Problems of life and death in the spiritual experience of humanity
Life and death are eternal themes of the spiritual culture of mankind. Prophets and founders of religions, philosophers and moralists, artists and writers, teachers and doctors have thought about them. It is unlikely that there will be an adult who sooner or later would not think about the meaning of his existence, death and the achievement of immortality. These thoughts come to the minds of children and very young people. This is evidenced by poems and prose, dramas and tragedies, letters and diaries. Only early childhood or senile insanity save a person from the need to solve these problems.
With few exceptions, at all times and all peoples spoke about life quite negatively. Life is suffering (Buddha, Schopehauer, etc.). Life is a dream (Plato, Pascal). Life is an abyss of evil (Ancient Egypt). "Life is a struggle and a journey through a foreign land" (Marcus Aurelius). "Life is a fool's tale told by an idiot, full of noise and fury, but devoid of meaning" (Shakespeare). "All human life is deeply immersed in falsehood" (Nietzsche), etc.
Death and potential immortality are the strongest temptation for the philosophical mind, because all our life affairs must, one way or another, be compared with the eternal. Man is doomed to think about life and death, and this is his difference from an animal that is mortal, but does not know it. Death is the payment for the complication of the biological system. Unicellular organisms are practically immortal, and the amoeba is a happy creature in this sense.
For centuries, humanity has been trying, at least theoretically, to refute this thesis, to prove, and then to implement real immortality. However, the ideal of such immortality is not the existence of an amoeba and not an angelic life in a better world. From this point of view, a person should live forever, being in constant bloom of strength. A person cannot come to terms with the fact that he will have to leave this wonderful world, where life is seething. To be an eternal spectator of this grandiose picture of the Universe, not to experience "saturation with days" like the biblical prophets - could there be anything more attractive?
But, thinking about it, you begin to understand that death is perhaps the only thing before which everyone is equal: poor and rich, dirty and clean, loved and unloved. Although both in ancient times and in our days attempts were constantly made and are being made to convince the world that there are people who have been "there" and returned back, but common sense refuses to believe this.
It has been noticed that human wisdom is often expressed in a calm attitude towards life and death. As Mahatma Gandhi said: "We do not know what is better - to live or to die. Therefore, we should neither be excessively enthusiastic about life nor tremble at the thought of death. We should treat both of them equally. This is the ideal option.
THE PROBLEM OF LIFE IN A HISTORICAL ASPECT
A person is, first of all, a living being. In order to reveal the specificity of human life among other organisms, it is necessary to determine what life is, what its essence and qualitative uniqueness are.
People have long tried to comprehend the secret of life. Already ancient thinkers saw something essential in the phenomena of life that distinguishes them from the phenomena of inanimate nature. Thus, the great ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle, understanding a living being as the unity of matter and form, body and soul, considered the ability to move independently to be the main feature of life. But due to the fact that matter itself, in his opinion, is incapable of movement, then the vital force that moves and directs the body in its development, as he thought, is the soul and form.
In ancient times, people were already interested not only in the question of what life is, but also in the question of its origin, how plants, animals, and man appeared. This was reflected in the myths of different peoples. Ancient Greek myths tell how Zeus ordered the creation of the human race from the “bones of the great mother”. By mother was meant mother Earth, and by bones her stones. According to some other ancient legends, man was created from clay, earth, wood, or formless living beings. Democritus argued the same in the system of his materialistic philosophy. According to his ideas, atoms, intertwining, form various substances, as well as plants and animals, not without reason, but “on some basis and by force of necessity.”
With the spread of Christianity in European countries, the biblical legend of the creation of life on earth by God became generally accepted. Biblical mythology cut off the paths to any study of the real causes of the origin of the world, and medieval thinkers were left only to “find out” what was the duration of Adam’s life, “specify” in what language he spoke to Eve, etc. True, in some church fathers we observe a reconciliation of biblical legends with the ideas of ancient thinkers. For example, one of the fathers of the Christian church, Blessed Augustine (354-430), argued that all development proceeds naturally due to the fact that God has invested an active force in matter. This process, according to him, can be seen in the example of the growth of a tree from a seed, in which future branches and leaves are already laid, but they are created gradually, as a result of the action of the potential force invested by God. Based on this, Augustine argued that the Bible's account of the six days of creation cannot be understood literally, but that it is necessary to believe that it was from this time that the flow of time began.
