2. Attitude to death, problems of life, death and immortality
Problems of life and death and attitudes towards death
in different historical eras and in different religions.
Introduction.
Life and death are eternal themes in the spiritual culture of humanity in all its divisions. Prophets and founders of religions, philosophers and moralists, figures of art and literature, teachers and doctors thought about them. There is hardly an adult who, sooner or later, would not think about the meaning of his existence, his impending death and the achievement of immortality. These thoughts come to the minds of children and very young people, as evidenced in poetry and prose, dramas and tragedies, letters and diaries. Only early childhood or senile insanity relieves a person of the need to solve these problems.
Essentially, we are talking about a triad: life - death - immortality, since all the spiritual systems of humanity proceeded from the idea of the contradictory unity of these phenomena. The greatest attention here was paid to death and the acquisition of immortality in another life, and human life itself was interpreted as a moment allotted to a person so that he could adequately prepare for death and immortality.
With a few exceptions, all times and peoples have spoken quite negatively about life, Life is suffering (Buddha: Schopenhauer, 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 sound and fury, but without meaning” (Shakespeare); “All human life is deeply immersed in untruth” (Nietzsche), etc.
Proverbs and sayings of different nations like “Life is a penny” speak about this. Ortega y Gasset defined man neither as a body nor as a spirit, but as a specifically human drama. Indeed, in this sense, the life of every person is dramatic and tragic: no matter how successfully life turns out, no matter how long it is, its end is inevitable. The Greek sage Epicurus said this: “Accustom yourself to the idea that death has nothing to do with us. When we exist, death is not yet present, and when death is present, then we do not exist.”
Death and potential immortality are the most powerful lure for the philosophical mind, for all our life's affairs must, one way or another, be measured against the eternal. Man is doomed to think about life and death, and this is his difference from an animal, which is mortal, but does not know about it. Death in general is the price to pay for the complication of a biological system. Single-celled organisms are practically immortal and the amoeba is a happy creature in this sense.
When an organism becomes multicellular, a mechanism of self-destruction, as it were, is built into it at a certain stage of development, associated with the genome.
For centuries, the best minds of humanity have been trying to at least theoretically refute this thesis, prove, and then bring real immortality to life. 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 the constant prime of life. A person cannot come to terms with the fact that he will have to leave this magnificent world where life is in full swing. To be an eternal spectator of this grandiose picture of the Universe, not to experience the “saturation of days” like the biblical prophets - could anything be more tempting?
But, thinking about this, 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 have been and are constantly being made to convince the world that there are people who have been “there” and returned back, but common sense refuses to believe this. Faith is required, a miracle is required, such as the Gospel Christ performed, “trampling down death by death.” It has been noticed that a person’s wisdom is often expressed in a calm attitude towards life and death. As Mahatma Gandhi said: “We do not know whether it is better to live or to die. Therefore, we should neither overly admire life nor tremble at the thought of death. We should treat both equally. This is the ideal option.” And long before this, the Bhagavad Gita said: “Truly, death is intended for the born, and birth is inevitable for the deceased. Do not mourn about the inevitable.”
At the same time, many great people realized this problem in tragic tones. Outstanding Russian biologist I.I. Mechnikov, who reflected on the possibility of “cultivating the instinct of natural death,” wrote about L.N. Tolstoy: “When Tolstoy, tormented by the inability to solve this problem and haunted by the fear of death, asked himself whether family love could calm his soul, he immediately saw that this is a vain hope. Why, he asked himself, raise children who will soon find themselves in the same critical condition as their father? Why should I love them, raise them and take care of them? For the same despair that is in me, or for stupidity? Loving them, I cannot hide the truth from them - every step leads them to the knowledge of this truth. And the truth is death."
1. Dimensions of the problem of life, death and immortality.
1. 1. The first dimension of the problem of life, death and immortality is biological, for these states are essentially different aspects of one phenomenon. The hypothesis of panspermia, the constant presence of life and death in the Universe, and their constant reproduction in suitable conditions, has long been put forward. The definition of F. Engels is well known: “Life is a way of existence of protein bodies, and this way of existence consists essentially in the constant self-renewal of the chemical components of these bodies,” emphasizes the cosmic aspect of life.
Stars, nebulae, planets, comets and other cosmic bodies are born, live and die, and in this sense, no one and nothing disappears. This aspect is most developed in Eastern philosophy and mystical teachings, based on the fundamental impossibility of understanding the meaning of this universal circulation only with reason. Materialistic concepts are based on the phenomenon of self-generation of life and self-causation, when, according to F. Engels, “with iron necessity” life and the thinking spirit are generated in one place of the Universe, if in another it disappears.
Awareness of the unity of human life and humanity with all life on the planet, with its biosphere, as well as potentially possible forms of life in the Universe, has enormous ideological significance.
This idea of the sanctity of life, the right to life for any living being, by virtue of the very fact of birth, belongs to the eternal ideals of humanity. In the limit, the entire Universe and the Earth are considered as living beings, and interference in the still poorly understood laws of their life is fraught with an ecological crisis. Man appears as a small particle of this living Universe, a microcosm that has absorbed all the richness of the macrocosm. The feeling of “reverence for life”, the feeling of one’s involvement in the wonderful world of the living, to one degree or another, is inherent in any ideological system. Even if biological, bodily life is considered an inauthentic, transitive form of human existence, then in these cases (for example, in Christianity) human flesh can and should acquire a different, flourishing state.
1.2. The second dimension of the problem of life, death and immortality is associated with understanding the specifics of human life and its differences from the life of all living things. For more than thirty centuries, sages, prophets and philosophers from different countries and peoples have been trying to find this divide. Most often it is believed that the whole point is in the awareness of the fact of impending death: we know that we will die and are feverishly looking for the path to immortality. All other living things quietly and peacefully complete their journey, having managed to reproduce a new life or serve as fertilizer for another life. A person is doomed to painful lifelong thoughts about the meaning of life or its meaninglessness, tormenting himself, and often others, with this, and is forced to drown these damned questions in wine or drugs. This is partly true, but the question arises: what to do with the fact of the death of a newborn child who has not yet had time to understand anything, or a mentally retarded person who is not able to understand anything? Should we consider the beginning of a person’s life to be the moment of conception (which cannot be accurately determined in most cases) or the moment of birth?
It is known that the dying Leo Tolstoy, addressing those around him, said,
so that they turn their gaze to millions of other people, and not look at one
lion An unknown death that does not touch anyone except the mother, the death of a small creature from hunger somewhere in Africa and the magnificent funeral of world-famous leaders in the face of eternity have no differences. In this sense, the English poet D. Donne is deeply right when he said that the death of each person diminishes all of humanity and therefore “never ask for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for you.”
It is obvious that the specifics of human life, death and immortality are directly related to the mind and its manifestations, to the successes and achievements of a person during his life, to his assessment by his contemporaries and descendants. The death of many geniuses at a young age is undoubtedly tragic, but there is no reason to believe that their subsequent life, if it had taken place, would have given the world something even more brilliant. There is some kind of not entirely clear, but empirically obvious pattern at work here, expressed by the Christian thesis: “God chooses the best first.”
In this sense, life and death are not covered by the categories of rational knowledge and do not fit into the framework of a rigid deterministic model of the world and man. It is possible to discuss these concepts in cold blood up to a certain limit. It is determined by the personal interest of each person and his ability to intuitively comprehend the ultimate foundations of human existence. In this respect, everyone is like a swimmer who has jumped into the waves in the middle of the open sea. You need to rely only on yourself, despite human solidarity, faith in God, the Higher Mind, etc. The uniqueness of man, the uniqueness of personality, is manifested here to the highest degree. Geneticists have calculated that the probability of this particular person being born from these parents is one chance in one hundred trillion cases. If this has already happened, then what amazing variety of human meanings of existence appears before a person when he thinks about life and death?
1.3. The third dimension of this problem is related to the idea of achieving immortality, which sooner or later becomes the center of a person’s attention, especially if he has reached adulthood.
There are several types of immortality associated with the fact that a person leaves behind his business, children, grandchildren, etc., the products of his activities and personal belongings, as well as the fruits of spiritual production (ideas, images, etc.).
The first type of immortality is in the genes of the offspring, is close to most people. In addition to the principled opponents of marriage and family and misogynists, many seek to perpetuate themselves in this very way. One of the powerful drives of a person is the desire to see his own traits in his children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. In the royal dynasties of Europe, the transmission of certain characteristics (for example, the nose of the Habsburgs) has been traced over several generations. This is associated with the inheritance of not only physical characteristics, but also the moral principles of a family occupation or craft, etc. Historians have established that many outstanding figures of Russian culture of the 19th century were related (albeit distantly) to each other. One century includes four generations.
Thus, over two thousand years, 80 generations have changed, and the 80th ancestor of each of us was a contemporary of Ancient Rome, and the 130th was a contemporary of the Egyptian pharaoh Ramses II.
The second type of immortality is body mummification with the expectation of its eternal preservation. The experience of the Egyptian pharaohs, the practice of modern embalming (V.I. Lenin, Mao-Zedong, etc.) indicate that in a number of civilizations this is considered accepted. Advances in technology at the end of the 20th century made it possible to cryogenesis (deep freezing) of the bodies of the dead with the expectation that doctors of the future would revive and cure currently incurable diseases. This fetishization of human corporeality is characteristic mainly of totalitarian societies, where gerontocracy (the power of the old) becomes the basis of state stability.
