Death
Bibliography
"Philosophy is about learning to die,
in order to learn how to live." Cicero
McGruder Grave site.
September 1939 Iowa, Gullim Cemetery
Elisabeth Kubler-Ross
(1926-2004)
On Death and Dying, 1969/1997
Questions and Answers on Death and Dying, 1972/1997
The dying patient has telling difficulties in common.
Stages in the dying process:
1. Denial - first line of defense
2. Anger - Why me?
3. Bargaining - if you God, then I will
4. Depression and Grief
5. Hopeful acceptance
Death:
The Final Stage of Growth, 1974/1997
(to develop interknowledge)
On Life after Death, 1991/2008
Charles Tart
Best-Bet Strategies for Survival;
to increase the likelihood of survival;
If there is such a thing:
1. Be concerned with personal growth (openness to flexibility)
2. Identification is dangerous … (with name/body)
3. Explore altered states of consciousness
(ordinary conesciousness is not total)
Altered States makes you adaptable to sudden changes
4. Accept doubts (assume death is near);
this rids you of pettiness
Hindu/Buddist
The Psychic-Nerve Centers/Chakra
Forms the great highway for the passage of the psychic
Forces of the human body. These forces are concentrated
in the centers, or chakra, Like dynamos, arranged and interconnected by it,
wherein are stored the Vital-Fluid upon all psycho-physical processes
ultimately depend. Of these six are of fundamental importance.
The Supreme or Seventh Chakra, the thousand-petalled lotus
has its exit, through which the consciousness-principle
normally goes out from the body at death.
The sixth situated between the eyebrows, as depicted by the 'third eye'.
The fifth is located in the throat.
The fourth is the heart nerve-center.
The third is the navel-center.
The second chakra or lotus is the center of the sex-organs.
The first is known as the Root-support
Begin hear and rise upward.
The first is known as the Root-support
Situated in the perineum; is the secret Fountain of Vital-Force,
Presided over by the Goddess Kundalini.
Next above lies
The second chakra or lotus is the center of the sex-organs.
The third is the navel-center and is above.
The fourth is the heart nerve-center.
The fifth is located in the throat.
The sixth situated between the eyebrows, as depicted by the 'third eye'
The three chief psychic nerves come together and then separate.
Above all, is the causal region of psychic man, as the sun of the body,
Sending it's rays downwards over the human-body cosmos, is
The Supreme or Seventh Chakra, the thousand-petalled lotus.
Through it the sushumnanadi has its exit, the Aperture of Brahma
through which the consciousness-principle
normally goes out from the body at death.
The initial aim of the practitioner of Yoga is to awaken what is called
The Serpent Power, personified as the Goddess Kundalini.
It is at the base of the spinal column, containing the root of the ... ,
that this mighty occult power lies coiled, like serpent asleep.
Once the Serpent Power is roused into activity, it is made to penetrate,
one by one, the psychic-nerve centers, until, rising like mercury in a magic tube,
it reaches the thousand-petalled lotus in the brain-center.
Spreading out in a fountain-like crest,
it falls thence as a shower of heavenly ambrosia
to feed all parts of the psychic body.
Thus becoming filled with supreme spiritual power,
the yogi experiences Illumination.
The Tibetan
Book Of The Dead
or
The After-Death Experiences
On the Bardo Plane,
according to Lama Kari Dawna-Samdup’s
English Rendering
Compiled and edited by
W. Y. Evans-Wentz, 1927/1960
The Tibetan Book
Of Living And Dying
by Sogyal Rinpoche
Edited by
Patrick Gaffney and Andrew Harvey, 1993
Dante Alighieri
(1265-1321 CE)
Spiritual Light – God
A hierarchy of the multiple kinds of light
Each level of the hierarchy is more:
Noble
Powerful
Vital
The Ladder of Beauty (Love)
The Ladder of Light
The Great Chain of Being
Beauty: The Ladder of Truth and Understanding
Light the Giver of Joy (the experience of Beauty)
or
Love in its widest sense
For Dante - All reality is thus a hierarchy of the multiple kinds and Forms of Light. Culminating in the Spiritual Light which is God. The light of the universe is a hierarchy of luminous beauty, and beauty elicits love in proportion to its intensity. In other words: Light as Beauty to lure one to The Source. In Dante’s Tenth Heaven - that is beyond time and space - rays of light, immaterial light, materializes and gives life and power to the Ninth Heaven. And so on down to Earth.
