Death certainly seems to a) happen, and b) exist, as we are left with a dead body and grieving relatives and friends, but this analysis seems to be woefully inadequate and limited due to the gravity of the situation. Parting with loved-ones in an emotionally disturbing and damaging process and so the process of dying itself is not to be questioned, analysed or understood in any way beyond what it is perceived to be. Of course, images of the dying processes are not ‘death’ and are only casually linked in to the sense that ‘death’ might be nearby. Surely, this deficient approach is like attempting to judge size, shape, design and purpose of a bus solely from the state of a lamp-post one has just hit – as it carriers over a cliff! Near misses and close associations are not scientific grounds for the assessment of death as an experienceable ‘process’. Death, at least in-part, must be ‘experienceable’ even if that ‘experience’ involves the ‘falling away’ of the sensory apparatus and bio-chemical ability to actually ‘sense’. An ‘inverse’ process to ‘conception’ and the start of life in the womb. If the breakdown of the physical processes occurs quicker than the dying process can spread throughout, then as no sensory ability exists, there can be no ‘sensing’ or even ‘awareness’ of the dying process regardless of how the physical body seems to behave on the external plane. A body which shudders and shakes could well be reacting as a body should do when its bio-chemical processes cease to function and are permanently ‘withdrawn’ from the formerly ‘living’ mechanism. This is where the language examining death needs to transition from the ‘sentimental’ to the ‘objective’. Death is the system-wide ‘closing-down’ of all sensory perception of a formerly ‘living’ biological entity. As the physical structures fall apart and their underlying conscious and bio-chemical processes cease to function, their remains no physical structure capable of ‘seeing through’ the process. Where ‘pain’ continues to ‘exist’, then obviously ‘life’ still exists as do regularly functioning physical capabilities. As can be seen, as comforting as religion might be for some people there is no agency or capability that continues to function once the physical sense organs and supporting body has a) ceased to function and b) ceased to exist. Of course, an individual might be able to traverse various states of deep meditation at the point very near to death – but as soon as the neurons in the mind begin to ‘uncouple’ – then the bio-chemical energy that powers the human-mind and generates these ‘deep states’ ceases to exist. If an individual appears to ‘return’ from the dead it merely means that they were not fully ‘dead’ and that certain life-forces continued to struggle for conscious-awareness and subject-object existence! When genuine death occurs – all the bio-chemical bridges are broken and just as there is no way forward (and nowhere to go) – there is certainly no way back! All is not lost, of course, because the bodily remains, in one form or another, will continue to traverse the universe even if reduced to atoms of carbon! For consciousness to a) unshackle itself from the bio-chemical processes that creates it, and b) upload itself into the cosmos is – at this time – viewed as an impossibility. Even if it were a possibility, a disembodied consciousness would be floating about somewhere – whilst the debris from the physical body would be elsewhere with never the two-meeting again! The idea that ‘religion is real’ will end with the physical destruction of the functioning of the brain-fibre condition to produce this assumption, ironically at exactly the point in time (I.e., ‘physical death’) when religionists state that religion will prove itself to be ‘existing’ and ‘self-evident’! In other words, belief in religion ‘fails’ when people are assumed to need it the most! The only real ‘preparation’ for ‘death’ is to frequent oneself with the dying process and attempt to ‘predict’ what this experience (‘anti-experience’) might be like as the senses cease to function and subject-object reality appears to fold in upon itself. I suspect that a deep sense of ‘humility’ and ‘tranquillity’ are required from years of ‘wise’ reflection into the nature of physical and non-physical existence.
THE SANGHA KOMMUNE (SSR) 