitude than about recognizing and cultivating the multiple dimensions of our lives.
"We should seek the greatest value of our action." ~STEPHEN HAWKING
Do away with all Myth. I lost god and along with it the fear of death.
"Getting rid of a delusion makes us wiser than getting hold of a truth." ~LUDWIG BORNE
German satirist
Finally, this from ROBERT INGERSOLL:
"Death, even at its worst, is only perfect rest. The dead do not suffer.”
“We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light.” ~ PLATO
• The thought of vanishing completely from the world, of being engulfed in ineradicable darkness, would seize upon me and crush with it the very existence of the world.
"I do not fear death. I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born, and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it." ~ MARK TWAIN
• Today, my eldest child, at the age of 6, has fallen prey to these same fears.
You taught him. If you tense up the leash on a Dog every time another Dog approaches, you are YOUR fears instilling in yours. In the same way, you instill your fear of your child's fears into your child.
“Do not raise your children the way [your] parents raised you, they were born for a different time.”
~ ALI IBN ABI TALIB
(607 – 661 CE)
COUSIN of the prophet Muhammad
• Authentic existence is perhaps less about boldly confronting the inevitable reality of our own finitude than about recognizing and cultivating the multiple dimensions of our lives.
"We should seek the greatest value of our action." ~STEPHEN HAWKING
Do away with all Myth. I lost god and along with it the fear of death.
"Getting rid of a delusion makes us wiser than getting hold of a truth." ~LUDWIG BORNE
German satirist
Finally, this from ROBERT INGERSOLL:
"Death, even at its worst, is only perfect rest. The dead do not suffer.”
11
@Robert Coane
All you did is insult the author of this essay. Judge much?
All you did is insult the author of this essay. Judge much?
Live like each day is your last, and one day it will be. That was in a film I recently saw, and it stuck with me.
7
if only schopenhauer had had a vcr, how different th world would now be
Thinking I would craft a comment as a means of exploring my own questions about dying, I realized that what I rely upon is that "whatever happens" has always happened. It is universal and nondiscriminatory. It must be perfect. Somehow that erases any fear. Suffering is what I believe we truly fear. That is another question entirely.
13
Take him to church or synagogue or a mosque, etc.
5
Stunting a child's academic development by immersing him in a religious cult that ritually celebrates the sanctity of medieval textbooks hardly seems like a good idea, Bookworm8571.
Unless you want to take him to a sample visit of one trip to each 'house of worship' and let him know that...."this is how brainwashing starts, little Johnny....intellectual child abuse of the masses at a tender young age.... followed by a lifetime of irrational superstition, 'be fruitful and multiply' nihilism and disregard for modernity, science, reason and cognitive dissonance".
Better to tell a child that we're all going to die, and that's why it's important to LIVE fully in the here and now because the only heavens and hells in the universe are man-made and woman-made.
Unless you want to take him to a sample visit of one trip to each 'house of worship' and let him know that...."this is how brainwashing starts, little Johnny....intellectual child abuse of the masses at a tender young age.... followed by a lifetime of irrational superstition, 'be fruitful and multiply' nihilism and disregard for modernity, science, reason and cognitive dissonance".
Better to tell a child that we're all going to die, and that's why it's important to LIVE fully in the here and now because the only heavens and hells in the universe are man-made and woman-made.
103
It is organized religion that turned me away from any idea of a loving God who gives us eternal life. Now that i am trying to 'study' Cosmology, a joke really as i can barely do fractions, i am again reawakened to beauty, mystery, terror of it all, and the total lack of dogma. Still, some how, i don't understand it, i feel closer to something that is beyond my comprehension and this gives me joy and comfort.
8
Not sure about this solution, at least regarding the Catholic faith. In the Catholic Church, people are told they will go to hell after death if they die without repenting. That just increases the fear in any child's mind.
6
Recognition of the premises of existence, and conscious understanding of its temporal aspect, does not diminish the sublime understanding of its mystery and complexity. The concept of death is cultural, the reality of life and death is universal. Certainty and chaos at the same moment.
2
I remember, as a young child, fearing death and having an emotional moment with my mother. I don’t recall receiving any solace at the time. I asked my grandfather, the oldest person I knew and one most likely, in my young mind, to be facing death in the foreseeable future, if he was afraid of dying. He said no. I asked him why and he explained, “As you get older you kind of get tired of living.” This puzzled me and although I didn’t pursue it, I never forgot what he said.
Now I am at the age my grandfather was when he made the above statement and I understand. I’m tired of seeing, despite the heroic, persistent and unselfish attempts of good people, man’s inhumanity toward other humans and our planet. I'm tired of the ignorance, selfishness, thoughtlessness, cruelty and mindless behavior that seems to define our species. Human progress is so slow as to seem to be moving in reverse if at all.
Humans have become a blight upon this beautiful planet. We very well may destroy what is left of it and all the wondrous things nature has for us. Hopefully, we will destroy ourselves, become extinct and leave enough life for nature to rebuild in our absence.
In the meantime, we can occupy ourselves trying to make life better for our fellow humans and other living things in our world; enjoying along the way what beauty and wonder we encounter. All the while, knowing that when we die, we help the planet, in our own small way by lessoning the presence of humans by one.
Now I am at the age my grandfather was when he made the above statement and I understand. I’m tired of seeing, despite the heroic, persistent and unselfish attempts of good people, man’s inhumanity toward other humans and our planet. I'm tired of the ignorance, selfishness, thoughtlessness, cruelty and mindless behavior that seems to define our species. Human progress is so slow as to seem to be moving in reverse if at all.
Humans have become a blight upon this beautiful planet. We very well may destroy what is left of it and all the wondrous things nature has for us. Hopefully, we will destroy ourselves, become extinct and leave enough life for nature to rebuild in our absence.
In the meantime, we can occupy ourselves trying to make life better for our fellow humans and other living things in our world; enjoying along the way what beauty and wonder we encounter. All the while, knowing that when we die, we help the planet, in our own small way by lessoning the presence of humans by one.
264
Whatever we may or may not do to this planet before we go the way of the Dodo, one thing is certain - in several billions of years the sun will engulf this puny planet and destroy whatever life may remain. And with that, so it will be with any material remains of our own personal existence.
And many, many billions of years later, the entire universe will grind to a halt, dark, spread out impossibly thin, and impenetrably cold for the remainder of forever.
And many, many billions of years later, the entire universe will grind to a halt, dark, spread out impossibly thin, and impenetrably cold for the remainder of forever.
3
for many, this prospect - the death of the universe - is more frightening than their own death, since it would effectively erase all the "material and cultural vestiges we leave", of which the author speaks. But by then - hopefully - humans will have evolved to a point where these "vestiges" will reside on a plane unaffected by the existence - or non-existence - of a physical universe. That's my hope, at least.
1
it wont take that long
after man is extinct, which seems closer as time goes by, my guess is that in 1 million years nothing we created will be left-
everything will have crumbled to dust and been blown away on th wind
Life has no meaning. Each of us has meaning and we bring it to life. It is a waste to be asking the question when you are the answer.
― Joseph Campbell
When you die or what happens after has never been the question. The question is, what will you do while you have life?
"Each of us has meaning and we bring it to life." No mental gymnastics required. Batteries included.
― Joseph Campbell
When you die or what happens after has never been the question. The question is, what will you do while you have life?
"Each of us has meaning and we bring it to life." No mental gymnastics required. Batteries included.
94
I'm guessing that saying to his son, "don't worry my boy - one day you will be fertilizer!!" wasn't very comforting?
6
As a child, I was never terrified of death. In spite of the fact that Christianity taught me to be good in order to avoid Hell, I just couldn't buy into it. And when I asked my pastor what happens to good people who aren't Christians, his answer, "We must have faith that God will be just", that was the beginning of the end. Then I realized that according to my religion, all newborn babies are born as sinners with the need for salvation...and I decided I didn't need salvation. Instead of thinking about death, I began to live.
In fact, death is a fact of life. In the novel "Death with Interruptions", José Saramago describes a world in which each person gets older and older, but no one dies. It is a horrible place in which this novel takes place.
Of course, no one can take our irrational obsessions away from us, Mr. Rockhill. And your child may grow up to share your particular obsession. Parents often do pass their irrational obsessions on to the children.
As far as the after-life goes, you may certainly explain to your child that many people have traditions, but that no one actually knows...because that is the only truth here. But people who obsess about death never live, authentically or otherwise.
In fact, death is a fact of life. In the novel "Death with Interruptions", José Saramago describes a world in which each person gets older and older, but no one dies. It is a horrible place in which this novel takes place.
Of course, no one can take our irrational obsessions away from us, Mr. Rockhill. And your child may grow up to share your particular obsession. Parents often do pass their irrational obsessions on to the children.
As far as the after-life goes, you may certainly explain to your child that many people have traditions, but that no one actually knows...because that is the only truth here. But people who obsess about death never live, authentically or otherwise.
6
There is a model of mental disorders that argues almost all of them can be understood as the result of attempts to avoid feeling. Many people fear death, often for idiosyncratic reasons. In attempt to avoid their fear they may embrace religion or some similar philosophy. We would all be better off facing the fear and going on with what is important to us in the life we have.
I don't have the exact quotes but Mark Twain wrote that he was not afraid of death, as he had been dead for billions of years before he was alive and it was of no inconvenience. He also wrote "Endeavor to live so well than when you die even the undertaker is sad"
I don't have the exact quotes but Mark Twain wrote that he was not afraid of death, as he had been dead for billions of years before he was alive and it was of no inconvenience. He also wrote "Endeavor to live so well than when you die even the undertaker is sad"
6
"Since I recognized eternal transcendence as nothing more than a comforting illusion, the only thing left was my finite life in the here and now, which was destined to disappear forever in an instantaneous blackout. It is now patently unclear to me, however, that we ever actually die in this way. Our existence has numerous dimensions, and they each live according to different times."
Wrong. It sounds as though the author is still engaged in some heavy rationalizing about his own future. The blackout is precisely how we die. My 92 year-old dad went to sleep 2 weeks ago and didn't wake up. Our memories of him are OUR memories, not his. The things he accomplished are still here, but he is not. He now inhabits that state we all did for the billions of years before we were born. And to which we shall all return.
A simple answer for the son might be:
"Do you remember what it was like before you were born? Me neither. No one does, but we've all been there already. Were you afraid or lonely? Of course not. And when your life here is over, a long time from now, you won't be afraid or lonely either." Then focus on living; don't feed the fear.
Wrong. It sounds as though the author is still engaged in some heavy rationalizing about his own future. The blackout is precisely how we die. My 92 year-old dad went to sleep 2 weeks ago and didn't wake up. Our memories of him are OUR memories, not his. The things he accomplished are still here, but he is not. He now inhabits that state we all did for the billions of years before we were born. And to which we shall all return.
A simple answer for the son might be:
"Do you remember what it was like before you were born? Me neither. No one does, but we've all been there already. Were you afraid or lonely? Of course not. And when your life here is over, a long time from now, you won't be afraid or lonely either." Then focus on living; don't feed the fear.
22
This may help
The cosmos is conscious. Lift up a stone, you will find it there. Gaze into the night sky, you will find it there. Split an atom; you will find it there. See a butterfly, you will find it there. Watch a spider, you will find it there. Look at the person next to you, you will find it there. Look at yourself, you will find it there.
You and everything in and around you, living and non-living, is part of this cosmic consciousness.
Within it is an implicate order. Within that implicate order is intelligence. Within that intelligence is endless and timeless cosmic creativity.
The sole purpose of your life from birth to death is to become a part of this cosmic creativity.
Then and only then will you be able to realize who you are and who you can become; not here one moment and gone the next, but a part of an endless and timeless cosmic creativity.
Then and only then can your thoughts, your actions, your very being become the creative force they were meant to be. Then and only then will you find a life purpose separate from the distractions that surround you. Then and only then will you find your path, one where your life’s possibilities are without limit. Then and only then will you find meaning to your existence.
Then and only then will you find that you are now and always will be known.
www.InquiryAbraham.com
The cosmos is conscious. Lift up a stone, you will find it there. Gaze into the night sky, you will find it there. Split an atom; you will find it there. See a butterfly, you will find it there. Watch a spider, you will find it there. Look at the person next to you, you will find it there. Look at yourself, you will find it there.
You and everything in and around you, living and non-living, is part of this cosmic consciousness.
Within it is an implicate order. Within that implicate order is intelligence. Within that intelligence is endless and timeless cosmic creativity.
The sole purpose of your life from birth to death is to become a part of this cosmic creativity.
Then and only then will you be able to realize who you are and who you can become; not here one moment and gone the next, but a part of an endless and timeless cosmic creativity.
Then and only then can your thoughts, your actions, your very being become the creative force they were meant to be. Then and only then will you find a life purpose separate from the distractions that surround you. Then and only then will you find your path, one where your life’s possibilities are without limit. Then and only then will you find meaning to your existence.
Then and only then will you find that you are now and always will be known.
www.InquiryAbraham.com
4
I have some hope that we will live on, not from some improbable fable of religion, but from the advanced science of our descendents. If energy and information cannot truly be destroyed, then maybe our distant progeny will discover some unimaginable means of restoring that information and resurrecting long dead consciousnesses. Yes, I see no practical way of making this happen, but consider that to a monk of the middle ages an iPhone would have seemed a miracle of the gods. A few more such leaps of understanding may be enough to bring us back.