Modern science, based on the strict method of scientific research of direct or indirect observations, has established that the phenomena of life follow a strict pattern. Experiments have shown that there are no simple substances in the composition of living organisms that would not be found in inorganic nature, that many compounds that are created in organisms as a result of the transition of one form of matter to another can be created artificially, in the laboratory.
Most scientists of the 20th century believe something like this. Once upon a time, conditions for chemical evolution developed on Earth, as a result of which complex organic molecules were synthesized. And from them, after countless trials and errors, tiny clumps of organic matter were formed, capable of metabolism and reproduction... These hypotheses have only one serious drawback: there is not a single fact confirming the theoretical possibility of the spontaneous origin of living organisms on Earth from inorganic substances.
WHAT IS THE MEANING OF LIFE?
Every person sooner or later asks himself the question of the end of his individual existence. Man is a being who is aware of his mortality and can make it a subject of reflection. The inevitability of his own death is perceived by man not as an abstract truth, but causes the strongest emotional shock, touches the very depths of his inner world. The first reaction of a person after realizing his mortality is a feeling of hopelessness and confusion (sometimes even panic). A person, overcoming this feeling, exists all his life, burdened by the knowledge of his own impending death; this knowledge, however, becomes fundamental in the subsequent spiritual development of a person. The presence of such knowledge largely explains the acuteness with which a person faces the question of the meaning of life (the meaning of death) and the purpose of life (the purpose of death).
Reflection on this question turns out to be the starting point in developing the main “line” of life, which subjugates the behavior and actions of a person at various levels: society as a whole, the work collective, family, close friends, etc. Deviations from this “line” lead to painful moral suffering in his life, and the loss of the “line” leads to the moral (sometimes physical) death of a person. The purpose and meaning of the individual life of each individual are closely connected with social ideas and actions that determine the purpose and meaning of all human history, society, humanity as a whole, its purpose, responsibility on Earth and in the Universe. This responsibility outlines the boundaries of what a person and humanity can and cannot do. This also determines by what means they can or cannot achieve their goals.
Even if a person is guided by certain moral goals in life and uses adequate means to achieve them, he knows that he cannot always and not in all cases achieve the desired result, which in moral categories has always been marked as goodness, truth, justice...
Many questions arise:
A person's life is unique and unrepeatable - is it to some extent compared to the life of those who live aimlessly, senselessly and immorally, act evilly, untruthfully and unjustly?
Is the life of each person not endless, but cut short by death, nonexistence?
Do moral categories such as good and evil, truth or falsehood, justice and injustice lose their meaning as a result?
Does everything come in human being and does everything "equalize" in non-being?
People have always sought a way out of this burdensome contradiction. And it was found at the beginning in the religious postulate about the "immortality of the soul" and afterlife "retribution", then - in ideas about "absolute reason" and "absolute moral values", while medieval alchemists searched for the "elixir of life" for centuries.
Realizing the end of his earthly existence and asking questions about the meaning of life, a person begins to develop his own relationship to life and death. This theme occupies a central place in all human culture. The history of world culture reveals the primordial connection of the search for the meaning of human life with attempts to unravel the mystery of nonexistence, as well as with the desire to live forever and, if not materially, then at least spiritually and morally to defeat death.
Numerous areas of philosophy are engaged in the search for an answer to this question. Philosophy, if it is not dogmatic, appeals primarily to the human mind and proceeds from the fact that a person must search for an answer on his own, adding his own spiritual (and physical) efforts for this. Philosophy helps a person by accumulating and critically analyzing the previous experience of humanity in this search.
Philosophical materialism denies the possibility of personal physical immortality for a person, leaving him no hope of an "afterlife". Accepting a materialistic worldview, a person takes a difficult step that requires personal courage and strength of spirit, because he thereby refuses the possibility of consolation, even if it is illusory. Humanity's accumulated moral experience has long been interpreted within the framework of religious systems, and the knowledge of moral values justified by them was supported by references to the judgment and reward that await everyone after death.
As the 20th century showed, the violent mass imposition of a materialistic worldview on people inevitably causes serious losses in moral development. And this is especially alarming and dangerous when human activity, both in scientific and technical and social terms, becomes large-scale in all its consequences and therefore requires a particularly responsible attitude towards oneself.
THE PROBLEM OF DEATH
Let's paraphrase a famous Russian saying: "Tell me who your enemy is, and I'll tell you who you are." The enemy of all people is death.
