separation, the separation of our physical bodies and human egoism. Understanding the alienation34 of oneself from the world as a matter of personal choice, outgrowing oneself as an ego is the key moment in unpacking the meanings of death.
We believe that the same example is suitable for illustrating the next issue of this chapter – overcoming death with meaning, going beyond it. We have already considered two of its key aspects in the book "New Horizons of Old Age": unity (the connection of everything with everything) and the answer to the question "Who am I?". And if the first aspect is eloquently reflected in the example with the baby (and most likely you, my reader, will be able to recall confirmations from your own life), then the second is a continuation of the question of the freedom of choice of perception and its purely applied nature.
If someone claims that the end of human existence is the death of the body, then what does this mean? Obviously, it's not that this is the case, that this is true or not true; but it definitely says something about the perception of this person, about how he chose to see himself and the world (he chose to be an atheist, a materialist, maybe considers himself a descendant of monkeys or something like that). As in this case, it is proposed to go beyond such a finiteness of being – socially (leave offspring, make a contribution to the development of science, benefit society and the fruits of your deeds will outlive you). Of course, such a view puts some restrictions on the semantic sphere, since no clear answer has been received to the question of questions about the meaning of life.
Although we do not set the task here to trace the roots of this or that attitude to death and its perception, nevertheless, we note that after three years35 a person is identified with the logic of thinking that is inherent in society. I.e., it is not developed, but assimilated; with a certain degree of certainty, we can talk about a person as a product of social logic. Its content includes, among other things, death, which is understood as the death of the whole person: the death of the body is a total disappearance from existence. The child initially does not have such an understanding, for example, if you tell him that dad is dead, then in the child's mind it is presented something like this: "well, he died, and that he should not come to me tomorrow for my birthday?". It is important to understand that there are other variants of logic (for example, in India), where "dad died" will mean that "dad is now in the next room, and we keep a relationship with him, he is still with us, but in a different way."
The logic of the mind (in which it is obvious that the death of the body clearly indicates that the person is no more) opposes the logic of the heart – the logic of faith, trust in inner feelings, experiences, intuitive cognition (the body has stopped functioning, but I feel that he is alive, that he is invisibly present in being). Such a "contemptuous" attitude of the modern world of technological progress to emotional intelligence cannot but have a detrimental effect on the mystery of death (after all, one can see in it both a great riddle and an equivalent sister of life).
Options for overcoming the limits of death are presented significantly further in world religions (and in a huge variety of esoteric schools and currents). And although in modern realities (as we have already noted above), with the development of rational, critical thinking, humanity naturally raises a lot of questions (consideration of which seems to us an unnecessary and unproductive task) this does not detract from the achievements of spiritual searches, plus it greatly expands (adds options) what the logic of the mind represents as the only real thing (the death of the temple of the soul is the death of the noetic and is equal to it, on the grounds that the soul cannot be "touched").
And finally, psychology36 also offers help in overcoming death with meaning (coping with it). Here it is necessary to clearly specify that there is a cognitive level, a mental level, a level of knowledge (let's say a person found out that he has a soul and now he has such information and can reproduce it) and a sensory level when a person has some kind of living experience ("I feel in my gut that this is so"). Both levels are important, so, let's say, a person can somehow concretize his deeper request for himself (for example, the fear of death), and look for answers in books or conversations. However, in such work, the dominant is the "heart level", and the mind is a service tool. So, in psychological reality, the departed relatives and close people do not go anywhere, they continue to influence a person's life (sometimes even more than during his lifetime). The person continues to conduct dialogues with them, prove something, ask for advice, etc. And if someone has a very clear experience of such communication, then for him it can become a door to the comprehension of some new, invisible dimensions.
I'll give you an example from the lessons. One participant, let's say Svetlana, 68 years old, said that even in her atheistic youth she had an experience of communicating with a demon who offered her wealth and success in exchange for a soul. She showed him the fig, which was followed by a series of troubles, losses, health problems. However, Svetlana does not regret the choice she made and her relationship with death is friendly. Once again, we are not talking here about whether it is so or not "in fact", whether it is bad or good, whether one or the other is right37. We are conducting research in order to get as close as possible and clearly see what is, the way it is.
In the proposed approach, which we relate (most closely) to existential psychology, we proceed from the following axiom:
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