Death

What is death? I know what we all think of as death, what a great many fear, but what does the word mean? Remembering as with all words they are not divine, not of any deity if such a thing exists but are the creation of man. Words are nothing but gifts we gave to ourselves for the purpose of communication. They do not define the thing they seek to define. They cannot. Once you start giving a thing a human label it no longer is the thing it was. It becomes described by one of creations creatures as if they owned it rather than being merely a part of it. Words are just words.

To understand death we first have to understand ourselves. What are we? Not just our brains which are both a gift and a curse, our brains which are the one single thing that lifts us above our fellow animals but us, our self, the me not the I, the self not the ego. What makes up a human being, or indeed life, existence itself?

We are made of molecules and atoms, we are made of the building blocks of life as all things are so when we die, as we lose the shell that contains our consciousness and which we so desperately cling to as if that and that alone is all we are, where do we go? To heaven? To an afterlife? Are we reincarnated? Well, if we are to use words man has made then we could suggest both are right. For if there is a heaven as Jesus described it as being within us or we accept, in an abstract way, that we are reincarnated then of course we are. Both are right but only if we use the labels affixed by man and not the specific meanings.

Science is nothing more than a tool by which we grow to understand the mechanics of existence, of life and of ourselves. Do not dismiss science, do not revere it either but respect it remembering the purpose it serves. Ever so slowly it helps us to understand creation and thereby ourselves.

Centuries ago the likes of Lao Tzu, Siddartha Gautama and others shared their thoughts on life, on death and of our part in the greater scheme of things. Now science is beginning, after all these years to confirm much of what they taught. Take for example death. What does Neil deGrasse Tyson (he of he wondrous moniker) have to say about death? But first what he and all of modern science say about life.

And now death...

“I would request that my body in death be buried not cremated so that the energy content contained within it gets returned to the earth, so that flora and fauna can dine upon it, just as I have dined upon flora and fauna during my lifetime”

When the fear of dying fades as we realise death is little more than a return to where we've come from, a return to that which have always been a part of, death no longer is a thing of fear, it is an art.

As T.S. Elliot so beautifully put it.

"We shall not cease from exploration

And the end of all our exploring

Will be to arrive where we started

And know the place for the first time."

Or, should we take a peek inside the Tao Te Ching where we can read Lao Tzu's words...

"If you realise that all things change,

there is nothing you will try to hold on to.

If you are not afraid of dying,

there is nothing you cannot achieve."