Fear: The Culture that Denies Death

All medical science is geared today to making us live longer. In the not too distant future you will be able to download all your thoughts and experiences into a computer to be retained in an acetylene solution. There you will spend eternity in a glass case believing that you are moving around still living out those experiences. Your great-great-great-great grand children can even come to visit you. Sounds morbid? Like something out of Stephen King even. But it’s the natural progression of a philosophy that determines that the physical is the only reality. Apparently in this new suspended reality you will not be able to tell the difference between that and how you live now. The interesting thing I find about this form of virtual reality is that it uncannily mirrors our present one, after all your experiences are really taking place inside you and not outside as you think. All movement is probably only an illusion too. The problem I have with it is that it seeks to take us further into the dream. It creates a ‘permanent’ dream within a dream. Is there any chance of waking up in this state? And what if someone pulls the plug? Horrified, are you?


What if you are already living in this state?


Would you know?


work to prolong life

Research scientists are working assiduously to create replaceable parts for the body, transplants, prosthetic limbs, artificial heart and lungs. Stem cell research will lead in the near future to the human body being able to grow its own replacement tissue. Shortly getting a new liver or spleen will be as routine as a hip replacement today. These are all excellent advances in their own right, nothing wrong with longevity. No one’s suggesting science shouldn’t advance as far as it can. But is it done with the mind set of clinging to life?

Previous generations grew old naturally, but not so any more. Before people were less afraid of death and more afraid of what came after it. That meant they traded living now in the hope of some putative ‘Hereafter’ (a very strange term if ever there was one). It kind of meant your life begun when you died. Their big fear was of a God always out to punish them. Today the fear of God is more unconscious, yet it is still present. In the past they accepted being ruled by an omnipotent being who had these weird and totally arbitrary set of rules; the thing to do was to stay on the right side of him. See God and the Myth we created of the Parent Today we pretend to be liberated from God, to be smarter than our ancestors, unshackled by the chains of superstition.

So what then do we do about death? We displace it in a morass of youth, botox and a quasi immortality. We have become very unconscious around death.


Now the previous generation’s strength was that they believed in something. When you believe in nothing you enter a vacuum and fall prey to the fear of fear itself. This is a form of torment worse than any previous belief in hell.


Is Death the ultimate failure ?

Our culture has defined death as a failure, this is why it attempts to hide it and call it by another name and indulge in a celebration of brash youth. Come to think of it, it can’t do anything else, death is the inevitable and single end point of a body-centred ideology. And this is true of religion as much as any atheistic philosophy. The Christian is concerned with nothing but the body. His view of the afterlife is one where everyone will rise again on the last day in the body they had in this life. Whether you like it or not you’re stuck with this thing. He believes in a hierarchical structure where everyone will have their proper place in heaven, maybe the clergy will get the best seats, and so on. His is a materialistic and fleshly heaven (while at the same time denying the flesh). I visit some old folks in a nursing home and they worry there won’t be enough room for everybody in heaven, considering the population of the world since the beginning of time. It is really sad that this is the basis of people’s religion, that this trash has been taught to people in the name of Jesus.


The thing is we are already immortal. Death is really a kind of transition, a change from one form of existence to another. There are hundreds of documented cases of people who died briefly and described feelings of supreme peacefulness, being totally loved and complete. Very often there was a guide or angel there to help them, and this guide would tell them they must return to earth because it wasn’t their time to move on yet. You see we chose to express life in a physical form, for whatever reason, maybe because there are things we have to learn. But life in the body should not be measured by the length of time you're in it. Your life here isn’t a punishment, neither is it permanent. It’s not something you need to cling to because life isn’t something you can ever lose.


Now there’s nothing wrong with the body. Let’s be perfectly clear on that one. In the past we also denied the body by calling it sinful, and this is what has led to the present impasse, the idolization of the body, if you like. ACIM tells us that the body is neither good nor bad, but neutral. It is created by the mind and does the mind’s bidding. Therefore, you can recreate your body or create a new one any time you choose. This takes us to the subject of reincarnation, which is a topic for another place, and one precariously received by the western mind, which oft times thinks, ‘I’ll be rich and famous the next time and living the life I really should be living now’. Well, no, you won’t! not unless you live it now. Really there is no ‘next time’, there is but a continuous now where you may appear to take different form and have new experiences.


Be not afraid. Death is not the enemy

It is not true that death is a failure. And while we go on thinking that we will go on denying it, and conversely go on making it real. For the thing we suppress in life is what we manifest. And while we do this we will continue sublimating youth or some other fantasy for it. Death is not something we should fear. Why?


Because love is stronger than death.

Don’t worry if you see bodies passing away, like the seasons, they’ll come round again. There is a reality beyond the body, beyond what our physical eyes can see and our hands can manipulate. And there are many ways of leaving the body besides through the portals of death.

Is it possible to take your body with you when you leave this earth? Many of the great yogis and enlightened masters appeared to have done precisely that, perhaps to teach us that it’s possible. Trust me they don’t use them where they are. Living in the mind of God, which is our true home, is to have no limits at all, therefore if you want you can still have your body, although you will hardly need it.


Love your body, take care of it, and when it is time gently let it go.

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