When Did You Ever Become Less by Dying (original) (raw)
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Survival?: Body, mind, and death in the light of psychic experience
1984
The greatest part of what we say and do is unnecessary. MARCUS AURELIUS Presque toute notre vie este employée à des curiositées niaises. En revanche il y a des choses qui defraient exciter la curiosité des homes au plus haut degré, et qui, à en juger par leur train de vie ordinaire, ne leur en inspirent aucune. Où sont nos amis morts? Pourquoi sommes-nous ici? Venons-nous de quelque part?.... BAUDELAIRE The answer to human life is not to be found within the limits of human life. JUNG Man has not basically changed. Death is still a fearful, frightening happening, and the fear of death is a universal fear even if we think we have mastered it on many levels. KÜBLER-ROSS Medical advances may postpone death, but no degree of scientific sophistication is able to eliminate it altogether. Sooner or later each of us has to confront the prospect of the death of the physical body. Then what? The annihilation of a dreamless sleep, or might conscious existence continue in some sense? If so, what might be the nature of such a continued existence? Might my present conduct and attitudes influence its quality? The decline in infant mortality has made us less familiar with death in the immediate family. We may see disasters on the television news, we may read of murders in the newspapers, but such events rarely touch us directly: this kind of thing could never happen to us, we remain insulated and apart. Our old people are often carefully segregated in institutions out of contact with the rest of society, and when they fall ill they are discreetly transported to clockwork hospitals. Here they become patients, further isolated from their normal environments, and are often cloaked in a conspiracy of silence regarding the real nature and gravity of their illness. Kübler-Ross constructs a scenario of what may ensue at this stage: Our imaginary patient has now reached the emergency ward. He will be surrounded by busy nurses, orderlies, interns, residents, a lab technician perhaps who will take some blood, another technician who takes the electrocardiogram. He may be moved to X-ray and he will overhear opinions of his condition and discussions and questions to members of his family. Slowly but surely he is beginning to be treated like a thing. He is no longer a person. Decisions are made often without taking his opinion. If he tries to rebel he will be sedated, and after hours of waiting and wondering whether he has the strength, he will be wheeled into the operating room or intensive treatment unit and become an object of great concern and great financial investment. He may cry out for rest, peace, dignity, but he will get infusions, transfusions, a heart machine, or a tracheotomy. 1 The alienation is exacerbated. For medicine death is the ultimate symbol of failure and defeat: life must be prolonged where possible. Death is to be evaded and denied. Such evasion and denial surrounding the terminal patient may temporarily prop up the medical staff and relatives, but it is liable to elicit feelings of horror and revulsion towards the dying person at the very moment when he most needs human sympathy and comfort. People are afraid of identifying themselves too closely. But one day it will be their turn. During the earliest stages, air is conceived as participating with thought: the voice is air, and, in return, the wind takes notice of us, obeys us, and is 'good at making us grow', comes when we move our hands, and so on. When thought proper is localised in the self, and the participations between air and thought are broken, the nature of air changes by virtue of this fact alone. Air becomes independent of men, sufficient to itself, and living its own life. But, owing, to the fact that it is held to participate with the self, it retains at the very moment when it is severing these bonds, a certain number of purely human aspects: it still has consciousness, of a different kind perhaps than formerly, but its own nevertheless. Only very gradually will it be reduced to a mere thing. 3 We know that trees, idols, holy places, and human beings are recognisable objects of the external world, into which early man projected his inner psychic contents. By recognising them, we withdraw such 'primitive projections', we diagnose them as autosuggestion or something of the sort, and thus the fusion effected by participation between man and the objects of the external world is nullified. 5 First, concerning souls of individual creatures, capable of continued existence after the death or destruction of the body; second, concerning other spirits, upwards to the rank of deities. Spiritual beings are held to affect or control the events of the material world, and man's life here and hereafter. 