Fear of death
Why is a person afraid of death?
From time immemorial, man has asked himself: what happens after death? Raymond Moody has dealt with this issue for decades and has asked this question to many people, believing that the answer is of interest and concern to many, regardless of their emotional type or belonging to different social groups. Among his interlocutors were students of psychological, philosophical and sociological faculties, believers, television viewers, members of civic clubs and medical professionals. And in his book Life After Life, Moody gives some pretty reasonable answers.
Here are some of his findings. First, despite their curiosity, most people find it very difficult to talk about death. Moody has two explanations for this. The first is mainly of a psychological or cultural nature: the very topic of death is taboo. Faced with death in some form, even indirectly, a person inevitably faces the prospect of his own death, the picture of death, as it were, approaches him, becoming more real and conceivable.
Many of the medical students, like Moody himself, remember very well that the experience of death, which is experienced by everyone who first crosses the threshold of the anatomical theater of the medical faculty, causes a rather disturbing feeling. The reason for these frankly unpleasant experiences seemed to the scientist absolutely obvious. He writes that his experiences almost did not relate to those people whose remains he saw there, although, of course, to a certain extent he also thought about them. However, what he saw on the table became for him a symbol of his own death. He believes that he thought, semi-consciously, "This will happen to me." Thus, a conversation about death from a psychological point of view, a person with such a disposition of feelings can be considered as an indirect approach to death, only on a different level.
Without a doubt, in many people, any talk about death evokes such a real image of death in their minds that they begin to feel the nearness of their own death. To protect themselves from such psychological trauma, they try, as far as possible, to avoid this kind of conversation.
Another reason Moody finds it difficult to talk about death is somewhat more complicated and rooted in the very nature of language. The words that make up human languages refer to things that a person gains knowledge of through physical sensations. Death is beyond conscious experience: most people have never experienced it.
Thus, if we talk about death in general, we must avoid both the social taboo and the language dilemma. The closest and safest for consciousness is analogy. A person compares death or dying with things with which he is familiar from his daily experience and which seem acceptable to him. One analogy is the comparison of death with sleep. Dying, man tells himself, is like falling asleep. Similar expressions can be found in everyday language and thinking, as well as in the literature of many cultures. In Iliad, Homer called sleep "the brother of death", and Plato in the dialogue "Apology" puts into the mouth of his teacher Socrates, who was sentenced to death by the Athenian court, the following words: "And if it were the absence of any sensation, it would be like a dream when sleep so that they do not even see anything in a dream, then death would be an amazing gain."
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The same analogy is applied in modern language: we are talking about the expression "put to sleep." After all, you bring a dog to the veterinarian and ask to put it to sleep, but we mean something fundamentally different from when you discuss with the anesthesiologist your own euthanasia for the duration of a surgical operation. The expressions “deceased” and “dormition” have the same roots (for example, the temple of the Dormition of the Mother of God).
Some peoples have a preference for a similar analogy. Dying, in their opinion, is like a loss of memory. When a person dies, he forgets all his sorrows, all painful and unpleasant memories disappear.
As widespread as these analogies are, they are still not satisfactory. Each of them in its own way asserts the same thing: death is actually the disappearance of human consciousness, complete and final. If so, then death does not really have any of the attractive features of falling asleep or forgetting.
Sleep is necessary and desirable because awakening will follow. A restful night's sleep makes the following waking hours enjoyable and productive. If awakening did not exist, the benefits of sleep simply would not exist. That is, the disappearance of our conscious experience implies the disappearance of not only painful memories, but also pleasant ones. It becomes clear that neither of the two analogies described provide real comfort or hope in the face of death.
There is also another point of view. According to her, death is not the disappearance of consciousness. This concept is probably much more ancient. It says that part of the human being continues to live after the physical body ceases to function and is completely destroyed. This constantly existing part has many names: psyche, soul, mind, "I", essence, consciousness … But no matter how you call it, the belief that after physical death a person passes into some other world is one of the most ancient. In Turkey, for example, Neanderthal burials dating back about 100,000 years have been found. The prints found there enabled archaeologists to establish that these ancient people buried their dead on a bed of flowers. This allows us to assume an attitude towards death as a celebration of the transition of the deceased from this world to another.
Apparently, now there are two opposite answers to the question about the nature of death. Both are of very ancient origin and both are widespread to this day. According to the first, death is the disappearance of consciousness, according to the other, the transition of the soul or mind to another dimension of reality. It is from this second answer that the adherents of the idea of reincarnation proceed.
After death - reincarnation
A poor peasant boy named Taranjit Singh was six years old. He kept telling his family about his past life. From the age of two, the boy repeated to his parents that he was not their son, and repeatedly tried to escape from home. He claimed that his name was Santam Singh and he used to live in the village of Chakhela, and his real father was called Jeet Singh. In a past life, he went to school in the village of Nihalwal. On September 10, 1992, he and his comrade Sakhwinder Singh were returning home from school on a bicycle and had an accident. He was hit by fellow countryman Yoga Singh on a motor scooter. As a result of his injuries, Santam died.
As Taranjit constantly repeated his memories, describing events, mentioning names, his parents went to Chakchela to clarify everything. They could not find the boy's "real parents", but they received information that a village named Chakchela is also in another district - in Jalandhar. They hit the road again. There, the parents found an old teacher who remembered a student named Santam Singh and the cause of his death, as well as the name of his father, Jeet Singh.
After Santam's parents were found, Taranjit's other stories were confirmed. At the time when Santam had an accident, he had two books and 30 rupees with him. The books were soaked in the boy's blood. It was found out that the mother of the deceased still keeps this money and books as a memory of her son. In a litter of time, Santam's parents came to Taranjit. They brought with them a wedding photograph, which the boy recognized immediately - he had seen it many times in his previous life.
An article was published in the newspapers about this story. The Indian forensic scientist Vikram Rada Sing Chaohan also read it, but did not believe in reincarnation. But curiosity made him investigate. He questioned many people in both localities and found many similarities in their stories. The forensic scientist also learned that a few days before his death, Santam had bought a notebook on credit from a shop for 3 rupees. When the shopkeeper met with Taranjit, the boy immediately remembered the debt, but he named a different amount - 2 rupees.
For the final clarification of the truth, the forensic scientist found samples of Santam Singh's handwriting and compared them with Taranjit Singh's. Vikram Chaohan found the two boys' handwriting to be almost identical. The slight difference could be attributed to an age difference: Taranjit is only six years old and does not write very well yet.