Only the fact of death deeply raises questions about the meaning of life. Life in this world has meaning precisely because there is death. The content is connected with the end. And if there were no end, that is, if there were an infinity of life, then there would be no meaning in life. Death - the ultimate horror and ultimate evil - turns out to be the only way out of stupid time into eternity, and immortal and eternal life turns out to be attainable only through death.
Plato taught that philosophy is nothing but preparation for death. But the only trouble is that philosophy itself does not know how to die and how to defeat death.
Life is noble only because there is death in it, there is an end, which indicates that a person is destined for another, higher life. In infinite time, the meaning is never revealed, the meaning lies in eternity. But between life in time and life in eternity lies an abyss, through which the transition is possible only through death, through the horror of rupture. Death is not only the nonsense of life in this world, its perishability, but also a sign coming from the depths, indicating the existence of a higher meaning of life.
Not a lowly fear, but a deep longing and horror that death causes in us is an indicator that we belong not only to the surface, but also to the depth, not only to the everydayness of life in time, but also to eternity. Eternity in time not only attracts, but also causes horror and longing. The meaning of death is that eternity is impossible in time, that the absence of an end in time is nonsense.
But death is a phenomenon of life, it is still on this side of life, it is the reaction of life to the demand of the end in time from life. Death is a phenomenon that extends to all of life. Life is a continuous dying, a constant judgment of eternity over time. Life is a constant struggle with death and a partial dying of the human body and the human soul. Time and space are deadly, they generate ruptures, which are a partial experience of death. When human feelings die and disappear in time, then this is the experience of death. When in space there is a separation from a person, from a house, from a city, from a garden, from an animal, which is accompanied by the feeling that you may never see them again, then this is the experience of death. Death comes to us not only when we ourselves die, but also when our loved ones die. We have an experience of death in life, although not a final one. The aspiration for eternity of all existence is the essence of life. And at the same time, eternity is achieved only by passing through death, and death is the fate of all living things in this world, and the more complicated life, the higher the level of life, the more death awaits it.
Death has a positive meaning. But death is at the same time the most terrible and only evil. All evil can be reduced to death. Murder, hatred, anger, debauchery, envy, revenge are death and the sowing of death. Death is at the bottom of every evil passion. No other evil exists except death and murder. Death is the evil result of sin. A sinless life would be immortal, eternal. Death is the negation of eternity, and therein lies the antilogical evil of death, its hostility to being, its attempts to return creation to non-being. Death is a return to primordial non-being.
Death negatively testifies to the power of God in the World and to God's content, which are revealed in nonsense. One could even say that the world would have fulfilled its godless plan of endless (eternal) life if there were no God, but because there is God, this plan is unfulfillable and ends in death. And the Son of God, absolutely sinless and holy, had to accept death, and thereby sanctified death. Hence the dual attitude of Christianity to death. In honoring the cross, we honor death that liberates, that conquers death. In order to come to life, one must die. In the cross, death is transformed and leads to life, to rebirth. And the whole life of this world must be spent through death, through crucifixion. Without this, a person cannot come to rebirth, to eternity. Good, goodness is life, the power and fullness of life, the eternity of life. Death is madness that has become everyday life. The living, not the dead, suffer when death does its work. The dead can suffer no more; and we may even praise death when it puts an end to extreme physical pain or mental decline. But it is wrong to speak of death as a "reward," for true reward, like true punishment, requires conscious experience of the fact. There may come a time in every man's life when death will be more effective for his chief ends than life; when what he stands for will become clearer and more convincing through his death. Death is a perfectly natural occurrence, and has played a useful and necessary part in the course of long biological evolution. Indeed, it is without death that the fact of the survival of the fittest has been given its fullest and most serious significance, and thus made possible the progress of the organic species.
The social significance of death also has its positive aspects. After all, death makes us close to the common concerns and common destiny of all people everywhere. It unites us with deeply felt heartfelt emotions and dramatically emphasizes the equality of our final destinies. The commonality of death reminds us of the essential brotherhood of people that exists despite all the cruel differences and conflicts recorded by history.
The tragedy and paradox of death.
Death, which is generated by natural law and to which a person is doomed by a biological process, is the most individual-personal in a person. And it is primarily the termination of relations with other people and with the life of the Cosmos. Every person must go through the tragedy of death. Freud claims that the goal that all life strives for is death. The paradox of death is that death is the most terrible evil that scares a person most of all, and through this evil the way to eternal life, or one of the ways, is revealed. Our life is filled with such paradoxes. The infinity of life would make man a finite being.