11 He goes on to argue that, given the possibility of communication between these spirits and men, reverence and propitiation will soon arise, thus pointing to emergence of religion from a combination of ancestor-worship and worship of elemental forces. This view has been contested by, inter alia, Evans-Pritchard 12 but a discussion of the issues falls outside the scope of this work. Whatever the controversy over the actual sequence of beliefs, it is generally recognised that the primitive outlook is characterised by the kind of animism formulated by Tylor. This view does not limit the possibility of continued post-mortem existence to man. Frazer states that The explanation of life by the theory of an indwelling and practically immortal soul is one which the savage does not confine to human beings but extends to the animate creation in general ….he commonly believes that animals are endowed with feelings and intelligence like those of men, and that, like men, the possess souls which survive the death of their bodies either to wander about as disembodied spirits or to be born again in animal form. 13 Once the moon charged the hare to go to men and say 'As I die and rise to life again, so shall you die and rise to life again'. So the hare went to men, but either out of forgetfulness or malice he reversed the message and said 'As I die and do not rise to life again, so shall you also die and not rise to life again'. Then he went back to the moon and she asked him what he had said. He told her, and when she heard that he had given the wrong message, she was so angry with him that she threw a stick at him and split his life, which is the reason why the hare's lip is still split ….before he fled he clawed the moon's face, which still bears the marks of his scratching, as anybody can see for himself on a clear moonlight night. 64 This myth is notable for its economy in explaining at one stroke the origin of death, the hare's lip, and the man in the moon. A third theme, that the serpent and his cast skin, has a tenuous connection with the Genesis story. Some Melanesians say that a messenger was entrusted with the message of immortality for men, providing that they shed their skins every year; but serpents were to be mortal. Unfortunately the secret was betrayed to the serpents and the message reversed. In another case in Annam 65 the messenger was entrusted with the same message but was intimidated by a group of serpents and obliged to repeat the message in reverse. It is interesting that both myths assume that the serpent somehow expropriated a privilege originally accorded to man. Another Sumatran story tells of a certain being who was sent down from heaven to put the finishing touches on creation. He was The idea of immortality was an axiom to the minds of the Egyptians; their notions might be confused, might be rebuffed by pessimism, might develop in various ways, yet from the first burial, with its regular offerings, the belief was always acting until it was expanded in the conversion to Christanity.9 with the calm assurance common to all close and confined religious associations, the Eleusinian society divided mankind into two classes: the 'Pure', that is those who had been initiated at Eleusis, and the innumerable multitude of the uninitiated'. 34 'Alexander's Tomb'. Here the essential items were distributed between three automatists, Mrs Piper, Miss Verrall, and Mrs Holland: Mrs Piper: Moorhead, I gave her that for laurel.
Science and the Afterlife Experience: Evidence for the Immortality of Consciousness by Chris Carter
Journal of Scientific Exploration, 2014
Science and the Afterlife Experience is the concluding volume of a trilogy that began with Parapsychology and the Skeptics (Carter 2007; reissued as Science and Psychic Phenomena, Carter 2012) and continued with Science and the Near-Death Experience (Carter 2010). These books provide handy introductions to parapsychology, psychical research, and allied concerns (such as the near-death experience) for a new generation of readers. They may best be described as quasi-scholarly, aimed primarily at a general (non-academic) audience, although they include notes, reference lists, and indexes. Carter, who holds an M.A. from the University of Oxford, England, identifies himself as a philosopher and here and there addresses philosophical concerns, such as the implications of "paranormal" phenomena for concepts of personal identity. One of the hallmarks of the series is the attention given to materialistic skeptical positions, extended in the volume under review to include super-ESP.
Death, Consciousness, and Phenomenology
2017
The gist of this paper will be my exploration of the kinds of issues that emerge when existentially-grounded phenomenologists confront the issue of death. After briefly examining the materialist perspective on consciousness, we will concentrate our attention on how the recognition of different levels of consciousness can show us how we can relate to death in different ways. We will proceed from examining the impossibility of the death of the self, to the possibility of transcendence through experiencing the death of the other. We will turn to Merleau-Ponty’s concept of bodily knowledge for help with the matter of how consciousness constitutes the world around itself and enables the possibility of transcendence. We will also examine passages from Nietzsche’s philosophy (with guidance from Heidegger and Blanchot) that cover the transition from viewing time as linear to viewing time as circular, and the transition from understanding our place in the universe in a passive, accepting way...