If humankind must uplift itself, then it is up to us in this transitional phase to "Keep the lights on" and ensure that we leave the earth without wrecking it through war or environmental degradation. We need to give our progeny a future they can build upon and maybe, just maybe, find a way to bring their ancestors back for life 2.0.
As to the odds, I am under no illusions that they are probably worse than hitting a hole in one on a Jupiter size golf course. And yet, any shot in the dark is better than none at all.
And yet...when I depart for my final sleep, it will be with the hope--however slim--of awakening in another world in the deep future.
If humankind must uplift itself, then it is up to us in this transitional phase to "Keep the lights on" and ensure that we leave the earth without wrecking it through war or environmental degradation. We need to give our progeny a future they can build upon and maybe, just maybe, find a way to bring their ancestors back for life 2.0.
As to the odds, I am under no illusions that they are probably worse than hitting a hole in one on a Jupiter size golf course. And yet, any shot in the dark is better than none at all.
And yet...when I depart for my final sleep, it will be with the hope--however slim--of awakening in another world in the deep future.
2
One of the coolest things is, as you get older, and more and more stuff breaks on you, and you put up with the same people, oh .. turning without a signal, parking their carts in the middle of the grocery isle, getting the wrong order at "fast food" joints, death begins to look much more appealing. It is how it is!
7
"Then he interjects that even his awkward sums might not add up because there could be an accident causing him to die before me." The risks of accidental death should be profoundly disturbing to a parent and in todays social climate there is good reason to be fearful. The existential threat that your children will die before you comes not from the microscopic corners of rare viruses, the concussive IED explosions or even the texting induced car accidents. The existential threat to the survival of our children and especially our grand children comes directly from the voracious jaws of the multinational crime organizations marketing and aggressively promoting illicit drug sales. More of our children and grandchildren will die form unintentional drug overdoses next week than the 548 American servicemen and women who died in combat during the high point of deaths in Vietnam Tet Offensive the second week of February 1968. Where is the outrage? Where are the street protests to stop the vast killing machine created by an American pharmaceutical industry systematically lying to the medical community and optimized by the drug king pins. Drug lords financing competitive urban gangs are catalyzing true wars to control their street corner drug sales franchise. These turf wars kill our children too. America wake up and look at the grim reaper coming after your children and grand childern.
2
“I remember Borges writing that we die twice,
once when the body gives out,
and then the second and final death
when there is no one left to tell our story”
—quoted in Death of the Liberal Class
by Chris Hedges
once when the body gives out,
and then the second and final death
when there is no one left to tell our story”
—quoted in Death of the Liberal Class
by Chris Hedges
7
Life force is a soul- not a brain that organically dies. Make the world a better place each day, by doing what makes you happy. Encourage your son to follow his heart, he will then contribute his unique gift to the world regardless of when he leaves his physical existence. Try and think of your son not your inability to answer his question - due to your lack of belief. There are so many positive constructive comments here to aid you. My faith in creation and the Universe that created it all has always kept me going, no matter what. Think about the vastness and mindboggling beauty of our world and the Universe. That would be a very positive exercise because everything serves a purpose in the natural world no matter who or what you believe created it. Once born- our bodies eventually transition to a place or dimension we've yet to experience. But a belief that it exists is beautiful and positive and is not a lie, it is a creation of our own reality. Go on ----create a wonderful world for your son to thrive in!
Be not afraid! If you aren't , your son won't be. Philosophy for adults with rational thinking ability is fine, for kids its way to real. Paint a colorful, beautiful picture that he can use his boundless imagination to enliven. Then he'll dream sweet dreams.
Be not afraid! If you aren't , your son won't be. Philosophy for adults with rational thinking ability is fine, for kids its way to real. Paint a colorful, beautiful picture that he can use his boundless imagination to enliven. Then he'll dream sweet dreams.
1
Mr. Rockhill:
Read philosopher, J. Krishnamurti (1895-1986), on fear and death -- not for comfort or illusion but for insight into your own thinking, all human thinking.
As a philosopher, you may have already read Krishnamurti since he gave numerous public talks all over the world and gave his life to helping others understand how thinking will not get you to anything beyond thinking. A silent mind is an open mind. Watch it and find out for yourself...Then throw his books away, as he often said.
Read philosopher, J. Krishnamurti (1895-1986), on fear and death -- not for comfort or illusion but for insight into your own thinking, all human thinking.
As a philosopher, you may have already read Krishnamurti since he gave numerous public talks all over the world and gave his life to helping others understand how thinking will not get you to anything beyond thinking. A silent mind is an open mind. Watch it and find out for yourself...Then throw his books away, as he often said.
2
Many children have questions and fears about death. Two books that might be helpful, and are not from a religious perspective:
Lifetimes: The Beautiful Way to Explain Death to Children
Sep 16, 2009
by Bryan Mellonie and Robert Ingpen
When Dinosaurs Die: A Guide to Understanding Death (Dino Life Guides for Families)
Apr 1, 1998
by Laurie Krasny Brown and Marc Brown
Lifetimes: The Beautiful Way to Explain Death to Children
Sep 16, 2009
by Bryan Mellonie and Robert Ingpen
When Dinosaurs Die: A Guide to Understanding Death (Dino Life Guides for Families)
Apr 1, 1998
by Laurie Krasny Brown and Marc Brown
2
Many children have questions about death - their parents teach them fears.
Ironic that I should read this article this morning. Yesterday I visited a neighbor, whose body is being wracked by cancer, who probably has a week left on this earth, Or at least the human I got to know and appreciate. And yet the mystery goes on for both of us. Perhaps he will get the answer (if there is one) sooner than me.
7
No child has an in-born fear of death. Children pick up their fears from their parents.
15
Every living thing has an inborn fear of death. It's why even a spider will run from a big foot.
I felt the same way when I read the article.....
1
Do any of us really believe we are alive, how do you know for sure? Pinch me, I'm dreaming. Trump for president, really?
10
Epicurus: "The gods are not to be feared; death cannot be felt; the good can be won; what we dread can be conquered." All else is burden, worry and unlived life.
2
Our Hope and Trust in Eternal Life comes from Almighty God. You or your son can read and understand the Truth directly from the Holy Bible, written by the Ancients through the inspiration of the One who crated the World. It drives away fear and provides a purpose for life. Your life. Right now and forever. JIM
4
If that works for, Jim, I'm glad. But, for many people, the closer they examine any of the existing religions, the less satisfactory an answer they provide.
1
Give me a break. Unless you can verify what you're saying, JIM, you're simply regurgitating someone else's self-calming superstitions.
Maybe for you. I'm not sure about others....
The world is made of facts, not things.
Facts don't change. Facts are eternal.
People are vast collections of eternal facts. Some facts are objectively observable (personal history, physical attributes, etc.). Some facts have a first person ontology (feelings, private thoughts, etc.).
The vast number of personal facts we actively or passively establish between our conception and our death are part of the true, enduring history of the world. Seen rightly, although our personal consciousness has limits, it is rooted in the eternal space time continuum, and permanently so.
It seems unreasonably greedy for being to fear our temporal limits when we are given extra temporal presence in factual reality.
Facts don't change. Facts are eternal.
People are vast collections of eternal facts. Some facts are objectively observable (personal history, physical attributes, etc.). Some facts have a first person ontology (feelings, private thoughts, etc.).
The vast number of personal facts we actively or passively establish between our conception and our death are part of the true, enduring history of the world. Seen rightly, although our personal consciousness has limits, it is rooted in the eternal space time continuum, and permanently so.
It seems unreasonably greedy for being to fear our temporal limits when we are given extra temporal presence in factual reality.
1
Facts are old. The world is made of lies.
1
We need more words for death, because there are many kinds, and most of those are experienced only while we are alive. Ever met someone who was just sort of wooden and blank? --or the other extreme, someone who is outwardly alive but really just a shell? How about someone who was romantically dead? How about Joe Schmoe, who has worked the same job at an insurance company for twenty years and also hasn't had a new experience in that long? Certainly that is a kind of death. How about the death you felt as a teenager when a romantic pursuit didn't work out? Or the death of your early ideals? --that is, assuming they didn't solidify into the straight jacket you are in now. Those are the kinds of death I would warn a child about (well, maybe not a child, but probably a young adult).
7
Men die, and they are not happy. This knowledge drove Camus' Caligula mad. But still we are usually incapable of fully grasping the concept of 'death' as in 'no more me!'
Because consciousness is how we relate to the world, we are no more capable of entirely grasping the idea of our own non-existence than we are of seeing our own faces without the aid of a mirror. Like Tom Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern trying to imagine what it is to be dead, lying in a coffin, and giving up because they're lying alive in a box, and being dead should make the difference.
At any rate, why should it matter? Once you die, 'you' will not exist to care about it, any more than unicorns somewhere are moaning, 'gosh, I wish I existed!' Ray Kurzweil's egomaniacal fantasies notwithstanding, it's questionable whether anyone is so invaluable as to be worth having around forever. The Greeks valued life in part because they understood its finiteness, and gave us the myths of Tithonus and the Sibyl, who were granted the gift of immortality and came to long for death. Sooner or later it becomes SSDD.
I'm not afraid of death. (It's prolonged, painful dying that scares me.) Part of me will never stop wanting to believe in the Rainbow Bridge where my cats and my childhood dog wait for me to cross to join friends and lovers. Wanting to believe is not the same as believing.
As Madelyn Murray O'Hair said. What happens when you die? 'You rot.' And most of us will be forgotten.
Because consciousness is how we relate to the world, we are no more capable of entirely grasping the idea of our own non-existence than we are of seeing our own faces without the aid of a mirror. Like Tom Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern trying to imagine what it is to be dead, lying in a coffin, and giving up because they're lying alive in a box, and being dead should make the difference.
At any rate, why should it matter? Once you die, 'you' will not exist to care about it, any more than unicorns somewhere are moaning, 'gosh, I wish I existed!' Ray Kurzweil's egomaniacal fantasies notwithstanding, it's questionable whether anyone is so invaluable as to be worth having around forever. The Greeks valued life in part because they understood its finiteness, and gave us the myths of Tithonus and the Sibyl, who were granted the gift of immortality and came to long for death. Sooner or later it becomes SSDD.
I'm not afraid of death. (It's prolonged, painful dying that scares me.) Part of me will never stop wanting to believe in the Rainbow Bridge where my cats and my childhood dog wait for me to cross to join friends and lovers. Wanting to believe is not the same as believing.
As Madelyn Murray O'Hair said. What happens when you die? 'You rot.' And most of us will be forgotten.
8
“If there are no dogs in Heaven, then when I die I want to go where they went.” - Will Rogers
If I thought heaven would be filled with dogs and cats, but no people, I would believe in it.
If I thought heaven would be filled with dogs and cats, but no people, I would believe in it.
1
Perhaps, but I will always raise a pint of prawns to you in remembrance!
The author could benefit greatly from an understanding of cybernetics and systems theory. Noel Charleton's book, Understanding Gregory Bateson, should be a required course for every college freshman.
About 20 years ago, I asked God to help me understand what “life is eternal” means upon learning, while at a spiritual retreat, that my cat had been put to sleep a day before.
This idea came right back: A half hour earlier, I’d been telling friends about his antics, unaware of his death. Right at the moment I'd been fully convinced of his life, he’d been dead a day, but I'd no sense of it and didn’t need to change how I thought of him — full of life — on account of this new information. I could ignore it and keep thinking of him as I had been. This was what he truly was.
Years later, within minutes of thinking intensely about a friend who was a terrible womanizer, I found out he had died, and decided, again, not to change my thought about him simply because of this news.
At his Romanian orthodox funeral, amid a lot of tears and the priest's rising wail, I wondered if “life is eternal” is just nice, convenient Bible verse, or a true statement. I asked for a thought, and this is what came: You do not know what his journey is. This was true. As much as I tried, I couldn’t prove otherwise.
The service was dramatic, but I felt calm, and looked beyond where his casket was standing and all the floral arrangements. There on the wall was another sign, a real one: “This is not an exit,” It read.
Life is eternal. All the signs say so.
This idea came right back: A half hour earlier, I’d been telling friends about his antics, unaware of his death. Right at the moment I'd been fully convinced of his life, he’d been dead a day, but I'd no sense of it and didn’t need to change how I thought of him — full of life — on account of this new information. I could ignore it and keep thinking of him as I had been. This was what he truly was.
Years later, within minutes of thinking intensely about a friend who was a terrible womanizer, I found out he had died, and decided, again, not to change my thought about him simply because of this news.
At his Romanian orthodox funeral, amid a lot of tears and the priest's rising wail, I wondered if “life is eternal” is just nice, convenient Bible verse, or a true statement. I asked for a thought, and this is what came: You do not know what his journey is. This was true. As much as I tried, I couldn’t prove otherwise.
The service was dramatic, but I felt calm, and looked beyond where his casket was standing and all the floral arrangements. There on the wall was another sign, a real one: “This is not an exit,” It read.
