About death and life after death
In the past few decades, many new discoveries have been made by scientists studying the processes of dying and death, to a large extent completely unexpected and contrary to the ingrained views of life and death. Nowadays, medical science is reconsidering its attitude to death, since research shows that death is not the end of a person's life, but only a transition to other conditions of existence.
Nowadays, as a rule, people know very little about death, about how dying goes and what happens after it. They don't think about death. This situation seems strange, since death is the most important event in the earthly life of a person and nothing more definite and more definitive can happen to any of us. This is understandable to everyone, and yet almost all of us live, one might say, day after day and do not think about death, or, more precisely, we try not to think, because somewhere in the depths of our souls there is a feeling of inevitability and vague anxiety.
Thoughts about death are difficult and unpleasant, so we try to think about it as little as possible. We are constantly busy with something, the day is full; you need to think about the future, to achieve something, to succeed in something, to complete something. And suddenly - death. Immediately, the end comes to everything planned, our hopes. It seems strange, incomprehensible and illogical. How so? I didn't have time to do what I planned, and what if something like that?
We do not know death and therefore we fear it, perhaps more than it deserves. First of all, what scares us the most? For most, death is a kind of dreamless sleep. I closed my eyes, fell asleep - and nothing else. Dark. Only with the onset of morning will the dream end, and death is forever. Of course, it is pitiful and bitter to lose everything that is dear to us on earth, but this is rather grief than fear. Many are more afraid of the unknown; what will happen to us? So we try not to think about the inevitability of death. Each of us, sooner or later, will cross this line, but we do not think about the most important thing and do not prepare for it. The question may arise: “What is there to think about and what to prepare for? Nothing depends on us here. The time of death will come - we will die, and that's it. There is nothing to think about. Many do so.
And yet everyone sometimes comes up with a restless thought: “What if it's not so? But what if death is not the end, and after the death of my body I suddenly find myself in completely new conditions, retaining the ability to see, hear and feel? And most importantly, what if our future in the other world to some extent depends on how we lived our earthly life and what we were like when we crossed the death threshold?"
A believer has already thought about all this, and when his time comes, he, most likely, will understand everything more clearly than an unbeliever. And not only clearer, but also easier. But everyone will have to cross this line, and many will meet what they did not expect and did not think about. Try to talk about this topic with someone from the "progressive" and most likely you will hear: "I do not believe in this." Therefore, we will not now say “I believe” or “I do not believe”, but we will approach this issue from the point of view of logic.
One not docking immediately catches the eye. People have intelligence: when faced with a problem, they consider all the possibilities. It can happen this way, or it can happen differently. Even if the problem is not at all significant, a reasonable person will certainly discuss several options. Why then, when considering the grave problem of death, which no one will be able to avoid, do so many act differently?
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Death is inevitable, and after its arrival there are logically two possibilities - absolute nothing or some kind of continuation of existence. We designated the posthumous existence as a possibility, although in the light of new discoveries made by medicine and science, it would be more correct to speak not about possibility, but about probability or even evidence. And how many people have not seriously thought about it at all? It turns out that the point is not in faith, but in the fact that they are not familiar with the facts, with all the pros and cons, and simply suddenly decided that “this cannot be”.
But why do people pass by the most important for them and, without hesitation, believe that everything is clear to them and there is nothing to think about? Indeed, the facts indicate the opposite, and if we take them into account, it immediately becomes clear that such a question as our fate after death cannot be solved by itself.
To begin with, where did this general unbelief that hangs over modern humanity come from and how did it develop? It wasn't always like this.
Christianity and all major religions teach that people have not only a body, but also a soul, and that after death the soul leaves the body and continues to exist in new conditions. Christianity is more than 2000 years old, from its ideas the European civilization grew and is alive with them. There were periods of unbelief in her history, and these were always troubled times. Their difference is a decline in morality, loss of peace and prosperity, a decrease in well-being. More than usual, wars, internal strife, epidemics, and famine raged. As if some life-giving force was leaving the nations. It is difficult to explain such troubled times simply by chance.
The historian Teng (France) wrote: “Where the Christian faith is forgotten, before our eyes and in the sight of history, the transformation of educated people and whole classes into beasts is taking place. Christianity is a great pair of wings, necessary to lift a person higher than himself … Every time, during the 19th century, when these wings were weakened or broken, public morality went down.
Only the true is eternal, the false is never lasting. All religions and even primitive pagan savages in one form or another believe in the other world and that existence does not end with death. Belief in spirituality embraces humanity from the very beginning of its history to the present day. The denial of God and everything spiritual has evolved over the last 100-150 years.
It grew out of materialistic philosophy, which recognized only the visible or accessible to other senses. Such a philosophy has lost all scientific significance in our time and went bankrupt not only in theory and practical conclusions, but also in its very foundation, when it was discovered that matter is not something constant and that its fundamental principle is protons, electrons, etc..- energy. The understanding of the spirituality of the universe has been inherent in man forever, the denial of spirituality is short-lived and, like any false teaching, is already leaving the world.
Many of us were brought up on materialistic ideas. Materialism was fundamental not only in science and art, but also at school, university, in the press, in relations between people, everywhere. Most people these days are saturated with materialism to the core.