The paradox of death has not only an ethical but also an aesthetic expression. Death is ugly, and it is the ultimate mutilation, decay, loss of face, loss of all appearance and countenance, the triumph of the lower elements of the material world. And death is beautiful, it ennobles the last of mortals and puts him on the same level with the very first, it overcomes the mutilation of vulgarity and everydayness. Death is the ultimate evil, the nobler life in this world. The beauty, the charm of the past, is connected with the fact of death, which ennobles. It is death that purifies the past and puts the seal of eternity on it. In death there is not only decay, but also purification. Nothing can withstand the test of death. Only the eternal can withstand this test. The moral paradox of life and death is expressed in the ethical imperative: treat the living as the dying, treat the deceased as the living, that is, always remember death as the secret of life, and in life and in death always affirm eternal life.
The tragedy of death can be realized only with a sharp consciousness of the personality. The tragedy of death is felt only because the personality is understood as immortal and eternal. Only the death of the immortal, eternal in its meaning and purpose is tragic. The death of the mortal, temporary is not tragic at all. The tragic death of the personality in man is because the personality is the eternal idea of God, the eternal plan of God for man. The personality is not born from a father and mother, the personality is created by God. Man in this world is a mortal being. But he realizes in himself the image and likeness of God, the personality, realizes himself as belonging not only to the natural, but also to the spiritual world. And therefore man considers himself to belong not only to the natural, but also to the spiritual world. And therefore man considers himself to belong to eternity and strives for eternity. Man is immortal and eternal, as a spiritual being belonging to the imperishable world, but he is a spiritual being when he feels himself a spiritual being, when the spirit and spirituality prevail in him, mastering his natural elements. The species, the genus, and not the individual are immortal. For example, Hegel does not know personal human immortality. The human personality and its eternal destiny are sacrificed to an idea, value, world spirit, world mind, etc. Materialism, positivism, and other such teachings reconcile with death, legitimize death, and at the same time try to forget about it, arranging life on the graves of the dead. The Stoic or Buddhist attitude to death is powerless before it and means the victory of death, but it is nobler than generic theories that completely forget about death. A sincere, not spiritual attitude to death is always sad and melancholic, it always contains the sadness of memory that has no power to resurrect. Only a spiritual attitude to death is victorious. Christianity knows victory over death. Christianity teaches not so much about natural immortality, which does not assume any struggle, as about resurrection, which assumes the struggle of spiritual, gracious forces with deadly forces. The teaching of rebirth proceeds from the tragic fact of death and means victory over it, which is not found in any teachings about immortality, neither in Plato nor in Theosophy. Only Christianity looks death straight in the eyes, recognizes both the tragedy of death and the meaning of death, and at the same time does not reconcile itself with death and conquers it. Man is both mortal and immortal, he belongs to both deadly time and eternity, he is both a spiritual being and a natural being. Death is a terrible tragedy, and death through death is defeated by resurrection. But death is defeated not by natural, but by supernatural forces.
The horror of death is not only the horror of the death of the individual, but also the horror of the death of the world. There is a personal Apocalypse and a world Apocalypse. The Apocalypse is a revelation about the death of the world, although death is not the last word in it. Not only man, not only nations and cultures, but also all humanity as a whole, and the whole world are mortal. The Apocalypse is a paradox of time and eternity. The end of our world comes in time, still in our time. But it is also the end of our time, and therefore it is beyond its limits. For each of us and for the whole world, a catastrophe is coming, a leap over the abyss, an incomprehensible exit from time, in the very time that is happening. If our sinful world in our sinful time were infinite, knew no end, then this would be as evil a nightmare as the infinite continuation in time of the life of an individual person. This would be a triumph of nonsense. The Last Judgment over the individual and the world in its inner sense is nothing more than finding meaning, as an establishment of values and qualities.
The paradox of time and eternity also exists for the fate of the individual. Immortal and eternal life are objectified, and then they speak of it as an afterlife. But immortal, eternal life, not objectified and not naturalized, taken from within, is a life of a fundamentally different quality, it is a spiritual life, in which eternity already comes in time. Eternal life can be revealed every moment, in the depth of the moment as an eternal present. Eternal life is not a future life, but a life of the present, a life in the depth of the moment. In this depth of the moment, a rupture of time occurs. Therefore, that attitude that awaits eternity in the future, as an afterlife, awaits death in time in order to join eternal divine life, is ethically wrong. In the future, in fact, eternity will never come, in the future there is only stupid infinity. Only hell can be imagined like that. Eternity and eternal life come not in the future, but in the moment, that is, the exit from time, in the intersection of the eternal projection of life in time.