Life is eternal. All the signs say so.
4
There is the biblical notion that 'death is swallowed up in victory'. Victor or victim, the death rate is still one apiece. The notion that you exist between two non-existences would give the lie to the story that before you were born you went to the picnic with your father but came back with your mother. Likewise we live on in our children. I've had the same experience as a child, late at night calling my mother to sit with me by the window to share my knowledge of mortality. It is probably when we are most vital and full of hope the horror looms largest. There may come a point at which death seems a great blessing. It might be difficult to arrive at a helpful state of readiness for death. We might think it happiest to be able to say, after we die, 'Is that all there is?'
1
Being an eager student of history, I have always taken the long view - that existence is like a continuously moving train through time. For a while it's our turn to be on that train - to be a part of the group of living things moving through time here on earth. Passengers come and go, so the riders are always changing. We don't get to go the whole journey of the train, just between a few stations. Then its our turn for the ride to be over and then new people get on. It's all okay - just make sure you don't waste a second of the ride!
2
Dear Sir,
Look into Eastern philosophy, which sees us all as intertwined expressions of one pulsing, eternal energy, which at it's foundation is love. Experiencing this energy is the goal of life, its expression is love. Life is eternal and just changes its form over the ages.
If you want scientific proof of this view, investigate quantum physics. For a practical explanation try Meher Baba's Discourses.
Meher Baba's definition of God is "the energy behind matter."
Good luck, Louise
Look into Eastern philosophy, which sees us all as intertwined expressions of one pulsing, eternal energy, which at it's foundation is love. Experiencing this energy is the goal of life, its expression is love. Life is eternal and just changes its form over the ages.
If you want scientific proof of this view, investigate quantum physics. For a practical explanation try Meher Baba's Discourses.
Meher Baba's definition of God is "the energy behind matter."
Good luck, Louise
3
From the age of 5 to 10, my dog, both grandfathers, a grandmother, and favorite aunt all died. At 11, my other grandmother died, and two months later my father died. It was the custom of long wakes. I spent way too much time in funeral homes at too young an age. I don't remember anyone explaining those losses to me; I just knew I didn't like it. It was frightening to be able to talk and play with someone one day but be alone the next. The death of my dad was the worst. 64 years later, I still can't remember the exact date he died, and I am excellent at remembering dates. With his death, I didn't get to observe and learn from him what it is a man becomes and how he does it. While it is a consolation to think I will join billions of others who have gone before me, I will miss good food, playing golf, reading, laughing, talking with friends,learning, sex… I will endeavor to enjoy those things until that day comes.
7
The older I get (now 73) the more things can be seen to return, some in new guises, some permanent features of human need, desire, and limitation. I've never been afraid of being dead: I never could take seriously the projections and promises of the religion I was raised in. I remember reasoning that if somebody came up behind me and slugged me with a 2x4, I would instantly lose consciousness and therefore never be aware of the blow, much less the state of unconsciousness I would be in. Death is the same. Alive, you might fear being harmed -- run over -- shot -- subject to disease; you might think with horror of all the life you won't have if you die; but you can be sure that none of it will bother you a bit when you're dead. You won't be "enveloped in darkness" -- not that you'll know; you won't be still alive in a metaphor of not-being. Wittgenstein says "Death is not an event in life" -- though dying may be. Dying can be scary. Being dead isn't scary, or anything else either.
4
I know that God and Christ are a comfort to many, but they certainly were not convincing to me, not even when I was 6. I have recently found much sense and comfort in the Buddhist idea of "dependent arising." Rather than deciding I'm so special that I persist in an afterlife as a concern of the master of the universe, I get to see myself as never having existed too much at all-- at least not as anything solitary or irreducible enough to warrant eternality. With my own middle and high school students, I find the best way to push back on fear of death is to get them to contemplate life, its beauty, and its possibility. Perhaps this seems counterintuitive, because the more I value life the more I should fear losing it? Life does not appear to be a possession in this sense (and perhaps there is common ground here with Christianity). Before I worry about my demise I might think a bit about what I am. Such thinking led Socrates to die on schedule, for instance, without fretting too much.
2
The eternal is now.
4
For some, fear of living is far worse than fear of dying.
3
The question of death is not logical unless we know "who I am" - ignorance creates all sorts of hypothetical questions. Most of us are ignorant and have different concept about our 'I-ness" and live our life with our own meaning of death. For "knower" there is no death.
1
Beautifully written. I can't improve on the many comments here, but will add some of my favorite quotes that hopefully relate.
---
"His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead." ~~ James Joyce The Dead
---
"Was I sleeping, while the others suffered? Am I sleeping now? Tomorrow, when I wake, or think I do, what shall I say of today?" ~~Vladimir from Waiting for Godot
---
"The beauty of things was born before eyes and
sufficient to itself, the heart-breaking beauty
Will remain when there is no heart to break for it."
-- Robinson Jeffers, from the poem "Credo"
---
"His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead." ~~ James Joyce The Dead
---
"Was I sleeping, while the others suffered? Am I sleeping now? Tomorrow, when I wake, or think I do, what shall I say of today?" ~~Vladimir from Waiting for Godot
---
"The beauty of things was born before eyes and
sufficient to itself, the heart-breaking beauty
Will remain when there is no heart to break for it."
-- Robinson Jeffers, from the poem "Credo"
5
I go to many estate sales for my business. Every so often, I find full boxes of photos from the Victorian, Edwardian, and more often more recent. These boxes of images, babies, families, just married couple with the dew still behind their ears, in stark, often degraded black and white.
At an estate sale, these artifacts have been left behind, and not considered a "valuable." Ancestors whose last proof of existence is abandoned by their own descendants, already forgotten when the last person who remembered them dies.
What I have learned from this, is that it is a great relief that I too will pass, and the pressure to impress or last is simply a waste of time. Enjoy every minute you have as you have it.
At an estate sale, these artifacts have been left behind, and not considered a "valuable." Ancestors whose last proof of existence is abandoned by their own descendants, already forgotten when the last person who remembered them dies.
What I have learned from this, is that it is a great relief that I too will pass, and the pressure to impress or last is simply a waste of time. Enjoy every minute you have as you have it.
8
I went through the same terror of realization at a later age, I was 16. I lay in bed one night and realized I wasn't going to be alive forever and pondering that fact, I realized I would cease to exist. I bolted from my bed and ran into the living room, heart pounding and panicking. I could find no comfort, just the thought I wouldn't be here anymore, I wouldn't be thinking or feeling, I'd be alone and dead. I never could believe any of the religious ideas, they made no sense to me, and seemed to me to be like fairy tales. I couldn't tell anyone my fears, because I didn't want to hear that I was right, that I would disappear, so I silently suffered.
Oddly, as I've gotten older, it is manageable, I'm still depressed and disturbed by it, but I can accept it better.
People have created gods and stories for as long as we have existed to comfort us and give us a chance to live forever if we pray to something. We're not much different from the ancient civilizations that way. It's astonishing we have not been able to be more evolved and sophisticated given all our scientific research and development.
Oddly, as I've gotten older, it is manageable, I'm still depressed and disturbed by it, but I can accept it better.
People have created gods and stories for as long as we have existed to comfort us and give us a chance to live forever if we pray to something. We're not much different from the ancient civilizations that way. It's astonishing we have not been able to be more evolved and sophisticated given all our scientific research and development.
6
I am the leavings of many deaths.
2
More proof that people who engage in philosophical "thought" which accomplishes little of value to people who live there lives You are born, you engage in interaction with the rest of those living and you die. What more is there to it? Who knows? Who cares except those with too much time on their hands.
3
if everyone had your driving sense of curiosity wed still be living in caves and clubbing animals to death
1
No, we'd be living in caves and clubbing each other to death. That clubbing part hasn't changed.
1
Curiosity about what? In the 500 years since the Enlightenment began the most striking statement to come out of it is "Hell is other people".
1
"Have you ever experienced a period of grace
When your brain just takes a seat behind your face"
Paul Simon
Yes, I have, and just one of those experiences is enough to stop all the nonsensical worrying about death.
OK. MOST of the nonsensical worrying about death.
When your brain just takes a seat behind your face"
Paul Simon
Yes, I have, and just one of those experiences is enough to stop all the nonsensical worrying about death.
OK. MOST of the nonsensical worrying about death.
5
Do primates, dolphins, elephants, and other intelligent animals with social structures grapple with this issue? Do they also fear death? Can they even comprehend the notion? Is self-awareness a prerequisite? Are humans the only animal on earth who are cursed by this?
5
yes, only humans
bc were chosen by God Almighty for that blessing
Why we never die.
First the material "we" is a manifestation of the universe etched into time. What we have been is is always somewhere- not availing now as we move in time. Just like "we" are no longer the child who blew out candles on our fifth birthday our "we" rides on a ribbon of consciousness with unknowable possibilities. Insofar as we share in the infinite presence- that which has no boundaries and remains forever undefined- all our musings have reality somewhere in existence.
At least that what somebody told me.
First the material "we" is a manifestation of the universe etched into time. What we have been is is always somewhere- not availing now as we move in time. Just like "we" are no longer the child who blew out candles on our fifth birthday our "we" rides on a ribbon of consciousness with unknowable possibilities. Insofar as we share in the infinite presence- that which has no boundaries and remains forever undefined- all our musings have reality somewhere in existence.
At least that what somebody told me.
I believe that science (study of physical reality) and metaphysics (beyond physical reality) are approaching a confluence. For much of history mankind believed in an afterlife. Then fairly recently scientists pooh-poohed this idea because they couldn't find it in their experiments. Now their experiments have gone off the charts and are beginning to indicate other dimensions or worlds beyond this one. This is reminiscent of the afterlife variously described by many religions. So why should we be so quick to discard religion or an afterlife, when the science of quantum physics today is approaching a vast unknown region beyond the physical world?
3
dream on, betty
literally
betty
your understanding of quantum theory is from a cosmo article
qt is an attempt to explain observations of th physical world, not to go beyond it, bc there is nothing beyond it
your use of catch phrases may make you feel good, but they explain nothing
except to make you feel good
which is good i suppose
if feeling good but not understanding makes you feel good
In my family, death was never spoken of. At age 7 I had not seen or heard much of it. But at that age I put the available information together and "realized" that death existed and that I was going to die. This came as a sack of rocks onto my soul. Not so much a fear than a painful realization.
With my own children I have made sure to speak of death from an early age. They go to funerals and do not seem to be pained by the existence of death. They know we have but one life and it is short. That we should leave the place a little better off than we found it and enjoy life while we can.
With my own children I have made sure to speak of death from an early age. They go to funerals and do not seem to be pained by the existence of death. They know we have but one life and it is short. That we should leave the place a little better off than we found it and enjoy life while we can.
2
The wake we leave is our afterlife. For some, the wake is shallow and fades easily; for others it's deep and lasting; think Martin Luther King Jr., Delano Roosevelt, Churchill. But the wake is often dictated by timing and to think that there is some overriding plan that drives us all is to engage in folly.
We live a circumstantial existence, one thing following another and how we react to events is really the only "free will'we have and that is limited by the events to which we respond.
Death is death and our wake will be forgotten if not in the next two generations than certainly at some time after that.
If there's a doubt, try cleaning our your house and going through every photograph in it, trying desperately to remember the faces that look out at you.
I hope the experience brings new adventures, but I'm not betting on it. Simply to be remembered as a decent human being is enough of an afterlife and should satisfy most of us.
We live a circumstantial existence, one thing following another and how we react to events is really the only "free will'we have and that is limited by the events to which we respond.
Death is death and our wake will be forgotten if not in the next two generations than certainly at some time after that.
If there's a doubt, try cleaning our your house and going through every photograph in it, trying desperately to remember the faces that look out at you.
I hope the experience brings new adventures, but I'm not betting on it. Simply to be remembered as a decent human being is enough of an afterlife and should satisfy most of us.
In 1966, as the LSD experience began. I was becoming acutely aware that we exist forever. These lifetimes are adventures and stories to go through to pass the time (eternity). The forgetfulness of each beginning, as we emerge from the other state of consciousness, is a blessing.
To attempt to fashion the world, so it will be a happier experience each time you live another life, is a nice way to spend a lifetime. Then again, the universe is a very large place to have experiences in, with many worlds.
The main theme of that LSD experience was to avoid introducing hurt into the universe. For once you create this hurt you are responsible for it and will reap its effect, for it had not been there before. The same if when you create kindness. We are all gods and goddesses in this ability create kindness and hurt.
With this incredible power, what will you create today? And why was the LSD experience made illegal?
To attempt to fashion the world, so it will be a happier experience each time you live another life, is a nice way to spend a lifetime. Then again, the universe is a very large place to have experiences in, with many worlds.
The main theme of that LSD experience was to avoid introducing hurt into the universe. For once you create this hurt you are responsible for it and will reap its effect, for it had not been there before. The same if when you create kindness. We are all gods and goddesses in this ability create kindness and hurt.
With this incredible power, what will you create today? And why was the LSD experience made illegal?
6
I heard similar accounts about transcedental experiences under LSD. How can one tell is if this is a genuine exeperience of, say many worlds and new beginnings, or an socially created illusion that bears strongly under the effect of the drug? Could say more about it?