The third type of immortality is hope in the “dissolution” of the body and spirit of the deceased in the Universe, the entry them into the cosmic “body”, into the eternal circulation of matter. This is typical for a number of eastern civilizations, especially Japanese. The Islamic model of attitude towards life and death and various materialistic or, more precisely, naturalistic concepts are close to this solution. Here we are talking about the loss of personal qualities and the preservation of particles of the former body that can become part of other organisms. This highly abstract type of immortality is unacceptable to most people and is emotionally rejected.
The fourth path to immortality is associated with the results of human creativity in life. It is not for nothing that members of various academies are awarded the title “immortals”. A scientific discovery, the creation of a brilliant work of literature and art, showing the path to humanity in a new faith, the creation of a philosophical text, an outstanding military victory and a demonstration of statesmanship - all this leaves a person’s name in the memory of noble descendants. Heroes and prophets, passion-bearers and saints, architects and inventors are immortalized. The names of the cruelest tyrants and the greatest criminals are forever preserved in the memory of mankind. This raises the question of the ambiguity of assessing the scale of a person’s personality. It seems that the more human lives and broken human destinies lie on the conscience of this or that historical character, the greater his chances of getting into history and gaining immortality there. The ability to influence the lives of hundreds of millions of people, the “charisma” of power evokes in many a state of mystical horror mixed with reverence. There are legends and stories about such people that are passed down from generation to generation.
We can say that the meaning of death and immortality, as well as the ways to achieve it, are the other side of the problem of the meaning of life. Obviously, these issues are resolved differently, depending on the leading spiritual orientation of a particular civilization.
2. Attitudes towards death, problems of life, death and immortality in the religions of the world.
Let us consider these problems in relation to three world religions - Christianity, Islam and Buddhism and the civilizations based on them.
2.1. Christian understanding of the meaning of life, death and immortality comes from the Old Testament position: “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 divine-human essence of Christianity is manifested in the fact that the immortality of the individual as an integral being is conceivable only through resurrection. The path to it is opened by the atoning sacrifice of Christ through the cross and resurrection. This is the sphere of mystery and miracle, for man is taken out of the sphere of action of natural-cosmic forces and elements and is placed as a person face to face with God, who is also a person.
Thus, the goal of human life is deification, movement towards eternal life. Without realizing this, earthly life turns into a dream, an empty and idle dream, a soap bubble. In essence, it is only a preparation for eternal life, which is just around the corner for everyone. That is why it is said in the Gospel: “Be prepared: for at an hour you do not think, the Son of Man will come.” To prevent life from turning, in the words of M.Yu. Lermontov, “into an empty and stupid joke,” one must 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. In the figurative expression of one of the moral hierarchs: “A dying person is a setting star, the dawn of which is already shining over another world.” Death does not destroy the body, but its corruption, and therefore it is not the end, but the beginning of eternal life.
Christianity associated a different understanding of immortality with the image of the “Eternal Jew” Agasfer. When Jesus, exhausted under the weight of the cross, walked to Golgotha and wanted to rest, Ahasfer, 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 his hateful immortality.
The image of “mountainous” Jerusalem is associated with the absence of disease, death, hunger, cold, poverty, enmity, hatred, malice and other evils there. There is life without labor and joy without sorrow, health without weakness and honor without danger. All in blooming youth and the age of Christ are comforted by bliss, tasting the fruits of peace, love, joy and fun, and “they love each other as themselves.” Evangelist Luke defined the essence of the Christian approach to life and death this way: “God is not the God of the dead, but the God of the living. For with him all are alive.” Christianity categorically condemns suicide, since a person does not belong to himself, his life and death are “in the will of God.”
2.2. Another world religion - Islam - is based on the fact of the creation of man by the will of almighty Allah, who is above all merciful. To a person’s question: “Will I be known alive when I die?” Allah gives the answer: “Won’t man remember that we created him before, and he was nothing?” Unlike Christianity, earthly life in Islam is highly regarded. However, on the Last Day, everything will be destroyed and the dead will be resurrected and appear before Allah for final judgment. Belief in an afterlife is essential
because in this case a person will evaluate his actions and actions not from the point of view of personal interest, but in the sense of an eternal perspective.
The destruction of the entire Universe on the day of the Just Judgment presupposes the creation of a completely new world. A “record” of deeds and thoughts, even the most secret ones, will be presented about each person, and an appropriate sentence 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 strictly prohibits suicide.
The descriptions of heaven and hell in the Koran are full of vivid details, so that the righteous can be fully satisfied and the sinners get what they deserve. Paradise is the beautiful “gardens of eternity, below which flow rivers of water, milk and wine”; there are also “pure spouses”, “full-breasted peers”, as well as “black-eyed and big-eyed, decorated with bracelets of gold and pearls”. Those sitting on carpets and leaning on green cushions are walked around by “forever young boys” offering “bird meat” on golden dishes. Hell for sinners is fire and boiling water, pus and slop, the fruits of the “Zakkum” tree, similar to the head of the devil, and their destiny is “screams and roars.” It is impossible to ask Allah about the hour of death, since only he has knowledge about this, and “what has been given to you to know, perhaps the hour is already close.”
2.3. Attitude to death and immortality in Buddhism differs significantly from Christian and Muslim. Buddha himself refused to answer the questions: “Is he who knows the truth immortal or is he mortal?”, and also: can a knower be mortal and immortal at the same time? In essence, only one type of “wonderful immortality” is recognized - nirvana, as the embodiment of the transcendental Superbeing, the Absolute Beginning, which has no attributes.
Buddhism did not refute the doctrine of the transmigration of souls developed by Brahmanism, i.e. 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 made significant changes to the teachings of Brahmanism. If the Brahmans argued that through rituals, sacrifices and spells that were different for each class ("varna") it was fashionable to achieve "good rebirths", i.e. to become a raja, a brahmana, a rich merchant, etc., then Buddhism declared all reincarnation, all types of existence as inevitable misfortune and evil. Therefore, the highest goal of a Buddhist should be the complete cessation of rebirth and the achievement of nirvana, i.e. non-existence.
Since personality is understood as a sum of drachmas that are in a constant flow of reincarnation, this implies the absurdity and meaninglessness of the chain of natural births. The Dhammapada states that "to be born again and again is sorrowful." The way out is the path of finding nirvana, breaking through the chain of endless rebirths and achieving enlightenment, the blissful “island” located in the depths of a person’s heart, where “they own nothing” and “covet nothing.” The well-known symbol of nirvana - the extinguishing of the ever-quivering fire of life is well expressed the essence of the Buddhist understanding of death and immortality. As the Buddha said: “One day in the life of a person who has seen the immortal path is better than a hundred years of existence of a person who has not seen the higher life.”
For most people, achieving nirvana immediately, in this rebirth, is impossible. Following the path of salvation indicated by the Buddha, a living being usually has to be reincarnated again and again. But this will be the path of ascent to the “highest wisdom”, having achieved which a creature will be able to leave the “circle of existence” and complete the chain of its rebirths.
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 regard, attitudes towards suicide are changing; it is considered not so sinful as senseless, for it does not free a person from the circle of births and deaths, but only leads to birth in a lower incarnation. One must overcome such attachment to one's personality, for, in the words of the Buddha, “the nature of personality is continuous death.”
2.4. Concepts of life, death and immortality, based on a non-religious and atheistic approach to the world and man. Irreligious 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 the meaning in life that would not be destroyed by the death that inevitably awaits every person.
For a believer, everything is clear here, but for an unbeliever, an alternative of three possible ways to solve this problem arises.
First way- is to accept the idea, which is confirmed by science and simply common sense, that in the world it is impossible to completely destroy even an elementary particle, and conservation laws apply. Matter, energy and, it is believed, information and organization of complex systems are conserved. Consequently, particles of our “I” after death will enter into the eternal cycle of existence and in this sense will be immortal. True, they will not have consciousness, the soul with which our “I” is connected. Moreover, this type of immortality is acquired by a person throughout his life. We can say in the form of a paradox: we are alive only because we die every second. Every day, red blood cells die, epithelial cells die, hair falls out, etc. Therefore, it is in principle impossible to fix life and death as absolute opposites, neither in reality nor in thoughts. These are two sides of the same coin.
Second way- gaining immortality in human affairs, in the fruits of material and spiritual production, which are included in the treasury of humanity. To do this, first of all, we need confidence that humanity is immortal and is pursuing a cosmic destiny in the spirit of the ideas of K.E. Tsiolkovsky and other cosmists. If self-destruction in a thermonuclear environmental catastrophe, as well as as a result of some kind of cosmic cataclysm, is realistic for humanity, then in this case the question remains open.
Third way As a rule, immortality is chosen by people whose scale of activity does not extend beyond the boundaries of their home and immediate environment. Without expecting eternal bliss or eternal torment, without going into the “tricks” of the mind that connects the microcosm (i.e., man) with the macrocosm, millions of people simply float in the stream of life, feeling themselves to be a part of it. Immortality for them is not in the eternal memory of blessed humanity, but in everyday affairs and worries. “It’s not difficult to believe in God... No, you have to believe in man!” - Chekhov wrote this without at all expecting that he himself would become an example of this type of attitude towards life and death.
Conclusion.
Modern thanatology (the study of death) is one of the “hot” points of natural science and humanities. Interest in the problem of death is due to several reasons.
Firstly, this is a situation of a global civilized crisis, which, in principle, can lead to the self-destruction of humanity.
Secondly, the value attitude towards human life and death has changed significantly in connection with the general situation on Earth.