Death exists externally as a natural fact that occurs in the future, and it means the projection of life in the future. But overcoming death and victory over it does not mean forgetting or not being insensitive to it, but accepting it into the spirit, when it ceases to be a natural fact in time and becomes a manifestation of the meaning that comes from eternity. Personal death and world death, as well as the death of nations and civilizations, as well as the death of historical forms of the state, society and everyday life, mean a catastrophic reminder of the meaning and truth that they are not fulfilled and distorted. Death is not only the triumph of nonsense, the result of sin and the victory of dark forces, but also the triumph of meaning, a reminder of divine truth, preventing untruth from being eternal.
THE PROBLEM OF IMMORTALITY
The problem of immortality is the main, the most important problem of human life, and only on the surface and frivolity does a person forget about it. Sometimes she wants to convince herself that she has forgotten, does not allow herself to think about what is most important. All religions, starting from the embryonic religious beliefs of savages, were built in relation to death. Man is a being faced with death throughout his life, and not only in the last hour of life. Man leads a double struggle: for life and for immortality. Death is a phenomenon still within life, and not on the other side, the most amazing phenomenon, bordering on the transcendent.
Severe suffering always raises the question of death and immortality. But any deepening of life also raises the same questions. Many types of religious and philosophical teachings have been built about the victory over the horror of death and the achievement of real or illusory immortality: the spiritualist teaching about the immortality of the soul; the teaching about the reincarnation of souls; the mystical-pantheistic teaching about merging with the Divine; the idealist teaching about the immortality of ideas and values; Christian teaching about the resurrection of the whole person; dulling the acuteness of the problem of death through merging with collective life on earth and through the possibility of earthly happiness. The spiritualist teaching about the immortality of the soul promises immortality only to a part of a person, not to the whole person. The teaching about reincarnation gives even less immortality to the whole person, it assumes his decomposition into separate elements and the throwing of a person into the cosmic cycle, leaving him at the mercy of time. A person can pass into a non-human kind of existence. The teaching about merging with the deity does not mean the immortality of the individual, but only the immortality of impersonal ideas and values. Idealistic teaching also does not mean the immortality of the individual, but only the immortality of impersonal ideas and values. Turning away from the topic of immortality through orientation towards the future happiness of humanity speaks of the insoluble nature of this topic and of hostility to its formulation. Only the Christian teaching about the resurrection of the whole person answers the question posed, but many difficulties are associated with it.
Immortality of the soul.
The question of death and immortality is inextricably linked with the consciousness of the individual, with personal destiny. If we lose the acute consciousness of the individual and forget about its unique and eternal destiny, we can console ourselves with the fact that life in nature, in the genus, is eternally reborn and immortal. Man, as a person, struggles with death in the name of immortality.
Man is immortal because he has a divine beginning. But immortal is not only the divine in man, the entire composition of man, which the spirit possesses, is immortal. The spiritual beginning is that beginning in man that leads to death, to the final immersion in the deadly stream of time.
The ancients were characterized by a belief not in the immortality of man and the human, but in the immortality of God and the divine. The soul was associated with the breath emanating from God. The soul has a shadow. The belief that it was necessary to feed the dead was very widespread, otherwise there could be hostile actions on their part. On the path to the afterlife, various obstacles were seen: in crossing dangerous places, in meeting wild animals. There was a difficult and dangerous struggle after death. Only in Egypt were there moral requirements for immortality. The Egyptians were the first to recognize the human soul as immortal. But at first only one king was recognized as immortal, and only then the privileged class. The idea of the immortality of the soul is of Greek origin. To achieve immortality for the Greeks means to become God. Immortality is a manifestation of the divine principle in man. Only heroes, demigods, and not ordinary people are immortal. There is a separation of man and the divine race. This is repeated in Nietzsche at a late hour of history. Man is mortal. But immortality is possible, because there is a divine beginning in man. There is God in man.
There is no individual immortality, there is only universal fire. Pythagoras recognized the immortality of the soul, but connected it with reincarnation. In Ananksagoras, the immortal spirit is immortal, not the soul. The immortal is universal, not individual.
The human personality is more real than the whole world, it belongs to eternity. But this is not visible from the outside, it is visible only from the inside. The human soul is limited by the body, depends on natural necessity, but it is internally infinite. Life from birth to death is only a small segment of eternal destiny. Man seeks personal immortality, not immortality in an object, but immortality in a subject. It is very important to realize that only the eternal is real. Everything that is eternal, transient has no true reality. Nietzsche says that for the joy, happiness of the moment, eternity was needed and everything is justified.