More about it?
Igor. With LSD the déjà vu of death is overwhelming. No one can cause you to feel it with words. You will know the truth of your immortality, as always, when this particular life ends. It is inescapable.
Let consciousness, be proof of the magic of life because it is Magic. The closest thing we have to "what caused us to be here".
It is so close as to be right under our nose. Yet so many fail to realize the absolute miracle of consciousness.
Some scientists talk of synapses and neurons causing consciousness, yet when you get right down to it, what is really there? Look closer and closer. Can you find the solid? It is all vibration, Magic in the end. What caused us to "be", hiding from itself to pass eternity away. It is all adventure.
Look to the plants and mushrooms to unlock the doors of perception and hope you connect the dots correctly. Hope you too will find that "Kindness" is the answer to existing for eternity in a glow of confidence, that all is well. Forever and ever, on this or any other fantastic world.
Igor. With LSD the déjà vu of death is overwhelming. No one can cause you to feel it with words. You will know the truth of your immortality, as always, when this particular life ends. It is inescapable.
Let consciousness, be proof of the magic of life because it is Magic. The closest thing we have to "what caused us to be here".
It is so close as to be right under our nose. Yet so many fail to realize the absolute miracle of consciousness.
Some scientists talk of synapses and neurons causing consciousness, yet when you get right down to it, what is really there? Look closer and closer. Can you find the solid? It is all vibration, Magic in the end. What caused us to "be", hiding from itself to pass eternity away. It is all adventure.
Look to the plants and mushrooms to unlock the doors of perception and hope you connect the dots correctly. Hope you too will find that "Kindness" is the answer to existing for eternity in a glow of confidence, that all is well. Forever and ever, on this or any other fantastic world.
1
My ego gets small comfort from the idea of living on after we die in our work or in other people. Lie Woody Allen, "I would much rather live on in my apartment."
That said, there is much to be gained by approaching dying and death in a wise way, Here is a radio doc I did for NPR on the subject, featuring Ram Das, Stephen Levine and several others. http://www.audiobyadam.com/2010/spirtituality-and-the-dying-process/
That said, there is much to be gained by approaching dying and death in a wise way, Here is a radio doc I did for NPR on the subject, featuring Ram Das, Stephen Levine and several others. http://www.audiobyadam.com/2010/spirtituality-and-the-dying-process/
4
Sounds like you’re still afraid of dying.
2
Many won't admit it, but everyone is afraid of dying. Some more. Some less. But it's still there, that fear.
Having developed self awareness, my belief that I will lose it within (at most) a few decades worries me. I just go on working at having the best life I can.
These fears are nearly universal and would seem to be an all too early awareness of the human condition in many if not all of us. I have heard them from stone cold atheists and fervent Catholics alike. I can recall such fears as a child-- and am aware of them in many others. As adults, they are still there and we try to rationalize them in various ways. Epicurus, for example, has a strong point although it does not quite hold water in a crunch. (Epicurus himself is said to have needed some reassuring on his deathbed-- but that is anecdotal.)
Let's face it, these rationalizations-- temporarily comforting or not-- are simply "whistling your way past the graveyard". All we have is the comfort of each other-- all of us being (this column is a fine example) in the same boat. A comfort, however small.
Let's face it, these rationalizations-- temporarily comforting or not-- are simply "whistling your way past the graveyard". All we have is the comfort of each other-- all of us being (this column is a fine example) in the same boat. A comfort, however small.
1
We all live forever - when we "die" we cease to exist. In other words, for the deceased, existence is over, you won't know it, don't sweat it. On the other hand don't commit suicide just because you're a little depressed, you owe it to your loved ones to live on; they could be very upset by your death.
1
"Why We Never Die"
What a strange title.. Of course we die.
As Doctor Who said, "Nothing last forever. Not me, not you, not the earth, not even the sky."
What a strange title.. Of course we die.
As Doctor Who said, "Nothing last forever. Not me, not you, not the earth, not even the sky."
3
Perhaps a poet and songwriter, Jackson Browne said it best:
Into a dancer you have grown, from a seed somebody else has thrown. Go on ahead and throw some seeds of your own. And somewhere between the time you arrive and the time you go may lie a reason you were alive, but you'll never know.
Into a dancer you have grown, from a seed somebody else has thrown. Go on ahead and throw some seeds of your own. And somewhere between the time you arrive and the time you go may lie a reason you were alive, but you'll never know.
2
My uncle feared dying in his sleep as a little boy. His older sister, my mother, told him that if little boys just died n their sleep like that civilization would,have lng fallen by now.
I find it interesting that the author teaches philosophy at Villanova University, a Roman Catholic college founded by the Augustinian Fathers. St. Augustine himself, who came to his faith later in life, is the attributed author of a poem on death, entitled "Love Never Disappears," which reads in part, "Death is a non-event... I have merely moved to the room next door." In various ways, great thinkers from Socrates through Aristotle through Thomas Aquinas have argued that the existence and immortality of the soul can be demonstrated through reason alone, i.e., through philosophy. You can find this kind of reason online... even if you can no longer find it at Villanova.
2
When my time comes it will be with the consolation that I will have followed all those that I have loved into that great unknown, and whether death leads to eternal darkness or a new journey it will be one that we all share. I would rather lay in eternal sleep than an endlessness of living without those that I cared for and loved.
2
Talk of death is best reserved for the cold light of day, surely the edge of sleep would be better used to focus on the wonders tomorrow will bring. Give the kid something to dream about... six years old? Pick up a happy book or two and read a couple of happy bedtime stories- eh, maybe this would be good for you also?
3
As a kid I had nightmares just thinking about eternal life. I could handle 100 years, a thousand years, ten-thousand years but forever and ever!? Then I realized that it was all nonsense and slept so much better.
4
Modern technology has significantly increased the numbers of people who have experienced bodily death and been brought back. There is a growing body of research on the subject of NDE's (Near death experiences) by highly qualified people who have studied thousands of cases around the world. 90% of NDE'ers report experiences of heightened clarity, immersion in a force of love beyond that ever experienced in the body, and non-verbal communication with beings of light. Consciousness beyond the body has been verified in so many cases it should no longer be denied. I urge people to investigate for themselves. check out the NDE website. It isn't enough to simply deny away others experiences or call them hallucinations. Not any longer.
2
I had one of those experiences when I was hit by a truck when I was a kid. The reason I had the experience is because I DIDN'T die. It is known, however, how your brain shuts down after your heart attack, and hearing goes last. So, talk to the dying or play their favorite music. But, if you are at the epicenter of a thermonuclear blast, you don't get the light show or the endorphins. Poof - you're gone and you won't notice it.
This piece can be summed up in a phrase of philosopher Martin Heidegger: "We must live out the reality of our mortality; without succumbing to fantasy or despair."
1
Thank you for this thoughtful article. Given trial-worthy evidence of Jesus' days on earth and documented appearances after his death, I strive--through my sometimes fearful thoughts of death--to hold on to Christ's promise that he goes before us to prepare a place for us, that God's house has "many rooms," and that he would not tell us this if it were not true. It is also helpful to adopt the thinking that we as individuals should not be our central reference point as the center of the universe, but to make neighbor and God the "center," and use our gifts to benefit others, to end suffering, and to preserve the natural world around us. Peace.
3
Given trial-worthy evidence of Jesus' days on earth and documented appearances after his death
can you share some of that 'evidence
that trial worthy evidence
and some documentation on his appearances after life ?
his image on a tortilla in mexico doesn't count
Igne Natura Renovatur Integra. Nature renewed by fire made whole. Our planet has survived several major extinctions as a result of asteroid impacts and volcanic activity. I will never ridicule anyone for their religious or spiritual beliefs. But for me, it is like believing in the fairy tale. Humans are a species of primate, just like our cousins the apes. We are also the deadliest and destructive of any species that has ever existed on earth. We too will eventually disappear into that good night. No god or gods can stop this from happening. This won't necessarily be a bad thing. Peace be with you.
1
to many people th extinction of th human race is as horrible to fave as their own deaths
how can th world get along wo people ( me )
well, somehow th world muddled through for 4.5 by before people arrived
it will muddle along quite well wo us, probably better
oh, and you, th same can be said for you
Yes, indeed, none of the wonderful, profound, loving explanations and rationalizations here "bring consolation [...] in any traditional sense." In a sense, they are all fictions, stories we tell ourselves about death so we feel, as Stanley Elkin has one of his characters say "it's not so bad to die."
In another story, Elkin has Ellerbee die and go to heaven where everything he sees fills him with awe: There really are angels! There really is manna! Later, after being in hell of 60 years, this faculty of enthusiastic awareness has been ground down, but continues to function: there really are devils, there really are pitchforks, he notes glumly, painfully.
It's no consolation in any traditional sense but life eventually becomes worse than death. One wants to keep one's awareness polished and pristine, but experience tarnishes and dulls and distorts. It's not merely bodily imperfection, it's the relentless beating down of the universe upon one's senses, and one's memories. Given the choice of an eternity in which everything morphs into spam and the miracle of oblivion, . . ..
In another story, Elkin has Ellerbee die and go to heaven where everything he sees fills him with awe: There really are angels! There really is manna! Later, after being in hell of 60 years, this faculty of enthusiastic awareness has been ground down, but continues to function: there really are devils, there really are pitchforks, he notes glumly, painfully.
It's no consolation in any traditional sense but life eventually becomes worse than death. One wants to keep one's awareness polished and pristine, but experience tarnishes and dulls and distorts. It's not merely bodily imperfection, it's the relentless beating down of the universe upon one's senses, and one's memories. Given the choice of an eternity in which everything morphs into spam and the miracle of oblivion, . . ..
One of my earliest memories dates back to the age of six.
It was a summer day, warm and sunny and bright. I was playing out back, behind our house which was built on the border of a farm. There was a shallow swale along the edge of the field where I saw a beautiful butterfly dancing on the flowers.
It was a big black and yellow tiger swallowtail. I stretched out my hand but it eluded me, so I started to chase it. It flew off and I ran after it.
I ran and ran and ran, along the edge of the field, past the homes in my neighborhood, far across a field lying fallow and into an old section of custom built homes, much nicer than ours, where I stopped short, gazing in awe as the butterfly flew up into a huge brick terraced garden exploding with flowers in every color.
Belatedly, I woke up, as if from a dream, and realized how far away from home I had come and suddenly felt lost. Yet, I wandered back again and soon was home.
I saw the butterfly again yesterday...
What happened to that little boy, though?
Where did he go?
It was a summer day, warm and sunny and bright. I was playing out back, behind our house which was built on the border of a farm. There was a shallow swale along the edge of the field where I saw a beautiful butterfly dancing on the flowers.
It was a big black and yellow tiger swallowtail. I stretched out my hand but it eluded me, so I started to chase it. It flew off and I ran after it.
I ran and ran and ran, along the edge of the field, past the homes in my neighborhood, far across a field lying fallow and into an old section of custom built homes, much nicer than ours, where I stopped short, gazing in awe as the butterfly flew up into a huge brick terraced garden exploding with flowers in every color.
Belatedly, I woke up, as if from a dream, and realized how far away from home I had come and suddenly felt lost. Yet, I wandered back again and soon was home.
I saw the butterfly again yesterday...
What happened to that little boy, though?
Where did he go?
8
Many of us, even the very young, don't fear death so much as dying. It's quite a bit easier to accept the flipping of a switch, particularly when the flipping is something every living creature must eventually experience, than it is the thought of lingering -- cancer, Alzheimer's, the numerous dreadful indignities we live long enough these days to suffer. Even the long destructive path of aging that robs us of who we once were can be a frightening prospect.
"Logan's Run" was at best a B-movie, but its concept of "Carousel" spoke to a decided yearning by many to end quickly and at the height of our physical capacities, rather than face the inevitable indignities and pain offered by the alternative.
Of course, this isn't a rumination I'd probably share with a troubled six-year-old trying to find peaceful sleep (or with his younger brother pretending to sleep while actually listening). Instead, the author’s conviction that how we live our lives can create ripples that never die among the living isn’t a bad one. Even if you’re 61 and not six.
"Logan's Run" was at best a B-movie, but its concept of "Carousel" spoke to a decided yearning by many to end quickly and at the height of our physical capacities, rather than face the inevitable indignities and pain offered by the alternative.
Of course, this isn't a rumination I'd probably share with a troubled six-year-old trying to find peaceful sleep (or with his younger brother pretending to sleep while actually listening). Instead, the author’s conviction that how we live our lives can create ripples that never die among the living isn’t a bad one. Even if you’re 61 and not six.
7
Death?
A strange situation: Supposing a person can get around the viciousness, manipulativeness of fellow humans which prevent one from learning anything in the first place, a person has an apparent time limit (lifespan) and limited in intelligence brain which cannot even really learn all the things humans have managed to learn over history such as the arts and sciences not to mention make so much as a dent in the mysterious background we call life and universe, the immensity before the eyes...
It does make a number of scenarios revolve in the mind: Life is futile or God is behind it. Or one is a convict in some science-fictional alien society subjected to a truly humiliating and mind breaking punishment. Or one is an alien in sleep stasis on a long distance voyage and "life" is a computer game which in its unsolvable nature is sure to stimulate, infuriate the mind, keep it from rotting on long distance voyage...