Almost one and a half billion people on the planet live in complete poverty and another billion is approaching the mark, one and a half billion earthlings are deprived of any medical care, a billion people cannot read and write. There are 700 million unemployed people in the world. Millions of people in all corners of the globe suffer from racism and aggressive nationalism.
This leads to a pronounced devaluation of human life, to contempt for the life of both one’s own and that of another person. The orgy of terrorism, the increase in the number of unmotivated murders and violence, as well as suicides are symptoms of the global pathology of humanity at the turn of the 20th - 21st centuries. At the same time, at the turn of the 60s, Western countries appeared bioethics- a complex discipline located at the intersection of philosophy, ethics, biology, medicine and a number of other disciplines. It was a unique reaction to new problems of life and death.
This coincided with a growing interest in human rights, including in relation to one’s own physical and spiritual existence and the reaction of society to the threat to life on Earth, due to the aggravation of global problems of mankind.
If a person has something like a death instinct (as S. Freud wrote about), then everyone has a natural, innate right not only to live as he was born, but also to die in human conditions. One of the features of the 20th century. is that humanism and humane relations between people are the basis and guarantee of survival for humanity. If earlier any social and natural disasters left hope that the majority of people would survive and restore what was destroyed, now vitality can be considered a concept derived from humanism.
Used Books.
1. An atheist's handbook. Publishing house of political literature.
Moscow, 1975
2. Philosophy. Textbook for students. 1997
Introduction
“The fear of death comes from the fact that people mistake for life one small part of it, limited by their own false idea.”
(L.N. Tolstoy)
What is death? Few of us seriously think about the nature of this phenomenon. Most often, we avoid not only conversations, but also thoughts about death, because this topic seems very bleak and scary to us. After all, every child from an early age knows that life is good, and death is something terrible and unknown. We grow up, learn, gain knowledge and experience in various fields, but our judgments about death remain at the same level - the level of a small child who is afraid of the dark.
The unknown is scary, and therefore, even for an adult, death will always remain the same unknown, frightening darkness until he tries to understand its nature. Sooner or later, death comes to every home, and every year the number of relatives and friends who have gone into this unknown is growing. People leave - we grieve and suffer from parting with them, but even during these periods we do not always try to figure it out and understand: what is this death after all? How should we perceive it? How is the incomparable loss and injustice of life, or is it possible that there is a completely different perception of it?
In fact, we will talk about life - death - immortality. The greatest attention here is paid to death and the acquisition of immortality in another life, while human life is a moment given to a person so that he can adequately prepare for death and subsequent immortality.
Often, all nations have always spoken negatively about life: “Life is suffering” (Buddha, Schopenhauer); “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 sound and fury, but without meaning” (Shakespeare); “All human life is deeply immersed in untruth” (Nietzsche), etc. Many of us answer the question “would you like to live forever?” will answer positively. But only a few are willing to do much to achieve this goal. What do we lose by directing our efforts to the search for immortality? Nothing. What do we lose if we sit with our hands folded? All! 1. The concept of death and immortality What exactly are death and immortality? It's no secret that at the heart of all religions there are teachings that describe what happens to a person after his death. Since most religions recognize the existence of an immaterial soul, they generally believe that death is just the death of the body, thus they describe various options for the continued existence of a person in the form of a spirit. There are many options, the most famous of them are: rebirth in a new body, ending with the achievement of nirvana, or eternal life. Death is an almost absolute powerful limiter for a person. She frightens him, which naturally seems omnipotent, but, as in the question of freedom, it is important to understand: edges give life a certain meaningful content, meaning, because they make human life certain and complete. Only when trying to understand death, not only in a negative way, is the mystery of immortality determined. If we were immortal, we could calmly postpone each of our actions for an unlimited time, but in the face of death as the inevitable end, as the limit of our capabilities, we are obliged to make the most of the time allotted to us and not lose a single opportunity to fill life with meaning and content. Thus, we can say that “death is needed to truly appreciate the significance of life.” Death, writes Yu. V. Sogomonov, is capable of performing a useful role. She is a powerful catalyst for life. After all, if an eternity awaited a person, would it be worth the haste, would it be necessary to strain one’s strength and will, would it be necessary to fight for earthly happiness? In this case, a person would have the ability to ossify... The clear consciousness that life is not endless does not at all terrorize morally steadfast people. Consciousness time pressure teaches a person to value time, not to waste it on insignificant things, and to strive to live life in such a way that later there was no excruciating pain during the aimlessly lived years . A person, realizing that death will come inevitably, is in a hurry to live, and in a hurry to feel .
When discussing the concept of death, the question arises: what is its nature? There are two opposing answers to this question, both of which have ancient origins and are still widely accepted today. The first says that death is the disappearance of consciousness, eternal sleep. Often, after losing someone close, we reassure ourselves by saying that he just fell asleep. Expressions of this kind occur in our everyday language and thinking, as well as in the literature of many centuries and cultures. “Obviously, such expressions were common in Ancient Greece. For example, in the Iliad, Homer calls sleep “the brother of death,” and Plato, in his dialogue “Apology,” puts the following words into the mouth of his teacher Socrates, who was sentenced to death by the Athenian court: “And if death is the absence of all sensation, it is something like sleep , when the sleeper does not see any further dreams, then it would be surprisingly beneficial. In fact, I think that if someone had to choose a night on which he slept so much that he did not even dream and, comparing with this night all the other nights and days of his life, he would realize how many days and nights he lived It’s easy to count better and more pleasant in comparison with all other nights and days. So, if death is like this, then I, at least, consider it beneficial, because all subsequent time (from the moment of death) turns out to be nothing more than one night." On the other hand, death is the transition of the soul or mind to another dimension of reality. According to this second, perhaps even more ancient concept, “a certain part of the human being continues to live even after the physical body ceases to function and is completely destroyed. This constantly existing part has received many names - psyche, soul, mind, “I”, essence, consciousness. But no matter what it’s called, the idea that a person passes into some other world after physical death is one of the most ancient human beliefs.” From this concept follows the concept of immortality - the eternal existence of the individual (“I”, soul, monad), individual will. The idea of immortality is found, in one form or another, among all ancient peoples. Among the Greeks and Jews<#"center">Christianity Islam Buddhism immortality 2. Death and immortality in world religions 1 Christianity “The wages of sin is death” (Rom. 6:23). In our society, the Bible is the most read and discussed book concerning questions about the spiritual essence of man and his life after death. But in general, the Bible says very little about events after death and about the nature of the other world. This applies mainly to the Old Testament. “According to some Old Testament scholars, only two texts in the entire document speak of life after death. “Isaiah 26:19: “Your dead will live, your dead bodies will rise!” Arise, rejoice, you cast down in the dust: for Your dew is the dew of plants, and the earth will cast out the dead.” Acts 12:2: “And many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth will awaken, some to eternal life, others to everlasting shame and shame.” Thus, in Christianity, death is regarded as the sleep of the physical body, while the soul is immortal. Immortality in Christianity is destined for all souls without limitation: righteous and sinful, but it will be different for everyone. For the righteous, eternity is prepared in paradise, in heaven, where there is no pain or suffering. For sinners - eternal torment in hell, retribution for sins and crimes. There is also a so-called “purgatory” where all non-believers go. But no one has the right to judge where the soul will spend “the rest of its eternal life,” except Jesus Christ himself, who will proclaim his verdict at the Last Judgment. Consequently, immortality in Christianity is the eternal existence of the soul in another world, which depends on the actions of a person during life. 2 Buddhism According to Buddhist teachings, existence is a cycle of birth, death and rebirth, proceeding in accordance with the quality of the actions of the being reborn. The process of becoming ceases when enlightenment (bodhi) is achieved, after which the enlightened one (buddha), no longer subject to the law of karma, enters a state called “immortality” (amata) by Gautama Buddha. “Buddhism says that every convert should be “showed the path to amata,” in which the liberation of the mind is achieved through deepening wisdom and meditative practices (sati, samadhi).” Therefore, the desire of the soul or ego (atman) for eternal individual existence is the immediate cause of all suffering and the basis of the cycle of reincarnation (samsara). Buddhism views the search for eternal life as an inherently doomed path that leads away from enlightenment: even gods who live for unimaginably long lives eventually die. Despite the proclamation of the inevitability of irreversible destruction of a person’s unique individual personality after death, Buddhism makes a concession to the natural human desire to achieve immortality. This concession consists of the inclusion in the canon of Buddhism of the doctrine that before the final attainment of nirvana, the righteous believer must necessarily pass through a series of heavenly or hellish realms, in accordance with his merits or sins before the Bodhisattva. Buddha said: “Be your own lamps,” “All my teaching has only one taste of salvation.” To achieve Nirvana, a Buddhist must follow the eightfold path in life: right views, intentions, speech, actions, lifestyle, effort, awareness and concentration. Observe five rules of behavior in your life: do not kill, do not take someone else’s, do not commit adultery, do not lie, do not get drunk. Be wise in your decisions and actions. Observe the middle Path and do not go to extremes. To explain what nirvana is, the Buddha makes the following comparison: “The happiness of an ordinary person is comparable to the pleasure a leper experiences from scratching his own wounds, the happiness of nirvana is comparable to being cured of leprosy. Talking about nirvana is comparable to a fruitless attempt to explain to a leper what the pleasure of healthy people consists of.” In heaven is the paradise Tushita, its name means "satisfied, joyful." This is one of the areas where the gods live. It is