Immortality of the individual.
Immortality in the family life, in children and grandchildren, as well as immortality in the nation, in the state, in the social collective, has nothing in common with the immortality of a person. The relationship between personality and sex is very complex and mysterious. Sex is impersonal, generic in a person, and this distinguishes it from eros, which is personal in nature. The change in human consciousness is also connected with the overcoming of sex. Immortality is connected with the state of consciousness. Only a holistic consciousness, not split, not decomposed into elements and not composed of elements, leads to immortality. Immortality in a person is also connected with memory. Immortality is a clarified memory. The most terrible thing in life is the experience of irreversibility, irreparability, absolute loss.
Man strives for integral immortality, for the immortality of man, not for the immortality of the superman, of the intellect, the ideal principle in itself, for the immortality of the personal, not the impersonal-universal. Only the liberation of consciousness from the exclusive power of the phenomenal world reveals the prospect of immortality.
Nightmarish prospects of endless reincarnations, prospects of the loss of personality in a faceless Godhead and most of all the prospect of the possibility of eternal hellish torments. And if we believe in the possibility of endless existence in the conditions of our life, which often resemble hell, then this would also be a nightmare and would cause a desire for death. Among the Hindus, reincarnation was a pessimistic belief. Buddhism, first of all, teaches the path of liberation from the torment of reincarnation. Belief in reincarnation is ungrateful and does not give liberation from karma. There is no hopelessness in it, there is no exit of time into eternity. In addition, the teaching of reincarnation justifies social injustice, the caste system. He who succumbs to sadness and pain, who is a slave to feelings, who is occupied with ephemeral objects, does not know immortality. L. Tolstoy recognizes personal life as a false life, and the personality cannot inherit immortality. There is no death when personal life is overcome. Nietzsche's teaching about eternal return is an ancient Greek idea that knows only cosmic time and completely surrenders man to the power of the cosmic cycle. This is a nightmare of the same type as the idea of infinite reincarnation.
The most humane nature is N. Fedorov's teaching about rebirth. He demands the return of life to all deceased ancestors, does not agree that any of the deceased should be considered as a means for the future, for the triumph of some impersonal objective principles. And we are talking about the rebirth of a whole person. This should not be a passive expectation of the resurrection of the dead, but active participation, that is, rebirth.
The theme of human immortality took its place in the materialist worldview. Materialism, which has always tried to understand the world without any subjectivist contributions, developed this theme from such positions.
The idealistic system of evidence for the posthumous existence of the individual contains many rational arguments. For example, Socrates said that just as sleep is the opposite of wakefulness and the transitions between them are awakening and falling asleep, the opposite of life is death, and the transition between them is dying and reviving. Since nature should not limp on one leg, dying must be supplemented by reviving. Socrates also believes in the transmigration of souls.
The Chinese philosopher Yang Zhu (440 - 360 BC) said that death equals everyone: “In life there are differences - this is the difference between the intelligent and the stupid, the noble and the lowly. In death there is an identity - this is the identity of stench and decay, disappearance and destruction... Both the ten-year-old and the hundred-year-old die; both the virtuous and the wise die; both the wicked and the foolish die.”
According to the teachings of the Worms (an ancient Indian school of philosophy), the existence of the world is due to involuntary combinations of material elements, and therefore there is no need to admit the existence of a god - the creator. One can do without belief in the immortality of the soul. What people call the soul is actually a living body that has consciousness. The existence of the soul outside the body has not been proven, therefore its immortality cannot be proven. After death, the body again decomposes into the original elements, a combination of which it was. A person in the real world will experience both pleasures and suffering. The latter cannot be completely eliminated, but they can be reduced to a minimum, and the former, on the contrary, to a maximum. The religious concept of virtue and vice is an invention of the authors of sacred books.
Heraclitus understood death as an element of the dialectics of the world process: “Fire lives by the death of the earth, and air lives by the death of fire; water lives by the death of air, earth by the death of water. The death of fire is the birth of air, and the death of air is the birth of water. From the death of earth, water is born. From the death of water, air is born, from the death of air, fire, and vice versa.” He includes in this cycle the soul, which he considers material, one of the transitional states of fire. He considers death and immortality as a unity of opposites: “The immortal are mortal, the mortal are immortal; by each other’s death they live, by each other’s life they die.”