Or one is locked in a type of mind trap game which is nothing more than kindergarten in some futuristic alien society, driving one to develop to be worthy of merely the first grade...Or one is being subjected to a wicked alien game of determining caliber starship captains which not only reads one's physical response in every little situation but reads every little dirty, nasty, cowardly thought for a board of experts to examine and weigh in whether one should be promoted or just sent to the kitchen to scrub the pots...
Whatever the case...Courage! Intellect!
A strange situation: Supposing a person can get around the viciousness, manipulativeness of fellow humans which prevent one from learning anything in the first place, a person has an apparent time limit (lifespan) and limited in intelligence brain which cannot even really learn all the things humans have managed to learn over history such as the arts and sciences not to mention make so much as a dent in the mysterious background we call life and universe, the immensity before the eyes...
It does make a number of scenarios revolve in the mind: Life is futile or God is behind it. Or one is a convict in some science-fictional alien society subjected to a truly humiliating and mind breaking punishment. Or one is an alien in sleep stasis on a long distance voyage and "life" is a computer game which in its unsolvable nature is sure to stimulate, infuriate the mind, keep it from rotting on long distance voyage...
Or one is locked in a type of mind trap game which is nothing more than kindergarten in some futuristic alien society, driving one to develop to be worthy of merely the first grade...Or one is being subjected to a wicked alien game of determining caliber starship captains which not only reads one's physical response in every little situation but reads every little dirty, nasty, cowardly thought for a board of experts to examine and weigh in whether one should be promoted or just sent to the kitchen to scrub the pots...
Whatever the case...Courage! Intellect!
2
He should face the facts of life, no trigger warnings, please.
11
And never lie to your children.
As soon as you lie even once, they rightly believe that anything you say could be a lie.
As soon as you lie even once, they rightly believe that anything you say could be a lie.
My dad died when my son was three. "If papa could die, I could too." Somehow it came to me to say that I wasn't sure what it feels like to be dead, but I think it's probably like what it was like before you were born. He agreed that he would remember if it hurt or was scary. Years later I heard him sharing that same thought with a friend.
86
You should introduce your son to Epicurus (341–270 B.C.E.) - a woefully under-read pre-socratic philosopher.
1. A subject S can rationally fear at t1 some state of affairs at t2 only if S will exist at t2.
2. We go out of existence at the moments of our deaths.
3. Hence, it is not rational for us to fear death.
It works for me!
1. A subject S can rationally fear at t1 some state of affairs at t2 only if S will exist at t2.
2. We go out of existence at the moments of our deaths.
3. Hence, it is not rational for us to fear death.
It works for me!
21
I apologize for nit picking, but Socrates was already dead at the time Epicurus was born, which makes it odd to refer to Epicurus as pre-Socratic. I guess this could be resolved if Epicurus was born after he died, which would help those suffering from the sort of fear of death the essay describes. Unfortunately, the matter is simply one of a mistaken adjective. Epicurus was Hellenistic, not pre-socratic, which leaves linear time unruffled.
For a similar materialist and atomistic argument about the absurdity of fearing death, refer to the later Roman philosopher, Lucretius, who also argued that once the atoms of our bodies disintegrate, there is no more us to fear anything. I found these arguments comforting when I encountered them in my adolescence. These arguments also bring pause to our tendency to worry about what history might think of us once we are dead. There will be no I to worry about their evaluations so I should not worry about such a future that will not exist for I. From this perspective I ought simply to get on with life while I live it. Of course, Socrates never heard these arguments and likely would not have bought into the materialist atomism on which they were based.
For a similar materialist and atomistic argument about the absurdity of fearing death, refer to the later Roman philosopher, Lucretius, who also argued that once the atoms of our bodies disintegrate, there is no more us to fear anything. I found these arguments comforting when I encountered them in my adolescence. These arguments also bring pause to our tendency to worry about what history might think of us once we are dead. There will be no I to worry about their evaluations so I should not worry about such a future that will not exist for I. From this perspective I ought simply to get on with life while I live it. Of course, Socrates never heard these arguments and likely would not have bought into the materialist atomism on which they were based.
Ah, but people don't fear death as much as what leads up to it.
1
epicurus put it thus
death does not concern us
when we are death is not
when death is we are not
sometimes th less convoluted expression is th better one
1
I had exactly the same experience at the same age as you and your son. It was not dying that I feared, but the void you describe - never having been.
I think that your insight that we are dying all the time is a useful one. The person whose extinction I feared as a child has been extinguished gradually over the course of a long life. The people, places, and feelings that made up the life I feared losing are all gone now, and new and different ones have taken their places. As much as anything though, such comfort (if that is the word) as I finally have acquired has come from peeling away the layers of "I" to try to arrive at what part of us exactly do we fear ceasing to be. Our thoughts? The people we love who define us? Our sensory experience of life? Our distinct personality? Setting each aside separately, having seen them forcibly taken from so many people prior to actual death, has left me with the altered sense that upon doing so, disassembling ourselves back to the womb, there is nothing left to die.
I think that your insight that we are dying all the time is a useful one. The person whose extinction I feared as a child has been extinguished gradually over the course of a long life. The people, places, and feelings that made up the life I feared losing are all gone now, and new and different ones have taken their places. As much as anything though, such comfort (if that is the word) as I finally have acquired has come from peeling away the layers of "I" to try to arrive at what part of us exactly do we fear ceasing to be. Our thoughts? The people we love who define us? Our sensory experience of life? Our distinct personality? Setting each aside separately, having seen them forcibly taken from so many people prior to actual death, has left me with the altered sense that upon doing so, disassembling ourselves back to the womb, there is nothing left to die.
16
We do go on, genetically and psycho-socially, in spite of our deaths, and in spite of no one remembering who we were, as long as human life goes on--which likely won't be forever. In the longest view, it may be that nothing at all survives. And we do re-enter the universal mix as discrete elements, so long as that goes on too. On the latter kind of survival, William Cullen Bryant in "Thanatopsis," composed when he was a very young man, had this to say:
Earth, that nourished thee, shall claim
Thy growth, to be resolved to earth again,
And, lost each human trace, surrendering up
Thine individual being, shalt thou go
To mix for ever with the elements,
To be a brother to the insensible rock
And to the sluggish clod, which the rude swain
Turns with his share, and treads upon. The oak
Shall send his roots abroad, and pierce thy mould.
Earth, that nourished thee, shall claim
Thy growth, to be resolved to earth again,
And, lost each human trace, surrendering up
Thine individual being, shalt thou go
To mix for ever with the elements,
To be a brother to the insensible rock
And to the sluggish clod, which the rude swain
Turns with his share, and treads upon. The oak
Shall send his roots abroad, and pierce thy mould.
17
Early on the writer dismisses organized religions points of view on death, yet later in his essay he basically is giving an Eastern/Oriental religions understanding of death.
4
Many people cannot face their eventual mortality. Whether they decide to work until 100 (and delude themselves), or cannot relinquish their youth; it shows their true self.
3
At the risk of being ridiculed, I can't remember any of my kids expressing fear of death. They grew up imbibing hope in a risen Christ Jesus and literal heaven. I didn't have to share Bertrand Russell's manly hopelessness with them, since I wasn't convinced of its silliness myself. Good and evil weren't mere products of the human imagination, along with God, all spirits - every thought we have, in fact; it wasn't we who were kings/monarchs, the ultimate arbiters, in the realm of value. God was indeed, as Lewis once put it, the ultimate Fact; God is good; the Word who became incarnate in Jesus was with God in the beginning and was/is God. We've had brilliant people throughout history believing together with us, as well all kinds of others. All sinners in need of God's grace in Christ Jesus; none with anything to bring to the table to merit an inestimably costly salvation freely given. In any case, no fear in death.
56
You are fortunate in that when you cease to exist, you will never know you were wrong .... because there will be no 'you' to know it.
4
Then why invent a hell?
4
...Salvation freely given? Judging by the catholic school tuition of my two kids, it's not.
2
Resurrection.
The continued existence of one’s self-awareness.
It’s a familiar and relatively simple concept; a basic tenet of many contemporary and archaic religions. It has been a key element in the quest for immortality that has dogged the human race for millennia; perhaps ever since self-awareness itself came into being as a side effect of the neurological activity within that mass of gray and white matter inside our skulls.
The concept is universal, but also personal; almost self-centered at its core. Everlasting self-awareness; the hope of escaping that ultimate obliteration. A desire so powerful that it drives humans to speak words and perform deeds ranging from unthinkable malevolence to extraordinary charitableness.
It’s also never a solitary endeavor. Unlike mastering a physical activity or developing a mental skill, no amount of self motivation, discipline, or sacrifice alone can control the outcome of receiving that ultimate reward. There’s always a contract with another who has the solitary, singular power to grant the gift, and who must be appeased in order to earn the reward.
Invariably, the pact is one-sided. There is a certain duplicity in the contract, as the beneficiary must play the part of both the mortgagor and mortgagee. The agreement is consummated with a one-handed handshake. The deception begins and the true nature of the beast is revealed in the name of fulfilling that promise.
The continued existence of one’s self-awareness.
It’s a familiar and relatively simple concept; a basic tenet of many contemporary and archaic religions. It has been a key element in the quest for immortality that has dogged the human race for millennia; perhaps ever since self-awareness itself came into being as a side effect of the neurological activity within that mass of gray and white matter inside our skulls.
The concept is universal, but also personal; almost self-centered at its core. Everlasting self-awareness; the hope of escaping that ultimate obliteration. A desire so powerful that it drives humans to speak words and perform deeds ranging from unthinkable malevolence to extraordinary charitableness.
It’s also never a solitary endeavor. Unlike mastering a physical activity or developing a mental skill, no amount of self motivation, discipline, or sacrifice alone can control the outcome of receiving that ultimate reward. There’s always a contract with another who has the solitary, singular power to grant the gift, and who must be appeased in order to earn the reward.
Invariably, the pact is one-sided. There is a certain duplicity in the contract, as the beneficiary must play the part of both the mortgagor and mortgagee. The agreement is consummated with a one-handed handshake. The deception begins and the true nature of the beast is revealed in the name of fulfilling that promise.
8
In Eastern Orthodox religion there is no continued existence of one's self-awareness. Jesus himself died, descended into Sheol, where the dead are but lifeless shadows who cannot praise God. The resurrection in Christian belief is bodily, albeit a spiritual body, like but essentially different from our corporeal bodies. Further, there is no immortality of the soul as in Western Christian thought.
As Heidegger points out, death is universal and inevitable. Everything about us dies, our cells and our consciousness. We cannot explain death. We can only accept it as part (and the end) of our existence. If we believe in a God who created the universe out of nothing, we can also hope that in the end He will raise us up from nothing.
As Heidegger points out, death is universal and inevitable. Everything about us dies, our cells and our consciousness. We cannot explain death. We can only accept it as part (and the end) of our existence. If we believe in a God who created the universe out of nothing, we can also hope that in the end He will raise us up from nothing.
1
We weren't here for an eternity before we were born so we were not fearfully aware of anything then. Same after death. Ergo, much ado about nothing. P.S. Who in their right mind would want to live forever? A truly frightening prospect. Think about it.
81
I am going to be 87 in one month. Lost my wife of 48 years, in 2010. I had a very satisfying and successful life and accomplished 98 percent of my Intellectual goals to date and am limited in any further accomplishments by physical infirmities. The final accomplishment sought by me is to cross the river Styx to determine what, if any, future exists. I have been waiting now for 6 years, a very dreary and boring wait.
3
@Toker, that was/is exactly what I fear: living forever. *That's* what kept me awake as a child. My personal death didn't trouble me, but enduring something that has no end, however pleasant, was terrifying. (Incongruously, I didn't fear death but I did fear bones.)
I would rather not live forever. When I am asleep, I don't know it, and that's what I hope death will be like. It's pointless to speculate about what happens after death (besides rotting into bones). I believe in God, not hell, and I trust God for whatever happens to us after death. It's a waste of time to do anything else.
By the way, I am Christian. Does "eternal life" mean living forever? Does the "kingdom of God" indicate someplace other than this life? I don't think so.
I would rather not live forever. When I am asleep, I don't know it, and that's what I hope death will be like. It's pointless to speculate about what happens after death (besides rotting into bones). I believe in God, not hell, and I trust God for whatever happens to us after death. It's a waste of time to do anything else.
By the way, I am Christian. Does "eternal life" mean living forever? Does the "kingdom of God" indicate someplace other than this life? I don't think so.
2
Wow, you discovered Christianity.
3
"The fear of death is virtually meaningless. We need to have the humility to know that, in death, we are in the company of countless others, and that death is the only certain destiny that awaits us all. I’m not overly preoccupied with death but rather by the enormous question mark it represents. Is it nothingness? That’s possible. If it’s not, then what a great adventure lies ahead!"
Francois Mitterrand , 1996
Francois Mitterrand , 1996
17
If one is not religious and does not believe in a religious after life here's a practical way to think about death. Try thinking about your relationship to the world as it existed before you were born. There wasn't any. You will have as much relationship to the world after you die as you did before you were born. But I don't find anything scary about that. It's just weird.