located above the top of Mount Sumeru - the center of the world. The garden of joy and the world of desires and passions are extinguished. In Tushita paradise, souls are reincarnated who have kept the five commandments: do not kill, do not steal, do not commit adultery, do not lie, do not get drunk - as well as those who have cultivated immeasurable states of consciousness through good deeds and meditation: a loving heart, compassion, impartiality - in other words, those qualities that which constitute the essence of the awakened mind. In this heavenly world, the souls of bodhisattvas are reborn. The Buddha of the future, before his descent to earth, resides in heavenly paradise. So, in Buddhism, death is considered as - physical death, that is, the death of the body, the existence of which is a cycle of births, deaths and rebirths, proceeding in accordance with the quality of the actions of the reborn being, and immortality is nothing more than immersion in nirvana with complete dissolution of the human “I” in it 3 Islam In Islam, “between death and the Day of Judgment, when Allah will finally decide the fate of all people, there is an intermediate state Barzakh (block). During this interval, the bodies of the dead are still able to feel, although they are in their graves, and the souls of the dead go either to heaven (the souls of Muslims) or to the well of Barakhut in Hadhramaut (the souls of infidels). In Islam there is grave punishment - a small trial of people immediately after death, a kind of preliminary investigation. The grave in this regard is purgatory, where preventive retribution is determined - punishment or reward. As in Christianity, before the Day of Judgment, all the dead will rise and appear before God. The righteous will find eternal bliss in paradise - al-Jannah" Immortality in Islam differs from immortality in other religions in that warriors who die in battle for their faith immediately gain immortality in paradise. Consequently, in Islam it is believed that death is an integral attribute of life, its component. After death, everyone, except non-Muslims, is equal in the face of Allah. Immortality in Islam exists, as in other religions, its only distinguishing feature is that warriors who fought in the name of Allah gain immediate immortality in paradise. 3. Death and immortality in different cultures The question of death is one of the eternal questions that man has asked himself since his appearance on earth. Death is a problem that a person inevitably faces, being a temporary being. Each era develops its own attitude towards death, its own understanding of death. In Ancient Greece it was believed that “death is not the destruction of life, but a simple change of being” In Ancient Greece, one of the ways for a person to alleviate the loss of his loved ones or to realize the proximity of his own death was mythology. She explained what would happen to the soul of the deceased after his death. Man does not know the time of death; The time and place of death is determined by Moira, the goddess of Fate. After death, a person goes to the underworld, where God Hades (better known as Hades) rules, who judged the souls of dead people, i.e. disposed of their life after death. Another, the god of Death - Thanatos, carried out the death sentence of Fate and met the soul of the deceased. After death, the soul of the deceased could end up either in the gloomy dungeon of Hades or on the Island of the Blessed, depending on the nature of the earthly life of the deceased and the favor of the gods towards him. One way or another, the death of a person did not mean a complete cessation of life. A person simply changed his place of existence. The souls of dead people are not burdened with terrible suffering anywhere in the underworld, their torment is mental: they miss the sun, yearn for relatives, for their native place. Ancient mythology was one of the first to formulate the idea of judgment of the soul after the death of a person. Three judges await the soul of the dead in the underworld - “Minos, Aeacus and Rhadamanthus”. They weigh the good and bad deeds of the deceased standing in front of them on the scales, after which they assign him a place of permanent residence. The views of ancient Greek philosophers on the problem of the immortality of the soul are different. Plato believed that the soul is immortal only because it is rational and connected with the world of ideas. “There is a divine element in the human soul, and it must be freed from the power of matter. Then a person wins immortality for himself. But gaining immortality means leaving the lower material world, and not transforming it.” It turns out that Plato believed that immortality is real, but not in physical form, only the human soul is immortal, and it acquires it only by getting rid of the bodily shell, i.e. due to the death of the physical body. “Another great philosopher, Aristotle, who was a student of Paton, believed that the soul dies along with the body and there is no immortality of the soul. According to Aristotle, the soul is the form that organizes and animates the matter of which a person consists, that is, what gives the organism integrity.” Plants and animals also have a soul. The soul of plants is associated with nutrition and reproduction; the soul of animals, in addition to these two functions, has the ability to sense and move in space. In addition to these abilities, the human soul also has the ability to think. The mind is what distinguishes humans from plants and animals. The mind is that part of the soul that does not perish along with the body, but returns to its original beginning, the highest principle according to which the cosmos was created. Another famous philosopher of Ancient Greece, Democritus, did not recognize the immortality of the soul. He believed that nothing exists except the material world, which we perceive through our senses. And in this world, in his opinion, there is nothing but atoms and emptiness. Like everything else, the soul consists of atoms, and, like all other things, with the death of the body it disintegrates into atoms and ceases to exist. True, death, in the view of Democritus, is still not the absolute end of life, because warmth and sensitivity are inherent in the smallest indivisible particles themselves, which means that these properties are indestructible, like atoms. The existence of a specific individual soul ceases, but its “immortal” atoms can become part of a new soul. So, in Ancient Greece, man came to terms with the inevitability of death; he had long lost immortality, which belonged entirely to the gods. A person's fate after death is life in the underworld, and whether he lives on the Isle of the Blessed or in the Kingdom of Shadows depends on his deeds during life. 2 Ancient Egypt In human history, two cultures have shown a particularly keen interest in death and the dying process: the cultures of the Egyptians and Tibetans. They shared a deep belief in the continuation of life after death. Therefore, burial rituals in these cultures are very detailed and were observed with special care. Funeral rituals helped the soul of the deceased to transition to a new state as easily as possible, drawing complex diagrams that reflected the wanderings of the soul. After death, a person's soul does not die; According to religious beliefs in Ancient Egypt, the deceased will be resurrected. In order to provide the deceased with a new, already eternal life, it is necessary to preserve his body and provide in the grave with everything necessary that he could use during life, so that the spirit could, upon returning to the body, not die of hunger and thirst. This means that the body must be embalmed and turned into a mummy. And in case the mummification turns out to be imperfect, it is necessary to create a likeness of the body of the deceased - his statue. And therefore in ancient Egypt the sculptor was called “sankh”, which means “creator of life”. By recreating the image of the deceased, he seemed to recreate life itself. “In the minds of the ancient Egyptians, a person consists of a body “Hitt”, a soul “Ba”, a shadow “Khaybet”, a name “Ren” and, finally, each person has his own invisible double, a guardian angel - “Ka”. Ka is born along with a person, relentlessly follows him everywhere, and forms an integral part of his personality; Ka does not die with the death of a person. He continues to live next to the person’s body in the place of his burial, which is therefore called the “house of Ka.” The life of Ka depends on the degree of preservation of the body and is closely connected with the latter. Therefore, funeral rites were performed with special care. The corpse was turned into a mummy and carefully hidden in a closed room of the tomb; the possibility of accidental destruction of the mummy was also provided for: in this case, statues that conveyed as closely as possible the features of the deceased could replace the mummy and become the seat of Ka. Along with Ka, in the religion of Ancient Egypt, much attention is paid to the true soul - Ba, depicted as a bird with a human head and a lamp with vegetable oil burning in front of it. According to the pyramid inscriptions, the deceased flies into the sky in the form of a bird; he sometimes also takes the form of a grasshopper, since the Egyptians considered the grasshopper to be a bird, and in this form he reaches the sky. In Ancient Egypt, Osiris was the ruler of the kingdom of the dead, the judge of the dead. According to legend, “Osiris was a legendary king whose rule in Egypt was famous for strength and justice. One day his brother Set tricked Osiris into a trap and killed him. Osiris's wife, Isis, managed to become pregnant by the dead Osiris. After burying his body, she fled to the Delta; there, hiding in the thickets of papyrus, she gave birth to a son, Horus. When Horus grew up, he decided to avenge his father." Gradually the death of the pharaoh is identified with the death of Osiris. Since the period of the First Interregnum, images of Osiris began to be found on the walls of the tombs of the nobility and in the burial places of ordinary Egyptians. There is a kind of “democratization” of myth; Now every Egyptian, regardless of his social status, becomes like Osiris in his death and thereby gains resurrection. Immortality in ancient Egypt was the ideological basis on which the Egyptian Empire existed for 4 millennia. For the first time, the idea of personal immortality for each person was formulated in Egyptian culture; the earliest description of a way to achieve personal immortality is the ancient Egyptian cult of Osiris with its promise of eternal life in the afterlife. The pyramid texts suggest that already 2400 BC in ancient Egypt there was a complex system of secret knowledge and rituals associated with the divine reign of the pharaohs, which, according to the priests, made it possible to gain immortality after death. Gradually, the cult of Osiris, the rituals associated with it and the idea of immortality become accessible to all segments of society. By 1400 BC, this teaching had developed into a complex system of secret religious knowledge, with the help of which all who could pay for its implementation could hope to gain the immortality offered by this rite. After embalming and burial, guaranteeing the safety of the body, the final stage of gaining immortality began. The deceased, guided by the instructions of the “book of the dead,” the text of which was either carved on the sarcophagus itself or inserted into it written on parchment, with the help of hymns, prayers and spells, had to appear before the court of Osiris and the 42 gods. Appearing before the court, the deceased had to make two acquittal speeches recorded in chapter 125 of the “Book of the Dead.” In the first speech of acquittal, the deceased addresses himself directly to Osiris. In the second - to each of the 42 gods-judges, each of whom pronounces his sentence: And only if a person led a righteous lifestyle on earth, corresponding to these two justificatory speeches, Osiris granted him immortality and sent him to heaven. If a person’s life did not correspond to these two justifications, then he was deprived of the right to immortality, and the sinner was eaten by the monster Amat (a lion with the head of a crocodile), which became his final and irrevocable death. 