Death is an issue in religion, philosophy and detective fiction.
Thoas to Ankhsenamen:
"'...you Egyptians think too much about the next life. You should cling to this one and enjoy it as best you can and forget about the rest.'" (pp. 133-134)
Enjoy, yes. Forget? Explore everything beyond our lives including any alleged evidence for survival. Genuine objective research into the paranormal is almost impossible in the present climate! The Society for Psychical Research did a good job on the deceased CS Lewis' appearance to JB Phillips. (Mrs Phillips confirmed that her husband spoke as if conversing with someone but also that she herself neither saw nor heard Lewis.)
One of the worst features of religion is Christians gloating at the supposed fates of unbelievers and even of heretics in the hereafter. Milton did it in Paradise Lost. An American Evangelical told me online that she would love to see my face on the Day of Judgement... Right. Let's all keep trying to find the truth for ourselves. If the ultimate reality is after all a person, then He or She will sort everything out.
4 comments:
Life is a material object; death is oblivion.
I think that life is a process rather than an object.
Death is matter reverting from an organic to an inorganic state. A heart stops pumping, blood stops circulating, neurons stop firing and interacting. Everything stays where it is but changes form. Nothing goes anywhere, not even into oblivion.
Your -consciousness- dies -- oblivion. It's dependent on the living organism of the human body.
"Oblivion" is correct for the cessation or absence of consciousness but it really has to mean that. Death is sometimes described as "darkness," "blank emptiness" etc. Darkness and emptiness are states that we can experience, i.e., of which we can be conscious. Absence of consciousness, of course, is a state of which we cannot be conscious. Obvious but I am just trying to make sure that language reflects that.
Post a Comment