Death and Soul Consciousness recounts my growing interest in the spiritual perspectives of both East and West and how quantum cosmology appealed to me as a bridge between science and mysticism. I highlight the unitary nature of consciousness and associated research into presentiment, psychokinesis, remote viewing and in particular, the near-death experience. I set out my understanding of the soul journey, concluding with two past life regressions of my own, which suggest to me that learning from experience (often through adversity) is part of humankind’s continuing evolution of spiritual growth.
1998
Preface "Call no man happy until he is dead" wrote unhappy Aeschylus. "Death is nothing" opined the much more contented Epicurus. "Death is not an event in life. Death is not lived through" wrote the early Wittgenstein.
A Natural Afterlife Discovered: The Newfound, Psychological Reality That Awaits Us at Death, 2022
This book reveals an amazingly long-overlooked psychological reality that dawned on the author when he woke up from a dream and thought: “Suppose I had never woken up? Though others would know, how would I ever know it was over?” Based on cognitive science research and analysis, the author found that consciousness is not extinguished with death but, from a dying person’s perspective, only imperceptibly “paused.” Given this, from your perspective, you’ll never lose your mind, self, and soul. And, given dreams and near-death experiences, you may experience a timeless natural—i.e., scientifically supported—afterlife, which can be a heaven of utmost happiness. Charles Darwin’s theory of natural selection was an earth-shattering revelation about how life evolved. This book is about an equally earth-shattering scientific theory about how a human life ends, including its possible impact on society and on you. For more information on the book, including media posts and author interviews, visit bryonehlmann.com.
Mysticism, Consciousness, Death
Drawing on the mystical experiences of the author, this paper examines death. After making several observations about his own mystical experience, the author explores the implications of his experience for both theories of consciousness and the ultimate question of death. He concludes, based on the observable facts of his experiences, that not only is consciousness far more varied and complex than most might admit, but that in order to account for observations in his home laboratory, it must survive the death of the physical vehicle.
Theories of Consciousness & Death [JCER 7(11)]
Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research, 2016
What happens to the inner light of consciousness with the death of the individual body and brain? Reductive materialism assumes it simply fades to black. Others think of consciousness as indicating a continuation of self, a transformation, an awakening or even alternatives based on the quality of life experience. In this issue, speculations drawn from philosophical research are presented.
Death is Transition -Time at the Door of Eternity
Unfolding Consciousness: Exploring the Living Universe and Intelligent Powers in Nature and Humans, 2022
This Chapter presents an overview of the principal stages and associated states of consciousness of man after physical death, and the processes that impel him towards rebirth. Whereas there are myriad complex details to consider in exploring ‘The undiscover’d country’ we necessarily have to confine our attention to the key features of the post-mortem and reincarnation process, drawing upon occult teachings in order to highlight the fact that consciousness is ubiquitous: it cannot be extinguished; it never ‘dies’. In other words, using the simile of ice, water, and steam being phase changes of the same H2O, death and the post-mortem states are but changes of phase of consciousness, which is unaffected by different phase states of itself... Pythagoras taught: "And when, after having divested thyself of the mortal body, thou arrivest at the most pure AEther, Thou shalt be a God, immortal, incorruptible, and Death shall have no more Dominion over thee."
World Futures, 2017
In contemporary Western culture, death has been widely censured because of its conceptual implications; it lies at the boundaries between reductionism and metaphysics. There is not yet an efficacious epistemology able to solve this contraposition and its consequent collision with science and tradition. This article analyzes Near Death Experiences (NDEs) as a prototypical argument in which 15 the two perspectives conflict. Specifically, it analyzes the epistemological antinomies of the ontological representations of death, inhering in passage versus absolute annihilation. Indeed, the NDEs theme permits the examination of the logical contradiction between monistic reductionism and its ontological counterpart to improve the discovery of a new paradigm that integrates the ecological 20 with eternalist views.