3 Ancient Israel Jewish culture is one of the most interesting cultures of the ancient world. Judaism became the forerunner of Christianity, formulated ethical values and religious ideas that remain relevant for modern man to this day. One of the most important moments in the religious life of Israel was the problem of death. The ancient Jews were realistic about death and were able to come to terms with the idea of the end of individual life. The death of a person did not mean the death of his soul; After death, the soul went to the kingdom of the dead - Sheol. Death itself is temporary; with the coming of the Messiah, the dead must be resurrected and already receive eternal life in the kingdom of God, which should come approximately 700-1000 years after the coming of the Messiah. Death was not present in the world immediately after its creation; death came into the world along with the fall of man. After creating the earth, God created the first man Adam and Eve, his wife; He settled them in the East in the Garden of Eden, in paradise. “God commanded man: “...you will eat from every tree in the garden. But from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, do not eat from it; for in the day that you eat of it you will surely die” (Gen. 2:16-17).” However, the serpent manages to tempt Eve. Eve succumbs to the serpent's persuasion, agrees to try the fruit and gives Adam a taste of it. A person thereby falls into “original sin,” caused by his own pride, the desire to compare with God. For this, God expels Adam and Eve from paradise; From now on, man must earn his own bread, and man also becomes mortal. Death, therefore, is an unnatural state of the world, it is a temporary state, it is a kind of disease to which every creature is susceptible until the judgment of humanity and the advent of the kingdom of God. The nature of man is dual: on the one hand, he is created in the image and likeness of God, God breathed breath or spirit into him, and on the other hand, man is created from dust and will return to dust. “The experience of one’s own greatness and at the same time one’s own mortality is one of the tense and insoluble contradictions inherent in any culture. Biblical texts speak of the futility of human existence; A striking example of this is the book of Job.” Long life is the greatest benefit for a person. As in many traditional cultures, death is humiliating: it reduces a person to the state of a worm in the grave or Sheol - a dark and terrible region in the depths of the earth. God has no power over Sheol, because... death is essentially the negation of his work. Therefore, the dead are deprived of communication with God, and for believers this is the most severe test. But God is stronger than death: He can raise a person from the dead if it is His desire. An important place in the culture of Judaism is given to the expectation of the resurrection of the dead after the coming of the Messiah. According to some ideas, there will be two resurrections: first, after the coming of the Messiah, only saints and righteous will be resurrected, and before the Last Judgment, when God descends to earth to judge humanity, all people, including pagans, will be resurrected. This will be the second - general - resurrection. The idea of personal immortality was alien to the ancient Jewish people; they were characterized by the consciousness of the immortality of the people, i.e. genus, species, not personality. Thus, ideas about the life of the soul after death in Jewish culture are quite diverse. Death in Jewish culture is experienced as inevitable for every person, life is very short, and all the benefits that a person enjoys in this life are transitory. In general, the attitude towards death is rather pessimistic, but on the other hand, there is always hope for the mercy of God, for the resurrection of the dead and eternal life in the future, for the resurrection of the entire people. A person seems to live with the hope of overcoming death; death is a temporary state of the human soul. 4 Middle Ages The Middle Ages is a historical era that began after the fall of the Roman Empire and lasted until the beginning of the 15th century; it is a special type of culture that determined all areas of people’s lives: from religious to everyday life. One of the main characteristics of the Middle Ages is theocentrism, the understanding of God as the source of all good. At the same time, human activity is not self-valuable, not self-sufficient, but entirely dependent on God. Religious norms are designed to regulate all aspects of human activity; they were decisive for the literature and art of that time. Moreover, death was understood through the system of Christian values; we can say that the Middle Ages are one of the few historical eras when a person found a way to come to terms with the fact that he is mortal, when death was perceived as something natural, and not an idea that exists on the periphery of culture. Ideas about why a person is mortal, about the posthumous existence of the soul, were Christian and biblical. Man becomes mortal as a result of the Fall. Evil is the distance of a person from God; when a person does evil, he is not with God, but acts on his own. At the same time, death was understood as a temporary state of man; after the end of the world, the resurrection of the dead and the Last Judgment, the righteous will find eternal life in paradise, where there will be no sorrows and illnesses that man is forced to endure on earth. The hope for eternal life and eternal bliss, on the one hand, is the basis of moral choice, and on the other hand, a consolation for a person facing death. After all, death is only temporary; Only the body dies, the soul is immortal. It is characteristic that in the Middle Ages, children from an early age were taught to think about death, in contrast to subsequent eras, when the topic of death became one of the least discussed, almost marginal. So, a dying person gathers his family and relatives around him, not excluding children, to say goodbye to them. The child is not protected from death, but, on the contrary, is taught to think about it. Another side of this attitude towards death was the clear separation of the world of the living and the world of the dead; the dead now seem unable to penetrate into the world of the living; the world of the dead turns out to be closed, inaccessible to the living. Material evidence of this was that cemeteries began to be built outside medieval cities. Medieval culture is a Christian culture, practically devoid of secular principles; all aspects of human life were imbued with religiosity. However, medieval culture also absorbed some elements of the pagan cultures that existed before it, which were deeply rooted in the human consciousness. Likewise, in the medieval attitude towards death, we can trace the interweaving of Christian and pagan ideas. For example, in Germany it was believed that the shadow of a headless man on the wall announced the imminent death of someone close. In Scotland, warnings of imminent death were dreams in which the sleeper saw the burial of a still living person. In Europe, fortune telling about the occurrence of death became widespread: it was believed that death was foreshadowed by certain outlines of drops of wax thrown into cold water. Thus, in medieval culture, death is universal, inevitable. From an early age, children were prepared for death, taught to take it for granted. Despite the fact that the people of the Middle Ages clearly separated the world of the living and the dead, they still believed in the existence of life after death, but in a different world: heaven and hell. Conclusion All teachings about immortality and death differ in some way from each other. Some believe that death is a dream, others - the transition of the soul to another world, or simply the death of the material body. But everyone agrees on one thing: death is inevitable, it limits the capabilities of our material body, creating boundaries that fill life with meaning. There is also life after death - the immortality of the soul, specifically the soul, and not the person as a whole, for it is impossible to achieve bodily immortality, as the alchemists tried to achieve. The concept of immortality is also understood in different ways: life in heaven or hell, chaol; the cycle of life and death, the rebirth of the soul in another body; life in the world of ancestral spirits. But there is no definite knowledge about what death is and whether there is life after it. Therefore, every person has the right to choose for himself what to believe in and what to expect from life. Death will come sooner or later anyway, and knowing this fact, it is worth using every second of life to enjoy it to the fullest. Literature 1.Balandin R.K., Life, death, immortality. M., 1992. 2.Balashov L.E., Life, death, immortality. 2009 .Berdyaev N.A., Experience of paradoxical ethics, M., 2003 .Moody R., Life after Life: a study of the phenomenon of continuation of life after the death of the body, Minsk, 1996. .Polikarpov V.S., The phenomenon “Life after death”, Rostov-on-Don, 1995. .Fustel de Coulanges Numa Denis, Ancient civil community: A study on the cult, law and institutions of Greece and Rome, M., 1996
The Greek sage Epicurus said this: “Accustom yourself to the idea that death has nothing to do with us. When we exist, death is not yet present, and when death is present, then we do not exist.”
Thinking about this, you begin to understand that death is perhaps the only thing before which everyone is equal: poor and rich, smart and stupid, loved and unloved.
Problems of life and death and attitudes towards death
in different historical eras and in different religions
Introduction.
1. Dimensions of the problem of life, death and immortality.
2. Attitude to death, problems of life, death and immortality
in the religions of the world.
Conclusion.
Bibliography.
Introduction.
Life and death are eternal themes in the spiritual culture of humanity in all its divisions. Prophets and founders of religions, philosophers and moralists, figures of art and literature, teachers and doctors thought about them. There is hardly an adult who, sooner or later, would not think about the meaning of his existence, his impending death and the achievement of immortality. These thoughts come to the minds of children and very young people, as evidenced in poetry and prose, dramas and tragedies, letters and diaries. Only early childhood or senile insanity relieves a person of the need to solve these problems.
In fact, we are talking about a triad: life - death - immortality, since all the spiritual systems of humanity proceeded from the idea of the contradictory unity of these phenomena. The greatest attention here was paid to death and the acquisition of immortality in another life, and human life itself was interpreted as a moment allotted to a person so that he could adequately prepare for death and immortality.
With a few exceptions, all times and peoples have spoken quite negatively about life, Life is suffering (Buddha: Schopenhauer, 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 sound and fury, but without meaning” (Shakespeare); “All human life is deeply immersed in untruth” (Nietzsche), etc.
Proverbs and sayings of different nations like “Life is a penny” speak about this. Ortega y Gasset defined man neither as a body nor as a spirit, but as a specifically human drama. Indeed, in this sense, the life of every person is dramatic and tragic: no matter how successfully life turns out, no matter how long it is, its end is inevitable. The Greek sage Epicurus said this: “Accustom yourself to the idea that death has nothing to do with us. When we exist, death is not yet present, and when death is present, then we do not exist.”
Death and potential immortality are the most powerful lure for the philosophical mind, for all our life's affairs must, one way or another, be measured against the eternal. Man is doomed to think about life and death, and this is his difference from an animal, which is mortal, but does not know about it. Death in general is the price to pay for the complication of a biological system. Single-celled organisms are practically immortal and the amoeba is a happy creature in this sense.