ATTITUDE TOWARDS DEATH, PROBLEMS OF LIFE, DEATH AND IMMORTALITY IN THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD
Let us consider these problems in accordance with the three world religions - Christianity, Islam and Buddhism and the civilizations based on them.
The Christian understanding of death and immortality proceeds from the Old Testament provision: "The day of death is better than the day of birth" and the New Testament commandment of Christ "... I have the keys to hell and death". The immortality of the individual as a whole being is conceivable only through the resurrection. The path to it is opened by the atoning sacrifice of Christ through the cross and resurrection. This is the realm of mystery and miracle, because a person is taken out of the sphere of action of natural and cosmic forces and elements and is placed as a person face to face with God, who is also a person.
Thus, the purpose of human life is the movement towards eternal life. Without realizing this, earthly life turns into a dream, an empty and idle dream, a soap bubble. It is only a preparation for eternal life, which is not far off for everyone. But it is necessary to always remember the hour of death. This is not a tragedy, but a transition to another world, where myriads of souls, good and evil, already live, and where each new one enters for joy or torment. Death does not destroy the body, but its corruption, and therefore it is not the end, but the beginning of eternal life.
Christianity associated another understanding of immortality with the image of the "Eternal Jew" Ahasuerus. When Jesus, exhausted under the weight of the cross, was walking to Golgotha and wanted to rest, Ahasuerus, who was standing among the others, said: "Go, go," for which he was punished - he was forever denied the peace of the grave. From century to century he is doomed to wander the world, waiting for the second coming of Christ, who alone can deprive him of immortality.
The Evangelist Luke defined the essence of the Christian approach to life and death as follows: "God is not the God of the dead, but of the living. For all are alive to him." Christianity categorically condemns suicide, because a person does not belong to himself, his life and death "are in the will of God."
Another world religion - Islam - proceeds from the fact that man was created by the will of Almighty Allah, who is, first of all, merciful. Unlike Christianity, earthly life in Islam is highly valued. However, on the Last Day everything will be destroyed, and the dead will rise and stand before Allah for the final judgment. Belief in the afterlife is necessary, since in this case a person will evaluate his actions and deeds not from the point of view of personal interest, but in the context of an eternal perspective.
The destruction of the entire Universe on the Day of Just Judgment presupposes the creation of a perfect new world. A "record" of actions and thoughts, even the most secret, will be presented about each person and a corresponding verdict will be passed. Thus, the principle of the supremacy of the laws of morality and reason over physical laws will triumph. A morally pure person cannot be in a humiliated position, as is the case in the real world. Islam categorically prohibits suicide.
The description of paradise and hell in the Quran is full of vivid details so that the righteous can be completely satisfied, and sinners receive what they deserve. Paradise is beautiful "gardens of eternity, beneath which rivers of water, milk and wine flow"; there are also "pure men", "full-breasted women of the same age". Those sitting on carpets and leaning on green pillows are surrounded by "forever young boys" who offer "bird meat" on gold platters. Hell for sinners is fire and boiling water, dung and scum, the fruits of the tree of “zakkum” resemble the head of the devil, and their fate is “shouts and roars.” It is impossible to ask Allah about the hour of death, because only He has knowledge of it.
The attitude towards death and immortality in Buddhism is significantly different from that of Christianity and Islam. The Buddha himself refused to answer the question: "Is the one who has known the truth immortal, or is he mortal?", and also: can the one who has known be mortal and immortal at the same time? In fact, only one type of "wonderful immortality" is recognized - nirvana, as the embodiment of the Absolute Beginning, which has no attributes.
Buddhism did not refute the teaching of the transmigration of souls developed by Brahmanism, that is, the belief that after death any living being is reborn again in the form of a new living being (human, animal, deity, spirit, etc.). However, Buddhism introduced significant changes into the teachings of Brahmanism. The highest goal of a Buddhist should be the complete cessation of rebirths and the achievement of nirvana, that is, non-existence.
Since the personality is understood as a sum of drachmas, which are in a constant flow of reincarnation, then the meaninglessness, the meaninglessness of the chain of natural births follows from this. “Dhammapada” claims that “being born again and again is painful”. The way out is the path of finding nirvana, breaking through the chains of endless rebirths and achieving enlightenment, a blissful “island” located in the depths of a person’s heart, where “they possess nothing” and “they desire nothing”. The well-known symbol of nirvana - the extinction of the eternal flickering fire of life well expresses the essence of the Buddhist understanding of death and immortality. As the Buddha said: “One day of life of a person who has seen the immortal path is better than a hundred-year existence of a person who has not seen the higher life”.