8
Intriguing. Yet I think that while the first point is true, the second is not. (Not really, if I may use that word in relation to non-existence).
Though the physical I will no longer have a relationship to the world, others' points are well taken. My influences continue, from physical creations to ideas, even my unique biome.
Though the physical I will no longer have a relationship to the world, others' points are well taken. My influences continue, from physical creations to ideas, even my unique biome.
1
I, too, grew up in constant fear of death and now address those fears with my small children. But, unlike the author, religion has brought me solace over time, although not as a child. It seemed to be inundated with death when I was a child, but now I see that the principles of the Christian life, whether one believes in religion or not, provide for a life that will be appreciated well beyond our physical death. Thus, we do live on forever.
4
I prefer the artist's life. It never ceases its search. It's too humble to assume it has all the answers, and it puts such beauty back into the world. One of the moments I remember so clearly is going to an exhibit of Mark Rothko's paintings at the Guggenheim Museum. His work is the essence of the struggle to be human; the beauty that struggle bestows on both the mind and the spirit, the despair and hopelessness that we must climb out of in order to continue to live meaningful lives, but still his fearlessness in being able to look at the depths of the unknown. To be able to hold both a fear of death and a joy of life within oneself simultaneously, is, I think, what describes a true human being. Yin/Yang if you will, but I could never find that complexitiy in any religion. Mr. Rothko's work lives on. His spirit is so clearly on those canvases. It took all that he had to create his art, and he has given the world something of infinite beauty.
2
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's poem " A Psalm of Life" addresses this issue. The second verse states " Life is real! Life is earnest!....and the grave is not its goal; .....Dust thou art, to dust returnest, ....Was not spoken of the soul". At death, only the physical body dies. The part that makes us human and different from all other animals is the spiritual part, the soul. Upon death the soul lives on and returns to God .
13
And how is it that you came to believe that animals have no soul...?
1
Having met a great many people who claim to have a 'soul', I am rather glad not to possess this imaginary attribute.
4
Where do we go after we die? We go back to wherever we were before we were born. Terror about what happens after death can sometimes be relieved by switching the thoughts to a curiosity about what happened before we were born. We can never know answers to either question but somehow equating those two states seems to help facing the fact that we are currently in between those two states, a state of being in between two states of non-being.
It's a very strange situation to be in, but better to think of it as mysterious and interesting rather than frightening. I also tend to then switch thoughts to a wonder and awe of the greater universe, the cosmos, the stars, etc. and head to a planetarium to expand my focus outside my one little life...
It's a very strange situation to be in, but better to think of it as mysterious and interesting rather than frightening. I also tend to then switch thoughts to a wonder and awe of the greater universe, the cosmos, the stars, etc. and head to a planetarium to expand my focus outside my one little life...
47
We are truly dead when we become forgotten. Our consciousness is all that we have to make us fear death. Every form of life on this planet would be better off without man, the ultimate, destructive invasive species. So make your life's aim to do good works for your fellow man and the rest of life and you will live on forever.
24
Our modern society hides and fears death. Many of us reach adulthood without having seen anyone die, although Hospice is beginning to reverse this unnatural state of affairs.
Walt Whitman was a nurse in the Civil War and saw many deaths.
He wrote in Song of Myself:
What do you think has become of the young and old men?
And what do you think has become of the women and children?
The smallest sprout shows there is really no death
And if ever there was it led forward life, and does not wait at the
end to arrest it,
And ceas'd the moment it appeared
All goes onward and outward, nothing collapses,
And to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier.
Walt Whitman was a nurse in the Civil War and saw many deaths.
He wrote in Song of Myself:
What do you think has become of the young and old men?
And what do you think has become of the women and children?
The smallest sprout shows there is really no death
And if ever there was it led forward life, and does not wait at the
end to arrest it,
And ceas'd the moment it appeared
All goes onward and outward, nothing collapses,
And to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier.
5
My son, Rocky, just died at a young age of 29, two months short of his 30th birthday this Sept 5. Although he has traveled a lot, accomplished a lot, and been a good boy who has left a lot of his imprint behind in the arts, I still wish he could have had more time.
Whether he's now free from pain and hassles of this world, I still wish he could have had more time.
Whether he's in the bosom of the Lord, I still wish he could have had more time.
I am afraid of death because it robs me of my time with my loved ones now.
Whether he's now free from pain and hassles of this world, I still wish he could have had more time.
Whether he's in the bosom of the Lord, I still wish he could have had more time.
I am afraid of death because it robs me of my time with my loved ones now.
160
I am sorry for your loss, Mayelum. The pain of being separated from your son, your grief for your own pain and for all that he will never have or do or be, cannot be ameliorated by philosophy or physics. Our heartbreak for the loss of the individual we love is personal even if we intellectually believe that existence itself is universal.
My mother died four years ago, about two months before her 80th birthday, which was also September 5th. My heart goes out to you, and I will be thinking of you.
My mother died four years ago, about two months before her 80th birthday, which was also September 5th. My heart goes out to you, and I will be thinking of you.
3
I am very sad to read of your son's death, and I share and stand with you in your sorrow. I am so, so sorry for the unfairness of losing Rocky. It is terrible. My nephew, Rob, died at age 33, four years ago, and the sadness is still crippling. I do believe you will see Rocky again, and pray that we will see Rob again. Sending you support and hope in the promises of Jesus.
1
I'm truly very sorry for your loss, mayelum. This, too, shall pass. You and he will be together again.
1
Looking at it more scientifically (and therefore less individualistically), it seems to me that the purpose of death is largely to make room for the living, since resources are not unlimited. (Can you imagine if everyone could live ten-times longer, let alone "forever"? I shudder to think of the political consequences!) Therefore, to worry constantly about one's own death is perfectly understandable, existentially, but also ultimately quite selfish.
37
As a child, having had no first-hand experiences with human death, I probably believed that it was too far in my future despite some serious childhood illnesses to represent an imminent concern. Though I respected death I had no fear of it.
Now in my sunset years having outlived my grandparents, parents, my first born child, half the ushers in my first wedding and about half of my former high school classmates, I've developed a keen awareness of death, do not fear it but do not seek it either. What I do fear is outliving a clear mind and functioning body. That, for me, would be worse than death.
Now in my sunset years having outlived my grandparents, parents, my first born child, half the ushers in my first wedding and about half of my former high school classmates, I've developed a keen awareness of death, do not fear it but do not seek it either. What I do fear is outliving a clear mind and functioning body. That, for me, would be worse than death.
457
I understand you would not want to be a burden on your family, but as consciousness erodes in old age, so does the part that experiences suffering.
Exactly, Lewis. 1/4 of Americans over 40 are on statin drugs, and 1/4 of them complain of muscle pain. How many, like me, have had their bodies made dysfunctional and their minds (due to pain, sleeplessness?) made less clear? How are we to know, since no one is required to report to any organization.
Those of us made sick can report to the FDA--but clearly, since only about one million report adverse effects to all drugs combined, this is not occurring. Who would expect it to, since we are the sick and often elderly.
At 69, I could trek in the Himalayan mountains. At 70, I couldn't walk around the block without limping in pain. StatinVictims.com
Those of us made sick can report to the FDA--but clearly, since only about one million report adverse effects to all drugs combined, this is not occurring. Who would expect it to, since we are the sick and often elderly.
At 69, I could trek in the Himalayan mountains. At 70, I couldn't walk around the block without limping in pain. StatinVictims.com
1
You know this how????
Huh! I went through the same thing, only a couple years younger, maybe age 4. My parents would be sitting in the living room reading and I'd go out and sit on my mother's lap and tell her. She would keep on peacefully reading and let me snuggle there 'til my fears went away and then tuck me back in bed. Finally one day I didn't need the ritual anymore. The philosophizing came later--still at the threshold of sleep--when I was about 11 or so. I'd call my poor dad to sit with me and help me worry about whether I believed in God.
2
Certainly true, and I remember consoling myself with similar thoughts when my mother died. One nice way of looking at it is that natural selection is a battle against death; the self-replicating molecule that survives an inimical environment moves on.
But, let's face it. From your perspective and mine, death is pretty much death. We fear it because selection pressure weeded out creatures that stepped over cliffs or kept munching grass when a lion attacked. Cruelly, at the same time, sexual reproduction required that the organism die; single-celled creatures are, if conditions are good, immortal. So we're stuck with death, and we're stuck with a fear of it a well.
I'm intrigued though that both you and your son appear to have this preoccupation to a greater extent than others. Since our fear of death appears to be at least partly biological, it seems plausible that some have genes that make them fear it more. You and your son? At the other extreme, I've known some people who were virtually fearless, and faced life-threatening situations without the fear that I and most experience. It seems, too, that your son may have picked up on the subtler signs of your own fear. Children learn not just from what their parents say, but from the subtle signs of emotional communication, and a child will frequently adopt the fear of a parent.
But, let's face it. From your perspective and mine, death is pretty much death. We fear it because selection pressure weeded out creatures that stepped over cliffs or kept munching grass when a lion attacked. Cruelly, at the same time, sexual reproduction required that the organism die; single-celled creatures are, if conditions are good, immortal. So we're stuck with death, and we're stuck with a fear of it a well.
I'm intrigued though that both you and your son appear to have this preoccupation to a greater extent than others. Since our fear of death appears to be at least partly biological, it seems plausible that some have genes that make them fear it more. You and your son? At the other extreme, I've known some people who were virtually fearless, and faced life-threatening situations without the fear that I and most experience. It seems, too, that your son may have picked up on the subtler signs of your own fear. Children learn not just from what their parents say, but from the subtle signs of emotional communication, and a child will frequently adopt the fear of a parent.
4
Thank you for writing this, I too had fears at that age and my mother did not know how to handle it. They surfaced around age 6 at twilight before sleep. Perhaps this is the age when we become aware of the importance of our existence and realize that it can end. As Bones said to Spock in the latest Star Trek "Fear of death keeps us alive"! Death is an important reminder that time is limited and we need to make the best use of it possible. Perhaps imagining my life to come and all the things I would do and places I would go would have been of comfort to me. Talking about core values and how to act on them whether it is the discovery of the world, nature, the human mind or outer space could have been of use but I suspect that my mother was at a loss about how to handle these overwhelming fears of mine. A conversation about how to live my life well and improve the world that we live in could have directed my thoughts from fear to purpose, because fear is an incredible motivator. Hugs included. Many thanks, to you and Bones.
8
Do not fear that which you cannot effect. Death is but a transition. People view it as the ultimate immolation of their selves; their ego and all the rest. They say they are destined to vanish; to ceases to exist. They say this with such...confidence.
But, how is this known? No one knows. It's all a guess. All that is known is that everyone who has gone before has left, and has never returned. It's the ultimate severing of all that you know, from the person you are now, that is most feared.
But consider what it is that animates you. Consider what ignited with your own conception. Your life force. This force perfuses the universe. At least...this is my bet. It manifests in all things. It manifests in you. It is, you. This force; this energy, like the basic laws of physics and such, never dies. It simply transforms and moves on to other states. So do you.
Given this you have but one obligation in your current state. Do not worry about that which you cannot effect. Live this life you have been given. Explore and enjoy the Paradise you are contained within. Learn as you go as best as you can. Rejoice in this walk with God. It is all but one moment in your boundless eternity.
John~
American Net'Zen
But, how is this known? No one knows. It's all a guess. All that is known is that everyone who has gone before has left, and has never returned. It's the ultimate severing of all that you know, from the person you are now, that is most feared.
But consider what it is that animates you. Consider what ignited with your own conception. Your life force. This force perfuses the universe. At least...this is my bet. It manifests in all things. It manifests in you. It is, you. This force; this energy, like the basic laws of physics and such, never dies. It simply transforms and moves on to other states. So do you.
Given this you have but one obligation in your current state. Do not worry about that which you cannot effect. Live this life you have been given. Explore and enjoy the Paradise you are contained within. Learn as you go as best as you can. Rejoice in this walk with God. It is all but one moment in your boundless eternity.
John~
American Net'Zen
175
Thank you for writing this. It is very comforting and worth much thought. Curiously, I have been grieving for a dear friend who died a year ago and who practiced Zen.
5
John - thank you. That has to be one of the finest comments I have ever read here.
4
Amen! Yes!
I grew up in a rigidly fundamentalist christian home. The talk of death was pretty much what sermons on Sunday were about. Dying without being saved by Jesus. Dying with sin on your soul. Dying and going to hades.
That was what I feared about dying. Not being good enough to get into heaven. Finding myself doomed to fire and brimstone.
Now that I'm very old and long been an atheist, I've lived to see the young, the middle aged and the old depart from my life forever. It hurts.
I have great-grandkids who know that, being old, I will eventually go away for good. But I tell them what I know for a fact - as long as they remember me, I will not truly be dead but just out of their sight and the love I have for them is still with them. As my elderly brothers and I agree, our beloved grandmother is not really dead because we remember her and her deep love for each of us. and what she taught us that we have passed on to our families.
That was what I feared about dying. Not being good enough to get into heaven. Finding myself doomed to fire and brimstone.