When an organism becomes multicellular, a mechanism of self-destruction, as it were, is built into it at a certain stage of development, associated with the genome.
For centuries, the best minds of humanity have been trying to at least theoretically refute this thesis, prove, and then bring real immortality to life. 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 the constant prime of life. A person cannot come to terms with the fact that he will have to leave this magnificent world where life is in full swing. To be an eternal spectator of this grandiose picture of the Universe, not to experience the “saturation of days” like the biblical prophets - could anything be more tempting?
But, thinking about this, 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 have been and are constantly being made to convince the world that there are people who have been “there” and returned back, but common sense refuses to believe this. Faith is required, a miracle is required, such as the Gospel Christ performed, “trampling down death by death.” It has been noticed that a person’s wisdom is often expressed in a calm attitude towards life and death. As Mahatma Gandhi said: “We do not know whether it is better to live or to die. Therefore, we should neither overly admire life nor tremble at the thought of death. We should treat both equally. This is the ideal option.” And long before this, the Bhagavad Gita said: “Truly, death is intended for the born, and birth is inevitable for the deceased. Do not mourn about the inevitable.”
At the same time, many great people realized this problem in tragic tones. Outstanding Russian biologist I.I. Mechnikov, who reflected on the possibility of “cultivating the instinct of natural death,” wrote about L.N. Tolstoy: “When Tolstoy, tormented by the inability to solve this problem and haunted by the fear of death, asked himself whether family love could calm his soul, he immediately saw that this is a vain hope. Why, he asked himself, raise children who will soon find themselves in the same critical condition as their father? Why should I love them, raise them and take care of them? For the same despair that is in me, or for stupidity? Loving them, I cannot hide the truth from them - every step leads them to the knowledge of this truth. And the truth is death."
1. Dimensions of the problem of life, death and immortality.
1. 1. The first dimension of the problem of life, death and immortality is biological, for these states are essentially different aspects of one phenomenon. The hypothesis of panspermia, the constant presence of life and death in the Universe, and their constant reproduction in suitable conditions, has long been put forward. The definition of F. Engels is well known: “Life is a way of existence of protein bodies, and this way of existence consists essentially in the constant self-renewal of the chemical components of these bodies,” emphasizes the cosmic aspect of life.
Stars, nebulae, planets, comets and other cosmic bodies are born, live and die, and in this sense, no one and nothing disappears. This aspect is most developed in Eastern philosophy and mystical teachings, based on the fundamental impossibility of understanding the meaning of this universal circulation only with reason. Materialistic concepts are based on the phenomenon of self-generation of life and self-causation, when, according to F. Engels, “with iron necessity” life and the thinking spirit are generated in one place of the Universe, if in another it disappears.
Awareness of the unity of human life and humanity with all life on the planet, with its biosphere, as well as potentially possible forms of life in the Universe, has enormous ideological significance.
This idea of the sanctity of life, the right to life for any living being, by virtue of the very fact of birth, belongs to the eternal ideals of humanity. In the limit, the entire Universe and the Earth are considered as living beings, and interference in the still poorly understood laws of their life is fraught with an ecological crisis. Man appears as a small particle of this living Universe, a microcosm that has absorbed all the richness of the macrocosm. The feeling of “reverence for life”, the feeling of one’s involvement in the wonderful world of the living, to one degree or another, is inherent in any ideological system. Even if biological, bodily life is considered an inauthentic, transitive form of human existence, then in these cases (for example, in Christianity) human flesh can and should acquire a different, flourishing state.
1.2. The second dimension of the problem of life, death and immortality is associated with understanding the specifics of human life and its difference from the life of all living things. For more than thirty centuries, sages, prophets and philosophers from different countries and peoples have been trying to find this divide. Most often it is believed that the whole point is in the awareness of the fact of impending death: we know that we will die and are feverishly looking for the path to immortality. All other living things quietly and peacefully complete their journey, having managed to reproduce a new life or serve as fertilizer for another life. A person is doomed to painful lifelong thoughts about the meaning of life or its meaninglessness, tormenting himself, and often others, with this, and is forced to drown these damned questions in wine or drugs. This is partly true, but the question arises: what to do with the fact of the death of a newborn child who has not yet had time to understand anything, or a mentally retarded person who is not able to understand anything? Should we consider the beginning of a person’s life to be the moment of conception (which cannot be accurately determined in most cases) or the moment of birth?
It is known that the dying Leo Tolstoy, addressing those around him, said,
so that they turn their gaze to millions of other people, and not look at one
lion An unknown death that does not touch anyone except the mother, the death of a small creature from hunger somewhere in Africa and the magnificent funeral of world-famous leaders in the face of eternity have no differences. In this sense, the English poet D. Donne is deeply right when he said that the death of each person diminishes all of humanity and therefore “never ask for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for you.”
It is obvious that the specifics of human life, death and immortality are directly related to the mind and its manifestations, to the successes and achievements of a person during his life, to his assessment by his contemporaries and descendants. The death of many geniuses at a young age is undoubtedly tragic, but there is no reason to believe that their subsequent life, if it had taken place, would have given the world something even more brilliant. There is some kind of not entirely clear, but empirically obvious pattern at work here, expressed by the Christian thesis: “God chooses the best first.”
In this sense, life and death are not covered by the categories of rational knowledge and do not fit into the framework of a rigid deterministic model of the world and man. It is possible to discuss these concepts in cold blood up to a certain limit. It is determined by the personal interest of each person and his ability to intuitively comprehend the ultimate foundations of human existence. In this respect, everyone is like a swimmer who has jumped into the waves in the middle of the open sea. You need to rely only on yourself, despite human solidarity, faith in God, the Higher Mind, etc. The uniqueness of man, the uniqueness of personality, is manifested here to the highest degree. Geneticists have calculated that the probability of this particular person being born from these parents is one chance in one hundred trillion cases. If this has already happened, then what amazing variety of human meanings of existence appears before a person when he thinks about life and death?
1.3. The third dimension of this problem is associated with the idea of gaining immortality, which sooner or later becomes the focus of a person’s attention, especially if he has reached adulthood.
There are several types of immortality associated with the fact that a person leaves behind his business, children, grandchildren, etc., the products of his activities and personal belongings, as well as the fruits of spiritual production (ideas, images, etc.).
The first type of immortality is in the genes of the offspring, and is close to most people. In addition to the principled opponents of marriage and family and misogynists, many seek to perpetuate themselves in this very way. One of the powerful drives of a person is the desire to see his own traits in his children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. In the royal dynasties of Europe, the transmission of certain characteristics (for example, the nose of the Habsburgs) has been traced over several generations. This is associated with the inheritance of not only physical characteristics, but also the moral principles of a family occupation or craft, etc. Historians have established that many outstanding figures of Russian culture of the 19th century were related (albeit distantly) to each other. One century includes four generations.
Thus, over two thousand years, 80 generations have changed, and the 80th ancestor of each of us was a contemporary of Ancient Rome, and the 130th was a contemporary of the Egyptian pharaoh Ramses II.
The second type of immortality is mummification of the body with the expectation of its eternal preservation. The experience of the Egyptian pharaohs, the practice of modern embalming (V.I. Lenin, Mao-Zedong, etc.) indicate that in a number of civilizations this is considered accepted. Advances in technology at the end of the 20th century made it possible to cryogenesis (deep freezing) of the bodies of the dead with the expectation that doctors of the future would revive and cure currently incurable diseases. This fetishization of human corporeality is characteristic mainly of totalitarian societies, where gerontocracy (the power of the old) becomes the basis of state stability.
The third type of immortality is the hope for the “dissolution” of the body and spirit of the deceased in the Universe, their entry into the cosmic “body”, into the eternal circulation of matter. This is typical for a number of eastern civilizations, especially Japanese. The Islamic model of attitude towards life and death and various materialistic or, more precisely, naturalistic concepts are close to this solution. Here we are talking about the loss of personal qualities and the preservation of particles of the former body that can become part of other organisms. This highly abstract type of immortality is unacceptable to most people and is emotionally rejected.
The fourth path to immortality is associated with the results of human creativity in life. It is not for nothing that members of various academies are awarded the title “immortals”. A scientific discovery, the creation of a brilliant work of literature and art, showing the path to humanity in a new faith, the creation of a philosophical text, an outstanding military victory and a demonstration of statesmanship - all this leaves a person’s name in the memory of noble descendants. Heroes and prophets, passion-bearers and saints, architects and inventors are immortalized. The names of the cruelest tyrants and the greatest criminals are forever preserved in the memory of mankind. This raises the question of the ambiguity of assessing the scale of a person’s personality. It seems that the more human lives and broken human destinies lie on the conscience of this or that historical character, the greater his chances of getting into history and gaining immortality there. The ability to influence the lives of hundreds of millions of people, the “charisma” of power evokes in many a state of mystical horror mixed with reverence. There are legends and stories about such people that are passed down from generation to generation.
The fifth path to immortality is associated with the achievement of various states that science calls “altered states of consciousness.” They are mainly a product of the system of psychotraining and meditation adopted in Eastern religions and civilizations. Here, a “breakthrough” into other dimensions of space and time, travel to the past and future, ecstasy and enlightenment, a mystical feeling of belonging to Eternity are possible.
We can say that the meaning of death and immortality, as well as the ways to achieve it, are the other side of the problem of the meaning of life. Obviously, these issues are resolved differently, depending on the leading spiritual orientation of a particular civilization.