A calm and peaceful attitude towards life, death and immortality, the desire for enlightenment and liberation from evil is also characteristic of other Eastern religions and cults. In this connection, the attitude towards suicide changes; it is considered not so much sinful as senseless, because it does not free a person from the cycle of births and deaths, but only leads to birth in a lower incarnation. It is necessary to overcome such attachment to one's personality, because, according to the Buddha, "the nature of personality is incessant death."
Non-religious people and atheists are often reproached for the fact that for them earthly life is everything, and death is an insurmountable tragedy, which, in essence, makes life meaningless. L.N. Tolstoy in his famous confession painfully tried to find in life the meaning that would not be destroyed by the death that inevitably comes to every person. For a believer, everything is clear here, but for an unbeliever, an alternative of three possible ways to solve this problem arises.
The first way is to accept the idea, confirmed by science and simply common sense, that the complete destruction of even an elementary particle is impossible in the world, and the laws of conservation operate. Matter, energy, and, it is believed, information and the organization of complex systems are preserved. Therefore, the particles of our "I" after death will enter the eternal cycle of existence and in this sense will be immortal. True, they will not have consciousness, a soul, with which our "I" is associated. Moreover, this type of immortality is acquired by a person throughout his life. It can be said in the form of a paradox: we are alive only because we die every moment. Every day, red blood cells die in the blood, hair falls out, etc. Therefore, fixing life and death as absolute opposites is impossible in principle neither in reality nor in thoughts. These are two sides of the same coin. The second way is to find immortality in human affairs, in the fruits of material and spiritual production that enter the treasury of humanity. For this, first of all, one needs confidence that humanity is immortal and has a cosmic destiny in the spirit of the ideas of K.E. Tsiolkovsky and other cosmologists. If for humanity self-destruction in a thermonuclear ecological catastrophe, as well as as a result of some cosmic cataclysms, is real, then in this case the question remains open.
The third path to immortality, as a rule, is chosen by people whose scope of activity does not go beyond their home and immediate environment. Without expecting eternal bliss or eternal torment, without resorting to the "tricks" of the mind that connects the microcosm (that is, man) with the macrocosm, millions of people simply float in the flow of life, feeling themselves a part of it. Immortality for them is not in the eternal memory of improved humanity, but in everyday affairs and worries. "Believing in God is not difficult... No, you, believe in man!" - Chekhov wrote this, not at all assuming that he, himself, would become an example of this type of relationship to life and death.
"Gods, my gods! How a gloomy evening earth! What mysterious mists over the swamps. Who wandered in these fogs, who suffered a lot before death, who flew over this earth, carrying an unbearable burden on himself, he knows this. The tired knows this. And he leaves the mists of the earth, its swamps and rivers without regret, he surrenders with a light heart to the hands of death, knowing that only she alone will calm him." These words of Mikhail Bulgakov contain a sad truth reconciled with death. Because on the path of life, for someone who is deathly tired - not oversaturated with pleasures, but rather tired, like a master who has completed an overwhelming task - for a tired traveler, the peace of nothingness does not inspire fear. Such great justice of fate. No matter how we theorize, no matter what ideas about the transition to another or a world beyond the life of the biosphere we console ourselves with, the simplest everyday form of death inevitably remains, sooner or later waiting for us. And then a lot - if not everything - depends on us.
Others are helped to overcome the fear of death by religious rites and images, hope for the immortality of the soul. Others think that in the nonsense of life only the pursuit of pleasures and material goods remains. Such people are able - just in case (and suddenly there is a God!) - to formally profess one or another faith. However, despite all their tricks, from time to time they experience the severe horror of the premonition of death, its lifelong experience. The fourth seek to substantiate scientific and philosophical concepts that explain the meaning of death. Becoming the subject of scientific and philosophical analysis, death appears as an ordinary natural process that accompanies life - nothing more. Thinkers who are able to be deeply influenced by the life of nature and the universe are in the best position. And finally, there are those we talked about at the very beginning: tired travelers who have worthily survived the blows and blessings of fate, workers and craftsmen who have experienced the happiness of creativity and self-sacrifice.
It would be strange and foolish to choose the best of these options. After all, we do not choose them, but they choose us. Everyone has the life, death and immortality they deserve.
And one more obvious truth: we are all immortal while we are alive.