Now that I'm very old and long been an atheist, I've lived to see the young, the middle aged and the old depart from my life forever. It hurts.
I have great-grandkids who know that, being old, I will eventually go away for good. But I tell them what I know for a fact - as long as they remember me, I will not truly be dead but just out of their sight and the love I have for them is still with them. As my elderly brothers and I agree, our beloved grandmother is not really dead because we remember her and her deep love for each of us. and what she taught us that we have passed on to our families.
337
Though this may seem quite naive, of course people fear death and dying (probably more the manner of dying than death itself). However, what Professor Rockhill asserts makes sense. If Einstein's assertion is correct, and the energy in the universe is never lost, then death is simple a change in the energy we have projected during earthly life. Thus those "traces" that we leave behind are the forms of energy we have produced in our biological lifespan, and have infused in the ones with whom we have had contact, and who live on after us.
This has been a great comfort to many of us who quietly continue to carry the energy of loved ones that has been infused within us and surrounds us, both in terms of philosophy and in terms of physicality. We can choose to recognize this or not. It is ultimately not dependent upon a belief in God or an afterlife at all, simply a belief and trust in the universal laws of physics.
This has been a great comfort to many of us who quietly continue to carry the energy of loved ones that has been infused within us and surrounds us, both in terms of philosophy and in terms of physicality. We can choose to recognize this or not. It is ultimately not dependent upon a belief in God or an afterlife at all, simply a belief and trust in the universal laws of physics.
67
I am glad to see that wysiwyg is thinking hard about some really important issues, but he or she needs to avoid getting too far in front of the true pioneers. In particular, the results from modern cosmology and quantum mechanics are indeed exciting and fundamental. However there are probably only a few hundred people on this planet today who are wise enough to make the kinds of conclusions that wysiwyg believes in and trusts. Even those few can only speculate, since there are known inconsistencies between current theories of cosmology and quantum mechanics.
Wysiwyg seems to be confusing two important concepts: energy and entropy. For example, the rest mass of a sorted deck of cards is equal to that of the same deck shuffled.
Most current quantum-cosmological theories involve some kind of "holographic principle" where a closed surface can record the complete state of everything in it, for all time. I think this is perhaps what wysiwyg is thinking of, but the science is simply not all there yet.
Wysiwyg seems to be confusing two important concepts: energy and entropy. For example, the rest mass of a sorted deck of cards is equal to that of the same deck shuffled.
Most current quantum-cosmological theories involve some kind of "holographic principle" where a closed surface can record the complete state of everything in it, for all time. I think this is perhaps what wysiwyg is thinking of, but the science is simply not all there yet.
2
Joni Mitchell reminds us of ourselves in the physical sense in the song "Woodstock" - "We are stardust, we are billion year old carbon." James Taylor's new hymn takes it even further with his "New Hymn." Noting that upon death "our few atoms blow to dust or form again in wiser lives." I like to think that my atoms might end up being a part of something greater that what I currently am.
1
The other evening was watching a documentary interview of a famous American comedian, a beaming toddler in his photos until age 6. 'What! Life ends! It does not go on forever?'. And, it is true that he looks anxious onwards. A contemporary in age, neither of us are getting younger, neither of us are Dorian Grey, I might say 'but you have achieved immortality!'.
I always liked 'The Age of Innocence' by Edith Wharton where a matriarch declares of a fallen young countess 'her life is over'. Her story is over. Mine has never taken off but I feel I have been here for ever so long, taking up precious space. Death may be frightening because it is a new experience, and while I gaze fondly at quiet graves where the grass grows green (some grazing sheep might be nice), I make a song and a dance over a mosquito bite.
I always liked 'The Age of Innocence' by Edith Wharton where a matriarch declares of a fallen young countess 'her life is over'. Her story is over. Mine has never taken off but I feel I have been here for ever so long, taking up precious space. Death may be frightening because it is a new experience, and while I gaze fondly at quiet graves where the grass grows green (some grazing sheep might be nice), I make a song and a dance over a mosquito bite.
5
The only truth is that love never dies. But I can say what I told my mother: she would spend eternity next to my father and they would never suffer again.
What's scary about that?
What's scary about that?
6
What's scary about it would depend, I guess, on what kind of a marriage they had.
3
God and we are eternal. Think Christ!
2
I truly don’t understand the terror. A fear of intractable pain, of loss of autonomy, yes. But of dying, when everything dies? A terror of the natural order? I think you do your son a disservice in acquiescing in his fantasy of a potion, an enchanted glass, to save him and his family. HIs family alone, of course, because if no one dies we quickly run out of room on this planet.
I say this as an observant Christian, but one for whom the promise of eternal life does not mean a literal Heaven.We live on in the memories of those who have loved us, in the lives of those we have affected in small and large ways. We make room for the next generation, we take part in the carbon cycle. We play our roles and exit, stage right.
I say this as an observant Christian, but one for whom the promise of eternal life does not mean a literal Heaven.We live on in the memories of those who have loved us, in the lives of those we have affected in small and large ways. We make room for the next generation, we take part in the carbon cycle. We play our roles and exit, stage right.
14
As with so many speculations on this subject, those who have never been clinically "dead" and resuscitated by means of medical science cannot really begin to posit about this aspect of our existence...
4
This article doesn't delve deep enough into the mind body problem. From a physical standpoint, our body will be recycled into the circle of life. However, there are shortcomings with this point of view. For instance, does eating a steak mean that I now am the cow that it came from?
When considering the mind (assuming there is a mind), we may live on in the memories of others because of the impact we have had on the world. But, most of us will be forgotten within a few generations of our death.
The author has yet to show that we never die.
When considering the mind (assuming there is a mind), we may live on in the memories of others because of the impact we have had on the world. But, most of us will be forgotten within a few generations of our death.
The author has yet to show that we never die.
6
Thank you. This piece is the post-modern academic style of reworking an idea in increments and plastering it with the word immanent. He does not address the question, merely places himself in its context and finds himself to worthy.
In the words of Socrates - Pfft.
In the words of Socrates - Pfft.
1
I can remember having a small daughter expressing the same fears to me. What came to me instinctively, rather than going into religious myths, was to ask her whether she remembered things being bad and scary before she was born. She thought about that and said that she did not. I then said: "Well then, when it is time, I guess going back to how we were then must not be bad and scary. Meanwhile we can just enjoy being alive together in this house."
That seemed to relieve her, and she happily was tucked in for the night.
That seemed to relieve her, and she happily was tucked in for the night.
475
Very good answer to your daughter
2
Perhaps she reacted less to the truth of your statement (which is about as proveable as the religious myths to eschewed), and more to the care, concern, and love you showed her in her moment of fear?
3
ds, I don't believe I existed as an unfertilized egg before conception. I don't believe we know about the before and the after. I wonder how small daughter sees your point these days.
Death may be a great awakening and a journey to a blissful afterlife. Or it may be nothing. If it is nothing, you will never know. So don't worry about it. Life is for the living. Enjoy it while you have it.
23
After many years of worrying about death I'm now much older and have seen death close up and I've come to exactly the same conclusion as you have. Life is sweet!
1
"I recognized eternal transcendence as nothing more than a comforting illusion" I'd not say that to a child. I'm sure you don't. For my part I like that illusion, if that is what it is.
We cannot be certain until we pass. If you are wrong, as Socrates and every Neoplatonist after him (including Jesus) advised, live the best life you can to prepare for that moment.
If atheists are correct, we'll just slip into a long sleep. I'd be lying if I said that I don't struggle with that thought of non-continuance. It's less the leaving behind than never seeing those that I love, ever again. I prefer to await some form of union with those who have passed on before me.
Like Andrea who commented earlier, I also am sad that the world is not the hopeful place it was when I was younger and naive. We live in a dark time. I feel sorry for those who are young today and hope my life will have made things a little better for them.
We cannot be certain until we pass. If you are wrong, as Socrates and every Neoplatonist after him (including Jesus) advised, live the best life you can to prepare for that moment.
If atheists are correct, we'll just slip into a long sleep. I'd be lying if I said that I don't struggle with that thought of non-continuance. It's less the leaving behind than never seeing those that I love, ever again. I prefer to await some form of union with those who have passed on before me.
Like Andrea who commented earlier, I also am sad that the world is not the hopeful place it was when I was younger and naive. We live in a dark time. I feel sorry for those who are young today and hope my life will have made things a little better for them.
7
'If atheists are correct, we'll just slip into a long sleep.'
No, if atheists are right, there will be no more 'we'.
No, if atheists are right, there will be no more 'we'.
2
A belief in hell and the knowledge that every ambition is doomed to frustration at the hands of a skeleton have never prevented the majority of human beings from behaving as though death were no more than an unfounded rumor.
Aldous Huxley
31
death does not concern us
when we are, death is not
when death is, we are not
epicurus
36
The early Catholic church demeaned this simple truth in favor of its promise of an after life if you heeled. I like the Epicurean truth although it takes a bit to get comfortable with it. Hard to imagine not being once you are.
7
tell your kids th truth about everything
including santa claus god and death
you dont do them any favors pretending reality doesn't exist
6
Andromeda,
Religion's depravities are caused by the theocratic "elites." They want to prevent us weak, frightened, confused humans from realizing, as we ultimately must, that the myths and superstitions respecting deities, after-lives, prayer, and miracles, are all lies.
When I finally told my 4-year old daughter that there was no real Santa Claus, a look of pure relief swept over her face, as her extreme case of cognitive dissonance was eliminated. She had wanted to believe in something that was clearly not true; the difficulty of doing so had been worrying and tormenting her.
Some people react badly to the loss of comforting fairy tales, but the well-developing mind will stride through it with grace and purpose, better for the liberation from nonsensical emotional crutches. We should try to help the young with this, rather than perpetrating the brainwashing.
Religion's depravities are caused by the theocratic "elites." They want to prevent us weak, frightened, confused humans from realizing, as we ultimately must, that the myths and superstitions respecting deities, after-lives, prayer, and miracles, are all lies.
When I finally told my 4-year old daughter that there was no real Santa Claus, a look of pure relief swept over her face, as her extreme case of cognitive dissonance was eliminated. She had wanted to believe in something that was clearly not true; the difficulty of doing so had been worrying and tormenting her.
Some people react badly to the loss of comforting fairy tales, but the well-developing mind will stride through it with grace and purpose, better for the liberation from nonsensical emotional crutches. We should try to help the young with this, rather than perpetrating the brainwashing.
4
This hits on something I've mused about for a while. We live in 4 dimensions, death is about reducing them. First, we're taken out of time, then our corpuscular existence rapidly fades and we are left as an idea. We continue as ideas in other people's minds and in the things we've done and made. We may become one dimensional in the process and at some point that dimension may slip beneath the waves. At least that's how it worked before modern technology but today the one dimensional self may persist infinitely.
3
What a copout. We all die, period. Whether some facet of our spiritual self continues in some way is unknown and perhaps unknowable. But most of us do not live on in any sense in the material world. And all of us will eventually be lost to time, and well before the earth itself arrives at its own far off but inevitable death.
Can the obsession with death found in the author as a child and now in his own children be some sort of genetic phenomenon, that is, a trait, or has the author impressed his own complex and troubled thinking upon his offspring? In either case, it's a sad burden that his child has inherited.
Can the obsession with death found in the author as a child and now in his own children be some sort of genetic phenomenon, that is, a trait, or has the author impressed his own complex and troubled thinking upon his offspring? In either case, it's a sad burden that his child has inherited.
11
I concur that the author has some unresolved issues from his own childhood that he is now visiting upon his son. He recalls very troubling memories from childhood, such as an open casket and a lifeless lamb, suicides and explosions, that are missing a comforting parental presence. It seems no one was there to help him sort out his thoughts and fears. Had he experienced meaningful reassurance, he would have certainly refocused his 6 year-old's attention from dying to living. How often in parenting we miss opportunities to provide comfort and wisdom to our children because we haven't yet worked through our own blind spots.
6
You say, "Did anything happen to you last night? Or the night before? Or all the nights of your life? You know why? Because everything bad has to get through me first. That's my job. I do it every night. You're safe, because I am here. Go to sleep."
11
'You say, "Did anything happen to you last night? Or the night before? Or all the nights of your life? You know why? Because everything bad has to get through me first. That's my job. I do it every night. You're safe, because I am here. Go to sleep."
What happens the first time Dad, for whatever reason, fails to block that tackle? When he fails to prevent the bogeyman from coming out of the closet - the dog's hit by a car, or the house burns down, or Mum dies of an ectopic pregnancy that she dismissed as indigestion until it was too late, or Dad has a heart attack and winds up in the hospital for two months ... or doesn't come out at all?
What happens the first time Dad, for whatever reason, fails to block that tackle? When he fails to prevent the bogeyman from coming out of the closet - the dog's hit by a car, or the house burns down, or Mum dies of an ectopic pregnancy that she dismissed as indigestion until it was too late, or Dad has a heart attack and winds up in the hospital for two months ... or doesn't come out at all?
3
Why lie?
1
Thank you Gabriel for putting into words the feelings that I have also had since early childhood. I could never so eloquently document the attacks of panic that I suffered.
I'm now in my 60's. I've learned over the years to be grateful for every day.