2. Attitudes towards death, problems of life, death and immortality in the religions of the world.
Let us consider these problems in relation to three world religions - Christianity, Islam and Buddhism and the civilizations based on them.
2.1. The Christian understanding of the meaning of life, death and immortality comes from the Old Testament position: “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 divine-human essence of Christianity is manifested in the fact that the immortality of the individual as an integral being is conceivable only through resurrection. The path to it is opened by the atoning sacrifice of Christ through the cross and resurrection. This is the sphere of mystery and miracle, for man is taken out of the sphere of action of natural-cosmic forces and elements and is placed as a person face to face with God, who is also a person.
Thus, the goal of human life is deification, movement towards eternal life. Without realizing this, earthly life turns into a dream, an empty and idle dream, a soap bubble. In essence, it is only a preparation for eternal life, which is just around the corner for everyone. That is why it is said in the Gospel: “Be prepared: for at an hour you do not think, the Son of Man will come.” To prevent life from turning, in the words of M.Yu. Lermontov, “into an empty and stupid joke,” one must 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. In the figurative expression of one of the moral hierarchs: “A dying person is a setting star, the dawn of which is already shining over another world.” Death does not destroy the body, but its corruption, and therefore it is not the end, but the beginning of eternal life.
Christianity associated a different understanding of immortality with the image of the “Eternal Jew” Agasfer. When Jesus, exhausted under the weight of the cross, walked to Golgotha and wanted to rest, Ahasfer, 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 his hateful immortality.
The image of “mountainous” Jerusalem is associated with the absence of disease, death, hunger, cold, poverty, enmity, hatred, malice and other evils there. There is life without labor and joy without sorrow, health without weakness and honor without danger. All in blooming youth and the age of Christ are comforted by bliss, tasting the fruits of peace, love, joy and fun, and “they love each other as themselves.” Evangelist Luke defined the essence of the Christian approach to life and death this way: “God is not the God of the dead, but the God of the living. For with him all are alive.” Christianity categorically condemns suicide, since a person does not belong to himself, his life and death are “in the will of God.”
2.2. Another world religion - Islam - is based on the fact that man was created by the will of almighty Allah, who, above all, is merciful. To a person’s question: “Will I be known alive when I die?” Allah gives the answer: “Won’t man remember that we created him before, and he was nothing?” Unlike Christianity, earthly life in Islam is highly regarded. However, on the Last Day, everything will be destroyed and the dead will be resurrected and appear before Allah for final judgment. Belief in an afterlife is essential
because in this case a person will evaluate his actions and actions not from the point of view of personal interest, but in the sense of an eternal perspective.
The destruction of the entire Universe on the day of the Just Judgment presupposes the creation of a completely new world. A “record” of deeds and thoughts, even the most secret ones, will be presented about each person, and an appropriate sentence 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 strictly prohibits suicide.
The descriptions of heaven and hell in the Koran are full of vivid details, so that the righteous can be fully satisfied and the sinners get what they deserve. Paradise is the beautiful “gardens of eternity, below which flow rivers of water, milk and wine”; there are also “pure spouses”, “full-breasted peers”, as well as “black-eyed and big-eyed, decorated with bracelets of gold and pearls”. Those sitting on carpets and leaning on green cushions are walked around by “forever young boys” offering “bird meat” on golden dishes. Hell for sinners is fire and boiling water, pus and slop, the fruits of the “Zakkum” tree, similar to the head of the devil, and their destiny is “screams and roars.” It is impossible to ask Allah about the hour of death, since only he has knowledge about this, and “what has been given to you to know, perhaps the hour is already close.”
2.3. The attitude towards death and immortality in Buddhism differs significantly from Christian and Muslim ones. Buddha himself refused to answer the questions: “Is he who knows the truth immortal or is he mortal?”, and also: can a knower be mortal and immortal at the same time? In essence, only one type of “wonderful immortality” is recognized - nirvana, as the embodiment of the transcendental Superbeing, the Absolute Beginning, which has no attributes.
Buddhism did not refute the doctrine of the transmigration of souls developed by Brahmanism, i.e. 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 made significant changes to the teachings of Brahmanism. If the Brahmans argued that through rituals, sacrifices and spells that were different for each class ("varna") it was fashionable to achieve "good rebirths", i.e. to become a raja, a brahmana, a rich merchant, etc., then Buddhism declared all reincarnation, all types of existence as inevitable misfortune and evil. Therefore, the highest goal of a Buddhist should be the complete cessation of rebirth and the achievement of nirvana, i.e. non-existence.
Since personality is understood as a sum of drachmas that are in a constant flow of reincarnation, this implies the absurdity and meaninglessness of the chain of natural births. The Dhammapada states that "to be born again and again is sorrowful." The way out is the path of finding nirvana, breaking through the chain of endless rebirths and achieving enlightenment, the blissful “island” located in the depths of a person’s heart, where “they own nothing” and “covet nothing.” The well-known symbol of nirvana - the extinguishing of the ever-quivering fire of life is well expressed the essence of the Buddhist understanding of death and immortality. As the Buddha said: “One day in the life of a person who has seen the immortal path is better than a hundred years of existence of a person who has not seen the higher life.”
For most people, achieving nirvana immediately, in this rebirth, is impossible. Following the path of salvation indicated by the Buddha, a living being usually has to be reincarnated again and again. But this will be the path of ascent to the “highest wisdom”, having achieved which a creature will be able to leave the “circle of existence” and complete the chain of its rebirths.
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 regard, attitudes towards suicide are changing; it is considered not so sinful as senseless, for it does not free a person from the circle of births and deaths, but only leads to birth in a lower incarnation. One must overcome such attachment to one's personality, for, in the words of the Buddha, “the nature of personality is continuous death.”
2.4. Concepts of life, death and immortality, based on a non-religious and atheistic approach to the world and man. Irreligious 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 the meaning in life that would not be destroyed by the death that inevitably awaits 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, which is confirmed by science and simply common sense, that complete destruction of even an elementary particle is impossible in the world, and conservation laws apply. Matter, energy and, it is believed, information and organization of complex systems are conserved. Consequently, particles of our “I” after death will enter into the eternal cycle of existence and in this sense will be immortal. True, they will not have consciousness, the soul with which our “I” is connected. Moreover, this type of immortality is acquired by a person throughout his life. We can say in the form of a paradox: we are alive only because we die every second. Every day, red blood cells die, epithelial cells die, hair falls out, etc. Therefore, it is in principle impossible to fix life and death as absolute opposites, neither in reality nor in thoughts. These are two sides of the same coin.
The second path is the acquisition of immortality in human affairs, in the fruits of material and spiritual production, which are included in the treasury of humanity. To do this, first of all, we need confidence that humanity is immortal and is pursuing a cosmic destiny in the spirit of the ideas of K.E. Tsiolkovsky and other cosmists. If self-destruction in a thermonuclear environmental catastrophe, as well as as a result of some kind of cosmic cataclysm, is realistic for humanity, then in this case the question remains open.
The third path to immortality is, as a rule, chosen by people whose scale of activity does not extend beyond the boundaries of their home and immediate environment. Without expecting eternal bliss or eternal torment, without going into the “tricks” of the mind that connects the microcosm (i.e., man) with the macrocosm, millions of people simply float in the stream of life, feeling themselves to be a part of it. Immortality for them is not in the eternal memory of blessed humanity, but in everyday affairs and worries. “It’s not difficult to believe in God... No, you have to believe in man!” - Chekhov wrote this without at all expecting that he himself would become an example of this type of attitude towards life and death.
Conclusion.
Modern thanatology (the study of death) is one of the “hot” points of natural science and humanities. Interest in the problem of death is due to several reasons.
Firstly, this is a situation of a global civilized crisis, which, in principle, can lead to the self-destruction of humanity.
Secondly, the value attitude towards human life and death has changed significantly in connection with the general situation on Earth.
Almost one and a half billion people on the planet live in complete poverty and another billion is approaching the mark, one and a half billion earthlings are deprived of any medical care, a billion people cannot read and write. There are 700 million unemployed people in the world. Millions of people in all corners of the globe suffer from racism and aggressive nationalism.
This leads to a pronounced devaluation of human life, to contempt for the life of both one’s own and that of another person. The orgy of terrorism, the increase in the number of unmotivated murders and violence, as well as suicides are symptoms of the global pathology of humanity at the turn of the 20th - 21st centuries. At the same time, at the turn of the 60s, bioethics appeared in Western countries - a complex discipline located at the intersection of philosophy, ethics, biology, medicine and a number of other disciplines. It was a unique reaction to new problems of life and death.
This coincided with a growing interest in human rights, including in relation to one’s own physical and spiritual existence and the reaction of society to the threat to life on Earth, due to the aggravation of global problems of mankind.
If a person has something like a death instinct (as S. Freud wrote about), then everyone has a natural, innate right not only to live as he was born, but also to die in human conditions. One of the features of the 20th century. is that humanism and humane relations between people are the basis and guarantee of survival for humanity. If earlier any social and natural disasters left hope that the majority of people would survive and restore what was destroyed, now vitality can be considered a concept derived from humanism.
Used Books.
