DEATH is not an experience in life (Ludwig Wittgenstein). Indeed, death is always described from the perspective of the living. How one perceives, thinks and feels about life and death throughout one’s life has to make a difference at the end.
Will we ever personally experience death when we will cease to be conscious before the end? We will be dead only for others — and when that happens, we will no longer be there. We avoid death in our thoughts and actions for the fear of it. Without such fear, we could see more clearly how interesting the concept actually is from a more detached point of view.
Death: Wall or door?
Others see death as the end of embodied life that leads to a portal to another life — a door. To others, it is a simple termination of this life — a wall. It may be viewed as a fun house mirror — the wall of death showing us that death is a reflection of our own lives.
To Jeff Mason, a philosophy professor who wrote in his sickbed of terminal cancer, death shadows life as naturally as the shadow one casts on the ground on a sunny day. There is no point in denying it, and no point in worrying about it. Perhaps acceptance lies in this direction.
Death across lifespan
Are birth and death the bookends of our lives? The young looks forward, and the old looks backward. What we value changes as we get older. The prospect of death differs with these changes. As the young savor youth and life, we get older and mortality starts to sink in. Mortality approaches. Life finds its greater meaning. The closer the death comes nearer, the intention to understand life gets deeper.
Plato had a vital concern and constantly meditated upon death. Spinoza is the wise person who thought so little of death. The truth of death is somewhere in the middle. Ignoring it gives us a false sense of permanence — losing ourselves as we live our daily lives. Ruminating on it can lead us away from living life.
The meaning of life in death
Kubler Ross famously discusses five stages of grief and loss: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. But Jeff Mason claims to have jumped to acceptance — gratitude — bypassing the four stages. In the end, he concludes that it is useful to think about death only to the point that it frees us to live fully immersed in the life we have yet to live.
Reflecting upon death gives us the opportunity to find the significance of one’s life and, like a north star in a compass, it makes us decide on the values that give life its meaning.
Near-death experience
My mother, Siony, at 72, suffered from an ascending paralysis Guillain Barre syndrome, was in a ventilator and survived. She went home on a wheelchair and took months to learn to walk again.
She reported having been through a timeless journey in place so peaceful and bright. She was floating but kept on running away from a hole of brightest light that appears to be most welcoming. She insists that she saw her dead relatives seemingly welcoming her. But she survived the death that was right in front of her.
Butch Guererro, a board member of the national Philippine Chamber of Commerce and Industry, claims to have died seven times and attests that “I was there, and it is unexplainable — there was no pain and there was only comfort. Smell was indescribable. Music was peaceful. It was full of joy.” He can attest to the life after death — and claims that it is a beautiful one where only love can permeate the barrier.
Janus de Leon, the dean of academics of my review center, had a freak vehicular accident and had a near-death experience (NDE) seeing souls wearing golden robes in a very bright place. He reports that there was no pain, no fear; just gratitude and total surrender to God. He knew that God was there and that life is everlasting.
An NDE is a broad range of personal subjective experience associated with death or impending death — unconscious, lacking heartbeat or respiration and having a flat electroencephalogram.
Accounts of NDEs have been found in many different cultures and throughout history but share some common features across cultures and religions, according to leading NDE researcher Bruce Greyson. The anecdotal accounts are similar to that of my mother, Butch’s and Janus’.
NDEs can be interpreted as glimpses of the heavenly realm, a confirmation of our eternal existence (Kushner).
Death through Catholic lens
Socrates argues, in the Phaedo, that the soul and the body are separable — that the soul is immortal — and that a very different afterlife awaits those who have lived a good or evil life. But after giving his “proofs” of the immortality of the soul, he has the greatness to admit that if he is wrong, and death is total extinction, then he will never know he is wrong, and his folly will be buried with him.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC) teaches that every spiritual soul “is immortal: It does not perish when it separates from the body at death, and it will be reunited with the body at the final Resurrection.” Human souls never die.
Each man receives his eternal retribution in his immortal soul at the very moment of his death, either entrance into the blessedness of heaven — through a purification or immediately — or immediate and everlasting damnation. (CCC 1022).
Science and the skeptics
In spite of scientific interest and modern pursuit for its more empirical understanding, there is still no scientific consensus about NDE, and there is a lack of rigorous experimental data, and controlled and reproducible experiments. The subjective nature of these experiences makes them difficult to verify scientifically.
The medical world has generally ignored these “near-death experiences,” dismissing them as “tricks of the brain” or wishful thinking. Skeptics argue that NDEs can be explained by brain activity during near-death states, hallucinations caused by medication or psychological defense mechanisms in response to trauma. The similarities in NDEs across cultures might be due to shared cultural expectations about death, rather than evidence of an afterlife (Blackmore). NDEs could be the brain’s way of trying to make sense of a traumatic experience like cardiac arrest (Dawkins).
Beyond religion, science
Bruce Greyson, without a religious belief system, approached near-death experiences from a scientific perspective through over four decades of research. He shows dying could be the threshold between one form of consciousness and another, not an ending but a transition. This challenges us to open our minds to these experiences and to what they can teach us, and in so doing, expand our understanding of consciousness and of what it means to be human.
Life ends in the same way, but indeed the difference is on how we live and how we will die. This is because the dead are not dead in those they left behind, unless they are forgotten.