Religion is in decline. God is no more. The afterlife is a fairy tale to comfort the dying. The mention of spirituality is evidence of your backwardness.
Materialists teach that a person is completely, 100% composed of matter. Life is a stream of chemical and molecular processes that take place in the tissues of the body; even a thought is a kind of secretion of brain cells. Professor Howard Haggard of London wrote in the middle of the 20th century; "The brain is the same organ in the body as the liver or heart … The liver, when stimulated, secretes bile, the heart pumps blood, and the brain produces thoughts." Etc. When dying, the matter of which the human body is composed disintegrates, and the existence of the personality stops there. That's the whole philosophy of materialism. For materialistic scientists, everything is simple and clear. They do not ask themselves the question: why is all this and what is the meaning of life then? And they have no answer to such questions, and they don't need it.
Everything, even the obvious manifestations of spirituality, are ignored or ridiculed by them. Transcendental spiritual abilities (including premonition, foresight, mystical states, states of possession, prophetic dreams and visions, clairvoyance, clairaudience, and so on) are simply not available for materialists. The work of Jung and other leading psychologists and psychiatrists that testifies to the life of the soul is not disputed (you cannot argue with the facts), but simply hushed up.
Modern materialism has nothing to do with the scientific method, although it is still used for political purposes. In a number of countries materialism has acquired the status of state philosophy and is supported by the rulers of these countries, since the soulless population is more obedient. The rulers themselves are well aware that the universe is not limited to one matter, and draw practical conclusions from this. So, for example, the problems of life outside the body and other transcendental phenomena are studied in special closed state institutions. This is understandable, because they clearly prove that some part of a person is able to leave the body and live outside any connection with matter.
The world is reasonably arranged, not accidental. You can ignore this only by literally closing your eyes. One of the philosophers, objecting to the materialists, said: “One can, of course, assume that everything in the universe developed by itself, without the participation of a higher mind, but then it is possible to assume that after an explosion in a printing house, the letters, falling to the ground, will form by themselves in the full text of Encyclopedia Britannica.
The languages of all nationalities indicate that there are material concepts and spiritual concepts in the world. There are things that can be measured and weighed, it is possible to see, hear, perceive with one or more senses. And there are concepts of a different order: love, hatred, compassion, envy, disgust, shame … It is impossible to weigh or measure them, but they are all more real and important than all things and concepts of the material world. In Exupery's fairy tale for children and adults "The Little Prince" there is a wonderful phrase: "The most important thing is invisible to the eyes."
The best minds of mankind saw the spiritual side of the world and believed in God and in the immortality of the soul. All the great philosophers of antiquity, including Plato and Socrates, believed in immortality. Plato taught: “The human soul is immortal. All her hopes and aspirations have been transferred to another world. A true sage wishes death as the beginning of a new life."
Believers were Newton, Galileo, Pascal; closer to our time - Pasteur, Einstein, Pavlov, our Russian writers and thinkers such as Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, V. Soloviev, and now Solzhenitsyn. Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy said: "Only those who never seriously thought about death do not believe in the immortality of the soul." People living a simple working life, especially people close to nature, instinctively feel the presence of God. Big minds confirm this feeling with their knowledge. And as a rule, those who do not feel and do not believe are those who in the middle - left one, but never came to another. There is a good saying among the British: "Superficial knowledge is dangerous." This is very true, those who do not think seriously do not believe. A. I. Solzhenitsyn said well: “I think that the feeling of the presence of God is available to everyone,if he does not allow himself to be wrapped up in the vanity of daily life. " Here is the answer to why many people “don't believe”. They don't think, there is no time to think.
There are many cases when a man or woman unexpectedly woke up at night with the feeling that a mother, wife or husband was standing next to him, being very far away at that time. And later it turned out that this close person died just at the time when the awakened one felt his presence next to him.
Since ancient times, there is evidence that at the moment of death the soul of the deceased is able to overcome any space and visit his relatives and friends, who see, hear, and more often only feel the presence of the deceased.
Animals often perceive the invisible presence better than humans. The cat arches its back, its hair stands on end; the dog starts barking for no reason.
There are many observations that testify to the life of the soul; belief in this never left people. In recent decades, the question of whether there is life after death has received objective confirmation. A lot of discoveries have been made. Modern methods of resuscitation - the return of life to the recently deceased - have lifted the veil and made it possible to cast a glance “on the other side of life”. It turned out that after the death of the body, the life of the soul continues. Many of the doctors and psychologists began their observations and reflections as skeptics and did not believe in the existence of the soul. They met the new with bewilderment and amazement, but, observing all the new cases, they radically changed their worldview.
Not so long ago, only a few scholars dared to express their opinions, which did not agree with the official doctrine of materialism. But science does not stand still, people learn what they did not know before. At present, scientists studying the problem of death have no doubts about the continuation of life after the death of the body.
The main scientific theories were revised. The primacy of matter is denied. Our understanding of the essence of life and death is also being revised.
The era of materialism is becoming a thing of the past. It is being replaced by a completely different outlook: the universe is not only matter, but much more …
P. Kalinovsky