MY VIEW ABOUT DEATH AND ITS RELATIONSHIP TO LIFE

I had a Near-Death-Experience (NDE) that affected my life profoundly, especially my views about death and its relationship to life. My NDE taught me to distinguish between the appearance of death and the experience of death. In the words of Kenneth Ring, "The appearance of death is not at all like the experience of death. What death looks like is not what it feels like."

The NDE does not displace traditional perspectives on what is appropriate to the situation of the dying person. The NDE is about the moment of death, a moment when awesome changes take place. It is a process of expansion beyond oneself, an adjustment of consciousness from one place of reality to another. Both the situation of the dying person and the moment of death are indispensable for a comprehensive understanding of what death is. As a consequence of my NDE, I do not fear death at all.

For the past 32 years I have worked with dying patients. I encounter death not so much as a problem to be solved or a puzzle to be pieced together, but as a mystery to be experienced. Death, whatever its meaning and real nature, seems always to elude us. It is always and finally a mystery. And mystery refuses to be captured and used. We do not capture it; we are captured by it. And being captured, we can be "engaged" to death and allow it to reveal its depth and richness.

Mystery, however, is not incomprehension. It is a gateway to meaning. Though we see through a glass darkly, we do see — not everything, but enough. We see enough so that we can walk in confidence. People actually have death awareness. We know about death as we live our life. Therefore, with self-conscious awareness, we can raise fundamental questions regarding our death, such as: Since I am going to die, how can I truly live? How can I awaken within myself the search for a more fundamental reality within myself? How can I truly be myself?

Toward the end of his life, Michaelangelo said, "I thought all the while I was learning how to live, but now I know I was learning how to die." His anticipation of death revealed to him that death is a key to self-understanding. It is an intellectual and moral revolution that helps us define human nature.

Death is an element and process of life. It is true that death is a distant future event that awaits us. But death can also be viewed as an element of life itself. It’s reality permeates the whole of life. Death is right here — in my life, in my body, as part of my very existence. It is always here, always with me. In The Aristos, John Fowles wrote, "We die throughout life, and what we call death is really the end of death, the death of death."

In Civilization and Its Discontents, Sigmund Freud wrote about life instinct and death instinct, claiming that death instinct is the more primitive. Death instinct, he said, is the impulse of life to return to lifelessness, to pull the organism back to the inanimate state from which all life emerged. "At one time or another," Freud wrote, "by some operation of force which completely baffles conjecture, the properties of life were awakened in lifeless matter . . . The tension then aroused in the previously inanimate matter strove to attain an equilibrium; the first instinct was present, that to return to lifelessness."

What is basic and significant about Freud’s idea of this fundamental psychological drive toward death is his idea that death is somehow present in a unified way from the beginning of life. Death is an intrinsic part of life; it arises out of existence itself. It belongs to life. The issue is not "to be or not to be." Rather, it is "to be and not to be." The "and" suggests that not-to-be (non-being) is an inseparable part of being. Death belongs to the very being of man. It is not something that is added on at the last stages of one’s life.

The implications of death as element are many. One is that death is the most definitive possibility of life. It stands before us in a unique way, with an aspect of totality that no other possibility has. We can know, see, eat, love — but all of these engage us only partially and temporarily. When we say one can die, we immediately recognize the difference: death engages us totally. The possibility of death enfolds, includes, and engulfs all other human possibilities completely and entirely.

Death also offers us a "way to be." It is something that we can do. It is a power to be, not just the power to cease to be. It is not merely something that we submit to, not something that "happens" to us. Rather, it is one of the things that human beings can do. When death occurs, it can be something we actually perform. We can choose to die. In my work with dying persons, I help them take their last experience of life and make of it a great achievement. I know that some dying persons can achieve what Dr. Avery Weisman, one of the most thoughtful writers in the field of thanatology today, calls "the appropriate death." The five basic elements of appropriate death are: greater sense of completeness; resolution of relationships with loved ones; more inner tranquility; less turmoil, agitation, and anguish; and rounding out life with a sense of accomplishment and peace.

Death assists persons to discover what is most important and essential in life. For example, Robert was a very successful CEO in his early 60s when he discovered something was wrong with him. He went to see a doctor, and after many tests, was told that cancer had spread throughout his whole body. When he asked the doctor what his chances were, the reply was "anywhere from three to six months."

When he invited me to work with him, he had already given up his business. His two sons had left mainland colleges to be with him, his daughter was experiencing great confusion, and his wife had relinquished all her community activities.

One evening Robert invited me to have dinner with the family. There was much laughter and joy around the dinner table. After dinner, we went into the living room and there the great illumination took place. The father went to each of his children, called them by name and said, "I love you." This person-to-person declaration of love enabled each of the children to experience the freedom to express their deepest feelings for each other . . . free to become the family they were meant to be.

Death mirrors the meaning of life. In our engagement with death, death bestows upon us many gifts. It can become a mirror in which the meaning of life is reflected. One of its healing gifts is individual awareness. Death is the key to self-understanding. It not only helps us define human nature, it is also an experiential understanding that pus us in touch with our deepest feelings, anxiety, and hope. As John Fowles says, "The more absolute death seems, the more authentic life becomes."

Death transforms our experience of time. For a dying person, it is not the past with all its joys or regrets that is important, nor the future with all its promise and fulfillment. What is real, what is important, is the present, the now. I am dying now. When we live in the moment, we suddenly realize that there’s nothing to be, nothing to do, nothing to have. Having nothing, we can be anything.

Death creates in us a special knowing: the knowing that love is stronger than death. Love creates something new out of the destruction caused by death. As Paul Tillich says, "Love does not seek to abolish death. Rather, it dares to accept death into its own bosom. Love willingly enters the grave and is witness to its power of resurrection."

There is an experience of life beyond death. In the face of death, there is a compelling and universal need, a sense of connection, an immortality. As Robert Lifton puts it, "This need is part of the organism’s quest for continuity, for meaning. This sense of eternal life is not just our denial of death. Rather in the face of death, death pushes us to search for a way of experiencing our connection with all of human history, with continuity of life, with eternal life."

Nikolai Berdyaev, in his poem "If There were no Death in our World," says:

It lifts the very last of mortals above the greyness and banality of life.

And only the fact of death puts the question of life’s meaning in all its depth.

Life in this world has meaning only because there is death;

If there were no death in our world, life would be deprived of meaning.

Meaning is linked with ending.

And if there were no end,

If in our world there was evil and endlessness of life,

There would be no meaning to life whatever.

The meaning of man’s moral experience throughout his whole life

Lies in putting him into a position to comprehend death.