Blessed Lenten reflections, everyone!
-END-
SOURCE: The Manila Times
Will we ever personally experience death when we will cease to be conscious before the end? We will be dead only for others — and when that happens, we will no longer be there. We avoid death in our thoughts and actions for the fear of it. Without such fear, we could see more clearly how interesting the concept actually is from a more detached point of view.
Death: Wall or door?
Others see death as the end of embodied life that leads to a portal to another life — a door. To others, it is a simple termination of this life — a wall. It may be viewed as a fun house mirror — the wall of death showing us that death is a reflection of our own lives.
To Jeff Mason, a philosophy professor who wrote in his sickbed of terminal cancer, death shadows life as naturally as the shadow one casts on the ground on a sunny day. There is no point in denying it, and no point in worrying about it. Perhaps acceptance lies in this direction.
Death across lifespan
Are birth and death the bookends of our lives? The young looks forward, and the old looks backward. What we value changes as we get older. The prospect of death differs with these changes. As the young savor youth and life, we get older and mortality starts to sink in. Mortality approaches. Life finds its greater meaning. The closer the death comes nearer, the intention to understand life gets deeper.
Plato had a vital concern and constantly meditated upon death. Spinoza is the wise person who thought so little of death. The truth of death is somewhere in the middle. Ignoring it gives us a false sense of permanence — losing ourselves as we live our daily lives. Ruminating on it can lead us away from living life.
The meaning of life in death
Kubler Ross famously discusses five stages of grief and loss: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. But Jeff Mason claims to have jumped to acceptance — gratitude — bypassing the four stages. In the end, he concludes that it is useful to think about death only to the point that it frees us to live fully immersed in the life we have yet to live.
Reflecting upon death gives us the opportunity to find the significance of one’s life and, like a north star in a compass, it makes us decide on the values that give life its meaning.
Near-death experience
My mother, Siony, at 72, suffered from an ascending paralysis Guillain Barre syndrome, was in a ventilator and survived. She went home on a wheelchair and took months to learn to walk again.
She reported having been through a timeless journey in place so peaceful and bright. She was floating but kept on running away from a hole of brightest light that appears to be most welcoming. She insists that she saw her dead relatives seemingly welcoming her. But she survived the death that was right in front of her.
Butch Guererro, a board member of the national Philippine Chamber of Commerce and Industry, claims to have died seven times and attests that “I was there, and it is unexplainable — there was no pain and there was only comfort. Smell was indescribable. Music was peaceful. It was full of joy.” He can attest to the life after death — and claims that it is a beautiful one where only love can permeate the barrier.
Janus de Leon, the dean of academics of my review center, had a freak vehicular accident and had a near-death experience (NDE) seeing souls wearing golden robes in a very bright place. He reports that there was no pain, no fear; just gratitude and total surrender to God. He knew that God was there and that life is everlasting.
An NDE is a broad range of personal subjective experience associated with death or impending death — unconscious, lacking heartbeat or respiration and having a flat electroencephalogram.
Accounts of NDEs have been found in many different cultures and throughout history but share some common features across cultures and religions, according to leading NDE researcher Bruce Greyson. The anecdotal accounts are similar to that of my mother, Butch’s and Janus’.
NDEs can be interpreted as glimpses of the heavenly realm, a confirmation of our eternal existence (Kushner).
Death through Catholic lens
Socrates argues, in the Phaedo, that the soul and the body are separable — that the soul is immortal — and that a very different afterlife awaits those who have lived a good or evil life. But after giving his “proofs” of the immortality of the soul, he has the greatness to admit that if he is wrong, and death is total extinction, then he will never know he is wrong, and his folly will be buried with him.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC) teaches that every spiritual soul “is immortal: It does not perish when it separates from the body at death, and it will be reunited with the body at the final Resurrection.” Human souls never die.
Each man receives his eternal retribution in his immortal soul at the very moment of his death, either entrance into the blessedness of heaven — through a purification or immediately — or immediate and everlasting damnation. (CCC 1022).
Science and the skeptics
In spite of scientific interest and modern pursuit for its more empirical understanding, there is still no scientific consensus about NDE, and there is a lack of rigorous experimental data, and controlled and reproducible experiments. The subjective nature of these experiences makes them difficult to verify scientifically.
The medical world has generally ignored these “near-death experiences,” dismissing them as “tricks of the brain” or wishful thinking. Skeptics argue that NDEs can be explained by brain activity during near-death states, hallucinations caused by medication or psychological defense mechanisms in response to trauma. The similarities in NDEs across cultures might be due to shared cultural expectations about death, rather than evidence of an afterlife (Blackmore). NDEs could be the brain’s way of trying to make sense of a traumatic experience like cardiac arrest (Dawkins).
Beyond religion, science
Bruce Greyson, without a religious belief system, approached near-death experiences from a scientific perspective through over four decades of research. He shows dying could be the threshold between one form of consciousness and another, not an ending but a transition. This challenges us to open our minds to these experiences and to what they can teach us, and in so doing, expand our understanding of consciousness and of what it means to be human.
Life ends in the same way, but indeed the difference is on how we live and how we will die. This is because the dead are not dead in those they left behind, unless they are forgotten.
Blessed Lenten reflections, everyone!
-END-
SOURCE: The Manila Times