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our answer this Easter, we all need to come to terms with the end of our earthly existence
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The story of the “death” of the 20th-century philosopher, Alfred Jules (A. J.) Ayer, is becoming legendary.
When the renowned atheist choked on a piece of salmon in 1988 in a British hospital, he went into cardiac arrest and technically died for four minutes.
As a leader of the dominant analytic school of philosophy, Ayer had been accused of “neutralizing” Western academic philosophers; encouraging them to focus on pure logic and avoid applying their big minds to the actual art of living. And dying.
But Ayer’s near-death experience changed all that. After he was resuscitated in hospital, Ayer wrote a piece in the Telegraph newspaper describing wondrous images he had while “dead” — of a beckoning red light and the collapse of space and time.
The atheist philosopher, known as “Freddie” to his friends, also quietly suggested his near-death experience (NDE) provided “rather strong evidence that death does not put an end to consciousness.”
Just as importantly, Ayer’s wife, Dee, told anyone who would listen, including journalists, that her husband had become much more pleasant company after his NDE.
As Dee quaintly put it: “Freddie has got so much nicer since he died.”
In a Western culture that greatly fears death and distracts itself from thinking about it with endless entertainments, it’s intriguing that scientific research into NDEs has expanded since Ayer enjoyed his profound out-of-body experience in 1988 (dying peacefully the following year at age 79).
The British and U.S. governments, for instance, are examining near-death studies in 1,500 heart attack patient-survivors at 25 hospitals.
Such groundbreaking exploration of near-death experiences is a long way from the arid and abstruse subjects that many university-based academics often end up studying.
Excitingly interdisciplinary research into NDEs and related phenomenon touches on the kind of crucial spiritual, scientific, psychological and philosophical questions humans have been asking for millennia.
One of the obvious questions it brings up is: Do near-death experiences offer evidence of human consciousness after death?
And: Do near-death, or related experiences of human mortality, turn people into better human beings, encouraging them to live more kindly?
The heart of Easter
These are existential questions that almost everyone — regardless of whether they belong to a faith tradition or not — could find value in exploring.
Questions of life and death form the heart of every great religion and every meaningful secular philosophy.
They are especially relevant as roughly two billion Christians around the world gather this weekend for Easter.
While practised in many different ways, Easter centres on a profound ritual in which followers are called upon to mystically enter the 2,000-year-old story of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
In many ways Christianity, and all great religions, are about coming to terms with death. And all religions teach, either literally or metaphorically, that death does not get the final word.
For instance, after committing to Christianity, which in its classic form contains the promise of “life everlasting,” many followers of Jesus often use the language of being “reborn” to describe their renewed vigour for life and others.
The quest to overcome humans’ fear of death also lies at the core of Judaism and Islam.
In somewhat different forms than Christianity, traditional schools of Islam and Judaism teach also about the immortality of the soul, and how essential it is to live a selfless life on this Earth.
Eastern religions tackle death in yet another way. Generally, Hinduism and Buddhism teach reincarnation. However, both call on followers to try to detach themselves from the endless cycle of death and rebirth by attaining Enlightenment and practising compassion.
Dealing with death by holding onto the possibility of existence after it is also not unique to organized religion. Popular culture and so-called “alternative” spirituality often develop the idea of the soul surviving the collapse of the body.
The immortality of the soul is a central theme of the wildly popular 3-D film, Avatar, in which the world-weary disabled hero, Jake Sully, must go through a death experience to be reborn.
An age-old conundrum
Even though rare, there are some brave figures in contemporary science, psychology and philosophy who are trying to respond to humans’ confusion and wonder about what happens after death.
It’s a conundrum that has been challenging humankind since ancient times — including the man many deem the greatest philosopher in Western history, Socrates.
After being condemned to death by Greek authorities in the fourth century BC, Socrates told them that death is not an evil thing, but on the contrary a good thing.
That said, Socrates did not presume to know what happened to humans after death. He was satisfied with being an agnostic about the afterlife.
As Socrates said, “Either it is annihilation, and the dead have no consciousness of anything; or, as we are told, it is really a change; a migration of the soul from this place to another.”
The story of Socrates‘ lack of fear about death makes up the opening chapter of The Book of Dead Philosophers, by Simon Critchley, which explores what 190 famous philosophers thought about death and how they died.
Critchley argues compellingly that real philosophy, unlike that practised by Ayer until his near-death experience, should be “about learning how to die.” Paradoxically, that is the goal of living.
Our ultimate purpose, as Critchley puts it, should be “cultivating the appropriate attitude to death.”
Life’s agent of change
Steve Jobs, the founder of Apple computers, is another contemporary figure who has come to believe that death is life’s greatest teacher.
“Death is very likely the single-best invention of life. It is life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new,” Jobs told Stanford University graduates after a tumour was discovered on his pancreas.
“No one wants to die,” Jobs said. “Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. … Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life.”
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