I'm not as frightened as I was as a child. I think part of it is that I thought the world would be a peaceful, loving place that I would never want to leave. Not so much today.
I'm now in my 60's. I've learned over the years to be grateful for every day.
I'm not as frightened as I was as a child. I think part of it is that I thought the world would be a peaceful, loving place that I would never want to leave. Not so much today.
23
One of the most comforting thoughts I have is that when death comes I will no longer feel anything, think anything, have any bodily sensations, zero awareness, and will be as if in a deep profound dreamless sleep, with no danger of awakening. Non-existence is total liberation. It will return me to the state I was in for billions of years before I was conceived: complete, total unaware nothingness. What more could anyone wish for even after the most satisfying life?
61
Love this.
Try Shakespeare.
2
Indeed, people pursue that state with drugs and alcohol.
1
There is an odd little quirk in our fear of death. The fact is that we have already been dead--that is, nonexistent--for about 13.7 billion years if the cosmologists have it right. But I have yet to hear anyone bemoan the fact.
As I look back on it, it was a piece of cake.
As I look back on it, it was a piece of cake.
143
(Reply to A Hughes)
"Annihilation has no terrors for me, because I have already tried it before I was born–a hundred million years... There was a peace, a serenity, an absence of all sense of responsibility, an absence of worry, an absence of care, and the presence of a deep content and unbroken satisfaction in that hundred million years of holiday..."
Mark Twain, Autobiography.
"Annihilation has no terrors for me, because I have already tried it before I was born–a hundred million years... There was a peace, a serenity, an absence of all sense of responsibility, an absence of worry, an absence of care, and the presence of a deep content and unbroken satisfaction in that hundred million years of holiday..."
Mark Twain, Autobiography.
3
It's not just the "experience" (or lack thereof) of temporal non-existence that should calm our fear of death, but also spatial non-existence. I don't exist in Paris right now. Being dead is like being in Paris before you even thought of being there. I sure do feel like missing out though, but only while actually existing somewhere else.
2
A lovely essay which reminds me of my own fears as a child. However, as a Christian and theologian, Professor Rockhill's words do not quite reassure me. As satisfactory as they may be in regard to my own being, they leave me bereft if I imagine the death of one of my children or grandchildren. Their continued existence - in artifact, memory, remembering community and the physical universe - seem little enough comfort in the face of their loss.
That this, for me, is so might of course reveal a failure in my own nerve or imagination. However, humans long for something more and while this longing is no proof of "the resurrection and the life," we may find cause to entertain the possibility imaginatively, rationally and sympathetically. I appreciate the essay very much.
That this, for me, is so might of course reveal a failure in my own nerve or imagination. However, humans long for something more and while this longing is no proof of "the resurrection and the life," we may find cause to entertain the possibility imaginatively, rationally and sympathetically. I appreciate the essay very much.
4
Perhaps the deepest feeling we have in us is time persistance through reproduction, which is the basic instinct of all species,...at least of all surviving ones. We all prey that "mother nature" respects our right to die before our children and grand-children, once we have raised them and helped them as much as we could.
I don't fear death. I do fear suffering on the way there.
157
There is always a choice.
Oddly, I think I want to either go quietly in my sleep.
Or suffer beforehand so I'll welcome it.
Or suffer beforehand so I'll welcome it.
1
At the risk of being dismissed as a reductionist, could it be that you and your son suffer from separation anxiety, potentially a heritable condition that sometimes runs in families and may be genetically determined? It is often found to be in the developmental histories of individuals who go on to develop anxiety disorders and a portion of whom may self-medicate with alcohol or other sedative substances in adult life? It may sound far fetched, but I am just speculating and wonder what others think. Separation anxiety is universal but there is a spectrum from the age-appropriate developmental challenge to crippling anxiety disorders with various efforts to control it ranging from religion to substance use to schizoid traits or attachment disorders as a way of avoiding intolerable fear of abandonment. Creativity, altruism and generativity are positive adaptive solutions. Not to mention procreation.
8
It seems narrow to try to pathologize one of humankind's oldest questions and fears. What philosopher, writer, artist or theologian has not contemplated this, much less 6 year olds of probably all times and places? I can also relate to a period at that age of many wakeful bedtime hours trying to (not) imagine non-existence. I wished i could just forget. Though surely some people do ponder it more deeply than others by their nature.
5
Your best bet is to take the advice proffered by Blaise Pascal, a 17th-century French mathematician.
Pascal argued that a rational person should live as though God exists and seek to believe in God. If God does not actually exist, such a person will have only a finite loss (some pleasures, luxury, etc.), whereas they stand to receive infinite gains (as represented by eternity in Heaven) and avoid infinite losses (eternity in Hell).
While waiting to learn whether or not you've made a wise choice, recite every day St. Augustine's favorite prayer: "Grant me chastity and continence, but not yet."
The above should cover all the bases. Godspeed!
Pascal argued that a rational person should live as though God exists and seek to believe in God. If God does not actually exist, such a person will have only a finite loss (some pleasures, luxury, etc.), whereas they stand to receive infinite gains (as represented by eternity in Heaven) and avoid infinite losses (eternity in Hell).
While waiting to learn whether or not you've made a wise choice, recite every day St. Augustine's favorite prayer: "Grant me chastity and continence, but not yet."
The above should cover all the bases. Godspeed!
13
Most of the evils in this world seem to come from various religions. People fight about things that they do not know. People impose their view on others. This is a major problem with adopting Pascal's idea. When you live as if God did exist, you will inevitably tend to impose some of your dogma on others.
Why do we need infinite gains anyway? Isn't it enough to enjoy what we have been granted? God gives an inch; and we want to take a mile.
Why do we need infinite gains anyway? Isn't it enough to enjoy what we have been granted? God gives an inch; and we want to take a mile.
5
Mr. Gaffney, I assume you realize that Pascal's argument is only persuasive if you believe in the simplified model that there are only two possibilities (either there is no god or a god exists who can be appeased by following Christian dogma). However, throughout history there have been hundreds of competing religious beliefs, if not thousands, and the above are merely two of those possibilities. What advice would you give if you also took seriously the (equally likely as far as we can tell?) possibilities that, say, the ancient Greek pantheon were in charge and were, as Solon put it (according to Herodotus), jealous of human happiness and/or that a god exists who plans to send everyone to hell who fails to follow his particular (non-Christian) teachings, and/or ...?
2
Pascal's puerile argument has been knocked down so often that it exhausts me just to have to repeat its disproofs.
For one thing, he assumes a false dichotomy. It's not either/or. There are a multitude of mumbo-jumbos, all claiming to be jealous gods. What happens if you die after a long life of believing in Jesus, and find yourself standing before Allah (or vice versa)? Or the Flying Spaghetti Monster (who may at least have a sense of humour and cut you a break on the 'hell' business)? For that matter, the Greek pantheon might still be up there, laughing at us; polytheism has its advantages, not the least of which is that positing multiple, amoral deities abolishes the entire problem of theodicy (why does an all-good, all-knowing, all-powerful deity allow evil?), which has spawned some of the most convoluted, intellectually dishonest work in all philosophy. Monotheism, like the elusive Unified Field Theory, speaks to our reductionist tendencies; but nothing is ever so simple as we - or Pascal, or Augustine (another 'philosopher' in whose work i see little value) would like it to be.
For one thing, he assumes a false dichotomy. It's not either/or. There are a multitude of mumbo-jumbos, all claiming to be jealous gods. What happens if you die after a long life of believing in Jesus, and find yourself standing before Allah (or vice versa)? Or the Flying Spaghetti Monster (who may at least have a sense of humour and cut you a break on the 'hell' business)? For that matter, the Greek pantheon might still be up there, laughing at us; polytheism has its advantages, not the least of which is that positing multiple, amoral deities abolishes the entire problem of theodicy (why does an all-good, all-knowing, all-powerful deity allow evil?), which has spawned some of the most convoluted, intellectually dishonest work in all philosophy. Monotheism, like the elusive Unified Field Theory, speaks to our reductionist tendencies; but nothing is ever so simple as we - or Pascal, or Augustine (another 'philosopher' in whose work i see little value) would like it to be.
7
I just wanted to thank you for this article. It was very well written, interesting, and reassuring to encounter another who has had the same fears on death as I do now.
I'm not quite there yet but I hope someday I can come to terms myself with the natural cycle of life and death. It just feels so final and absolute and religion does little to console the thought.
I'm not quite there yet but I hope someday I can come to terms myself with the natural cycle of life and death. It just feels so final and absolute and religion does little to console the thought.
2
But we do die, we disappear we cease to exist
We did not exist before we were born
It's a mystery
A huge mystery
We did not exist before we were born
It's a mystery
A huge mystery
73
As a child, I had a panic fear of death from age 6 onwards, and at times still have it. I had gone to a Catholic school during first grade, and religious instruction was full of references to hell, purgatory and damnation if we committed sins; in essence, death as the ultimate threat was present virtually all the time, along with a more often than not horrendous afterworld. In addition to a God who had the role of a sacred Big Brother who was watching you all the time and waiting for you to make the slightest error made my fears totally overwhelming. "Don't be silly was the answer I got when I tried to speak about those fears.
Now I have learned to see death as the natural end of existence, a fact that has been around ever since the first life came into the world, and life will be going on even though we will no longer see it. Every human being wants to leave behind something, be it tangible or the memory of some act of kindness or bravery; but even that hope is futile, as our achievements will be as ephemereal as an insect's body.
As my burial place I have selected a plot in a Forest Cemetery in the Taunus Hills of Germany, at the roots of a beech tree. The idea that this tree and its neighbours will absorb what was once me, use it for their own growth and translate it into new life in an endless cyle of existence is a wonderful thought that has served to lessen my fears and make consideration of my ultimate disappearance much easier to contemplate.
Now I have learned to see death as the natural end of existence, a fact that has been around ever since the first life came into the world, and life will be going on even though we will no longer see it. Every human being wants to leave behind something, be it tangible or the memory of some act of kindness or bravery; but even that hope is futile, as our achievements will be as ephemereal as an insect's body.
As my burial place I have selected a plot in a Forest Cemetery in the Taunus Hills of Germany, at the roots of a beech tree. The idea that this tree and its neighbours will absorb what was once me, use it for their own growth and translate it into new life in an endless cyle of existence is a wonderful thought that has served to lessen my fears and make consideration of my ultimate disappearance much easier to contemplate.
41
Try Kurzweil's "The Singularity is Near," your sons might have options in middle age. The related documentary Transcendent Man is free online - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transcendent_Man
Better to go with cryonics. You can do it right now, no waiting. ANd if you never wake up you'll never know.
1
"..death is a constitutive feature of the unfolding of biological life. In other words, I am confronting death each day that I live..."
"If biological death appears to some as an endpoint to existence, there is nevertheless a longevity to our physical, artifactual and psychosocial lives. They intertwine and merge with the broader world out of which we are woven".
Now that is a comforting thought. (Longevity? That all depends).
"It is in this regard that twilight conversations with my oldest son take on a very different light."
I sure hope so.
We all fear death. Behind every type of explanation, if one scratches the surface, then what there very often is is that feeling of terror one gets looking at The Scream of Edvard Munch (whatever it "really" means).
6 year old's are not that good at hiding it. Adults might be better, but it is there.
"If biological death appears to some as an endpoint to existence, there is nevertheless a longevity to our physical, artifactual and psychosocial lives. They intertwine and merge with the broader world out of which we are woven".
Now that is a comforting thought. (Longevity? That all depends).
"It is in this regard that twilight conversations with my oldest son take on a very different light."
I sure hope so.
We all fear death. Behind every type of explanation, if one scratches the surface, then what there very often is is that feeling of terror one gets looking at The Scream of Edvard Munch (whatever it "really" means).
6 year old's are not that good at hiding it. Adults might be better, but it is there.
15
Not everyone fears death. Dying, perhaps, but not death.
24
'Of all the wonders that I yet have heard,
It seems to me most strange that men should fear,
Seeing that death, a necessary end,
Will come when it will come.'
-- Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, II.ii.
It seems to me most strange that men should fear,
Seeing that death, a necessary end,
Will come when it will come.'
-- Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, II.ii.
2
Life as we know it has been a component of this planet for nearly as long as this planet has been in this universe, some 4,000,000,000 years or so. That's a lot of 0's. To view life as only a human experience is to forget that life has been around for a long time and we humans have not. Life is because it can. We complicate the reason that we are here by focusing on ourselves. Try seeing life from the perspective of a 2,000 year old sequoia. How about an adult may fly, who gets to live for 24 hours or so. Life is what we do with the time we get to be alive. We can spend your time getting on with it or not, but it seems to me like a waste of it worrying about when its done.
198
But in our society it seems important to be some body and supposedly that gives us meaning. In Indonesia there is an huge old banyan tree where the dead are laid out in the open their essence to be absorbed into its roots and ultimately to rejoin the nature from which we came. To some this may seem spiritual mumbo jumbo, but is it so different from the scientific view that all our elements and energy are recycled back into the web of the universe? Is it so important that my personality whatever that may be will survive? Please I hope never to inflict this worrying selfish being beyond what my time allows. Thank you all for sharing your lives here.