FACING DEATH

Sir Jonathan Miller, being interviewed on how he feels about facing his own death packed more into a 5 minute interview than many people ever think about in a lifetime. He commented that he never thought about a name for that which other people call Atheism. After all, said he, he had no name for not believing in Pixies either.

Once I wrote on fear of dying, not fear of death. Hearing the exact same sentiments from a man with whose ideas I have been confronted, I relived the experience and realization that my own thoughts are hardly unique. It is just confirming, realizing that others reach the same conclusions. Why, then, do we not all come to the same conclusions? Where (or why) do we get sent onto a different track.

People have been doing research for years on this very subject. What does the brain have to do with a belief in religion? Some researchers thought it had to do with the amount of serotonin in the brain. A correlation was found between serotonin levels and anxiety, and researchers were surprised to discover a connection between the density of the receptors and spiritual acceptance. I hardly expect true religious believers to accept that their brains were not influenced by their God to make it so.

Newberg, one of the researchers says: "If we can learn more about the human brain through studies of these very complex spiritual and religious experiences people have, we can understand neurobiology and psychiatry better,...and if there are ways we can learn more about these experiences - how they happen, what they mean - religion and spirituality can be enhanced as well."

It then follows that if people believe there is a conscious after-life that extends their present life experience, they will face death very differently than those of us who sincerely believe when our physical body ceases to maintain life for us, oblivion follows. Thus our bodies can be cremated and scattered wherever because they have as much meaning as the leaves that fall in the Autumn. It is my view that the belief affects us by some living our lives less passively; we believe this life is all there is for us. It then behooves us all to accept that which we cannot change. Enjoy it while you have it and share the enjoyment with as many others as your life touches and affects.

For me, it has allowed me to put the deaths of friends and loved ones behind me, as, 'they existed for me in a period of time which is now over' and move on. I often kid that, if there really is a God, she/he/it would not make me a bigamist in Heaven by putting me with both my husbands when on earth they were successive rather than simultaneous spouses!