Awareness of our death doesn’t always lead to exhilaration or appreciation of life. Sometimes we shrink from it, we become anxious or obsessive. Why are we afraid of death? When we die we will be no more. We won't even have a chance of noticing that. We just won't be any more. We'll become NOTHINGNESS! Not wanting to die seems natural to me. "I can find out why I don’t want to die — which means finding out what I want to do while alive", says Evan Hadkins. And I tend to agree with him. Because when one is very ill and has to lie in bed knowing he/she will never recover his/her desire to die seems to me quite understandable. And what do you think about it? By the way, have you had a close call (being narrowly missed by a car, for instance) that has given you a more vivid sense of life, or, perhaps a moment of anxiety? I would like to hear your experience in the comments. P.S. Have a look at the table. Can you draw some conclusions?
Asya, are you sure that a very sick person REALLY wants to die? Well, he/she of course may. But what if he is young and has a lot of plans and dreams? How is it possible for him to accept death? I think death may be accepted only by a person who is old and wise enough to understand the power of time. Of course, the fear of death is in human nature. I've been thinking about life and death for a long time and I've decided that people shouldn't waste their time thinking about death. We know that it's inevitable and can't change the turn of things. We'd better think of life and the present day. Anyway, the time for us to think about death will come some day.
We shouldn't deep into religious questions because if only we look deep into religion and track its history and everything that sorrounds it, we can undoubtedly find reasons for any religion. Let's just take the spread of Christianity in Egypt in the time of the Roman Empire fall. There were intelligent people with modern thinking, good scientists, who, at the same time, belonged to high society. They were pagans, they believed in Ra and Gor, whoever. At the beggining of our era the pagan religion for such people was nothing but a way to spiritual enrichment. But new religion, Christianity, was for those poor and uneaducated people who inhabitated Egypt at that time. They adopted Christianity to unite themselves and destroy the people loathed by them who had eveything. Most of pagans were killed. Most of them were the intellectual core of the society. This is how religion works. Dozens of examples from different religions can be given concerning this topic, but I went a little bit off-top, sorry. It seems that there is no life after death, but at the moments when you lose you nearest, it seems that there is. The stress influences you and your mentality mixed up with the notion of religion do their business. And one more thing - a myth of feeling the vividness of file in an extreme situation. Everyone who experienced such things would tell you that our brains don't react anyhow on this. In the moment of a crash accident eveything happens so fast that one can't think about anything at all. Maybe another thing is when a gun is by your temple, but I think no one here has ever experinced such a thing.
Do you really think that the phenomenon of death and life after death can be explained scientifically? Does the concept of LIFE fit the concept of after-death existence? Is it existence or a permanent presence in the universe that is always there? Is religion, be it Christianity or Islam or Buddism, just a theoretical explanation of it all? When I think of religion, the notion becomes clearer. When I think of science, things become more complicated and unclear. Strange.
Religion is a strange thing for me. I don't trust it. There are very many different religions that differ from each other completely. But science is universal. That makes me trust it. And it does make things clearer. Sometimes scientific researches are rather difficult to understand but having gained this understanding you can't but admit the validity of the theory.
Life after death can neither be proved or disproved. This is because one would have to undergo physical death in order to prove or disprove it, and by its very nature, disproving it would not be possible. We can't imagine life after but we only know this life, that's why it is often strange to believe in after-life. World religions have developed different teachings to explain that earthly presence is only one type of life. Life never stops but takes different shapes. The problem is that a human being is not a cosmic being and he/she can't establish clear logical links between all life types. These links are not seen with a naked eye or an unprepared mind or a one-dimentional soul. Do we need it though? Yes, this theme is and will always be part of our concept of the world. I think you will find the links on Life after Death a useful journey into the core of the issue - http://lifeafterdeath.info/ and http://www.aarpmagazine.org/people/life_after_death.html and http://www.stevepavlina.com/articles/life-after-death.htm
Thank You for the link. I've looked the site through. Really, quite debatable issues are discussed there. And no direct conclusions are drawn - I like it when we have to decide personally. Liked the chapter "science" most of all - it made me think
I'm in two minds. I believe in life after death when it concerns my relatives oe close friends, but I can't even imagine my 'life after'. I am not afraid of death when e.g. I'm flying, but I was deadly scared before I was operated on. So, it depends.