More Light = More Love = More Light
Plato
(428-348 BCE)
Plato’s Scale of Beautiful Forms or His Ladder of Beauty
The true lover’s life is a journey, an ascent from the particular and corruptible beauties of sense to the general and more permanent beauties of the Mind/Soul.
The Form of Beauty
The ascent from the sensible to the intelligible
or
from a physical sense to a spiritual sense.
Supreme Being
the Highest Intelligible Reality
the object of Love
Philosophy
the Science which is:
Knowledge of Beauty
The Beauty of the Sciences
Culture: The Beauty of Laws and Tradition
The Beauty of Souls
The Beauty of Many/All Bodies
The Beauty of One Body
(personal love)
Start here and ascend upwards
Epicurus
(342-271BCE)
Perfecting the Pleasure Principle
Epicurus was a practical philosopher. He thought that ideas should have as much effect upon the control of life as medicine has upon the health of the body. He considered philosophy as the medicine of the soul.
God and Death
Epicurus thought he had liberated humanity from the fear of God and from the fear of Death. One no longer had to fear God because God did not control nature or human destiny and, was therefore, unable to intrude into people's lives. As for Death, Epicurus said, need not bother anyone, because only a living person has sensation either pain or pleasure. After death, there is no sensation, since the atoms that make up both body and mind come apart, so there is no longer this particular body or mind but only a number of distinct atoms that return, as it were, to the primeval inventory of matter to continue the cycle of new formations. No other principle is needed to explain a person's nature, no God and, therefore, no afterlife. To be liberated from the fear of God and of death sets the stage for a way of life completely under a person's own control.
Stoicism
Distinguishing Between What We Can and Cannot Control
Wisdom and Control versus Pleasure
In their moral philosophy, the Stoics aimed at happiness, but unlike the Epicureans they did not expect to find it in pleasure. Instead, the Stoics sought happiness through wisdom, a wisdom by which to control what lay within human power and to accept with dignified resignation what had to be. They were profoundly influenced by Socrates, who had faced death with serenity and courage. This example of superb control over the emotions in the face of the supreme threat to one’s existence, a threat of death, provided the Stoics with an authentic model after which to pattern their lives. Centuries later the Stoic, Epictetus, said that "I cannot escape death, but cannot I escape the dread of it?" Developing this same theme in a more general way, he wrote, "Demand not that events should happen as you wish; but wish them to happen as they do happen, and you will go on well." We cannot, that is, control all events, but we can control our attitude toward what happens. It is useless to fear future events, for they will happen in any case. But it is possible by an act of will to control our fear. We should not, therefore, fear events—in a real sense we have "nothing to fear but fear itself."
The Stoics stuck to their notion that attitudes are under the control of a person's choice, that by an act of will we can decide how we will react to events. A human being undergoes a process of change when he begins to age and face death; but people know what is happening, for in addition to the mechanical process of aging, they "know" that it is happening. No amount of additional knowledge will change the fact that a person is mortal, but the Stoics built their whole moral philosophy on the conviction that if someone knows the rigorous law and understands one's role as inevitable, he or she will not strain against the inevitable but will move cheerfully with the pace of history. Happiness is not a product of choice; it is rather a quality of existence, which follows from acquiescing to what has to be. Freedom, therefore, is not the power to alter our destiny but rather the absence of emotional disturbance.
The Human Encounter With Death
by Stanislav Grof, M.D. and Joan Halifax, Ph.D., 1978
Euthanasia
by Derek Humphry, 1991
The Right to Die:
Understandinmg Euthanasia
by Derek Humphry, 1991
Final Exit:
The Practicalities of Self-Deliverance
and Assisted Suicide for the Dying
by Derek Humphry, 1991
Final Gifts
Understanding The Special Awareness, Needs,
And Communication Of The Dying
by Maggie Callanan and Patricia Kelley, 1992
How We Die:
Reflections on Life's Final Chapter
by Sherwin B. Nuland, 1995
Staring at the Sun:
Overcoming the Terror of Death
by Irvin D. Yalom, 2009
HOW TO LIVE
or
A Life of Montaigne
In one Question and Twenty Attempts At An Answer
by Sarah Bakewell, 2010
Being Mortal:
Medicine and What Matters in the End
by Atul Gawande, 2014
How do we reframe suffering and find our unique joy
by B. J. Miller, 2017
That Good Night: Life and Medicine ln the Eleventh Hour
by Sunita Puri, 2019
OP-ED
”’Fighting” disease is the wrong metaphor
By Sunita Puri
in
Los Angeles Times
SUNDAY, MAY 19, 2019