1. An atheist's handbook. Publishing house of political literature.
Moscow, 1975
2. Philosophy. Textbook for students. 1997
3. Cultural studies. Textbook and reader for students.
Essential aspects of religious anthropology are thanatology and eschatology. The main question of these teachings about death and events beyond its threshold is formulated with extreme clarity in the biblical Book of Job: “When a man dies, will he live again?” (14:14). Death and immortality are a religious, moral, philosophical problem , inextricably linked with an understanding of the essence of man and the meaning of his life. The promise of salvation, immortality, a blissful afterlife forms the basis of religious hope, which is not satisfied with the idea of death as the cessation of life activity, when the individual existence of a person as a person ends. Life after death is a religious idea and the theological teaching, according to which the deceased continues to exist either as a spiritual being in the higher world - the seat of the deity (in heaven) or in the lower world - the place of punishment, the abode of forces hostile to the deity (the underworld); or as an integral bodily-spiritual being, reincarnated in this the world (or others, higher and lower, or a being restored by the deity in the resurrection from the dead. Ideas about an afterlife have been a basic element of religion since prehistory and are reconstructed in Paleolithic drawings. In the vast majority of religions, there is a view that death does not mean the end of personal existence and that there is a necessary connection between this life and the other world. The death of a person is considered as the death of his body, from which the soul is separated, continuing to exist in the other world, waiting there for resurrection, a new union with its spiritualized body, incarnating into a new earthly or some other worldly (heavenly, hellish) body. In archaic tribal religions, the afterlife was seen as a continuation of the earthly life, and the soul was a human double. The evolution of religions is associated with the complication of these ideas and the introduction of spiritualistic and ethical components into them. Most religions have beliefs that the highest principle in man, often called the soul, continues to live after death and can influence the affairs of living people. Therefore, they try to establish a connection with the souls, spirits of their ancestors, and enlist their protection. In many religions, it is believed that a good afterlife should be ensured in earthly existence, and for this, various ways of salvation from an evil posthumous fate are proposed: various forms of purification, moral behavior, rituals aimed at overcoming death, sin, increasing afterlife status; the latter, in particular, is served by the funeral cult, rituals performed by relatives and clergy in order to facilitate posthumous existence. For a number of cultures, biological death is not the dividing line between the earthly and heavenly or other other worlds; such a transition is carried out only in sacred initiation, in a funeral or funeral cult. Ideas about the immortality of the soul, its reincarnation (reincarnation) or reunion with the resurrected body are associated with the idea of posthumous retribution, reward - life in paradise, the best incarnation, in reunion with the deity, or punishment - torment in hell, in the worst incarnation, removal from the deity, ultimate destruction. The belief in the immortality of the soul and the continued existence of the individual beyond the grave appears in many religions as the teaching that death is the gateway to immortality, new life; only it opens up the possibility of a higher existence, and sacrifice in this life (asceticism), moreover, sacrifice of life is the key to eternal blissful existence. In connection with this, ideas about sacrifice develop (for example, in Vedic mythology the first victim Purusha), self-sacrifice of the deity, sacrifice and asceticism and corresponding practices, including human sacrifice. In many ethnic religions and philosophical teachings, for example, developed on the basis of Brahmanism, the doctrine of death is included in the concepts of the reincarnation of souls - particles, the emanation of the Absolute Essence. The death of an individual living being is considered as the separation of body and soul, which immediately or after a certain transition period acquires a new body in this or another world. Death is also associated with the final liberation of the soul from inauthentic existence, its merging with the Absolute. Individual living beings are considered, for example, by Hare Krishnas as owners of bodies, changing them like clothes; the soul thrown into the world must successively undergo incarnation in 8,400,000 bodies - that is how many, they believe, there are types of creatures in the world. In Buddhism, the existence of an individual spiritual substance (anatman) is denied, but the recombination of dharmas according to the law of karma gives rise, after an intermediate state (Tibetan “bardo”), to more and more new existences of a “sentient being”: staying in illusory transitional states, heavenly and hellish, the worlds of buddhas and Bodhisattvas, finally, upon liberation from the circle of samsara, enter nirvana - union with the original Buddha.
Biblical texts contain the harsh truth about death as a consequence of finitude, the transitory nature of human existence, his createdness (see: Gen. 3:19), about the irrevocable end of individual existence - a fate that is the same for all living beings:
And man dies and disintegrates; left, and where is he?
The waters leave the lake, and the river dries up and dries up:
So a person will lie down and not get up; until the end of heaven he will not awaken and rise from his sleep (Job 14:10-12).
Death is understood as a natural phenomenon “in a good old age,” when a person is satisfied with life (see: Gen. 25:8), but also as an action of God, who gives and takes away the breath of life (see Ps. 89:4). Death was perceived as punishment for sin (see Ps. 89), it meant the end of hope, man was separated from God (see: Ps. 6:6; 87: 6; Is. 38:18-19). The Bible speaks of heaven as an expression of the closeness of God and his power, Enoch (see: Gen. 5:24) and Elijah (see: 2 Kings 2:11) God takes to heaven. The Bible also contains ideas about the underworld (Sheol) - a dark kingdom of shadows far from God - but they can be interpreted as the power of death and non-existence. In later Judaism, especially in the Hellenistic period, they are transformed into the concept of a place of afterlife torment. The religion of the ancient Jews, reflected in the biblical narratives, did not know the resurrection of the dead until the Hellenistic period. Some texts say that a person does not cease to exist after death, but being a shadow in Sheol does not deserve the name of life.
Christianity insists on resurrection - the restoration or reconstruction of a living integral person (identical and genuine both in his personality and in the essential characteristics of his entire nature) after his actual death, loss of personal unity of soul and body and partial or complete destruction (corruption) of the body. This idea is found in various religions, but is especially characteristic of Judaism; Christianity and Islam, in which it is formalized into an important doctrine. The oldest evidence of belief in the resurrection of the dead is found in the 3rd century. BC e. the so-called “Apocalypse of Isaiah” (see: Is. 24-27; 26:19). It is most clearly proven by the prophecy of Daniel dating back to the time of the Maccabees (167-141), which states that not only the righteous will be resurrected, but also sinners (see: Dan. 12:2). Subsequently, the resurrection was thought of as the union of immortal souls with the restored bodies. Dying was understood as the separation of the soul from the body, death - as the state of this separation and bodily death, the afterlife - not as the presence of a shadow in Sheol, but as the existence of a soul independent of the body, in heaven or hell. The torment of sinners and the bliss of the righteous in many religions are considered temporary, transitory, punishment after death - as purification, most often by fire (for example, in Mazdaism). In monotheistic religions - Judaism, Christianity, Islam - such torment and bliss are considered eternal. The expectation of the resurrection became a subject of dispute in later Judaism between the Pharisees and Sadducees (see: Mark 12:18; Acts 23:6). According to the Gospel of Mark, Jesus gives the following argument in favor of the resurrection to the Sadducees who tempted him:
And about the dead, that they will be resurrected, haven’t you read in the book of Matthew, how God at the bush said to him: “I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob?”
God is not the God of the dead, but the God of the living (12:26-27).
Resurrection, like immortality, is conceived from the dialogical relationship of man with God; man cannot perish, since God knows and loves him. The first to rise is Christ, “the firstfruits, the firstborn from the dead” (Col. 1:18), his resurrection is the beginning of the revival of the dead (see: 1 Cor. 15:22-23). Resurrection and resurrection are recognized as a miracle, a violation of the natural course of events, the ability to resurrect is an exclusive characteristic of God, a proof of His omnipotence. The resurrection of Lazarus, the daughter of Calamus, the son of the widow of Nain, testifies that Jesus Christ possesses Divine omnipotence, and His resurrection is evidence not only of the will of the Father, but also of the Divinity of Jesus Christ Himself, the guarantee of the universal resurrection from the dead (see: 1 Cor. 15:20-28), the basis of Christology and anthropology, the very essence of Christianity (see: 1 Cor. 15:13-14). Christianity makes the doctrine of death dependent on the doctrine of the Fall and salvation, considers death as a punishment for sin, which is its source (see: Rom. 5:12; 1 Cor. 15:56), bodily death - as the separation of the soul from body, which returns to the earth, and complete death - as the final removal of a person from God, the deprivation of his grace (see: Rom. 1:32; 8:13; Rev. 2:11; 20:6). Victory over death is achieved in the incarnation and voluntary death, the Golgotha sacrifice of Jesus Christ (see: 2 Tim. 1:10), after which death turns out to be the transition of some to the “resurrection of life”, others to the “resurrection of condemnation” (see. : John 5:29). Death as dying, an event cannot separate from God (see: John 11:25-26; Rom. 8:38-39). The resurrection and ascension of Jesus Christ into heaven is seen as a prerequisite for the rapture and transformation of the righteous to eternal life in the Kingdom of God (see: 1 Cor. 15). The teaching of Jesus' descent into hell emphasizes the reality of his death and victory over the power of hell (see: Eph. 4:8-10; Rev. 1:18). Christianity connects the afterlife with the resurrection from the dead and reward: for the righteous - eternal life with God in the Kingdom of God, paradise, and for sinners - removal from God, stay in hell (see: Matt. 10:28). Views about the existence of souls in bliss or torment until reunification with resurrected bodies are also preserved. These ideas about the intermediate state of the soul between death and resurrection developed in Catholicism into the dogmatic doctrine of purgatory, with which Orthodox and Protestants do not agree. The Christian teaching about resurrection does not understand it as a return to earthly relationships. After the resurrection, according to Jesus Christ, they will no longer marry, but “will be like angels in heaven” (see. : Mk. 12:25). According to the Apostle Paul, complete bliss is achieved only after the resurrection in a new body, which he calls “heavenly”, “spiritual”, which, unlike the carnal or “spiritual” body, is incorruptible and immortal (see: 1 Cor. 15:40, 42-49, 52-54).
Human life, the meaning of which is proclaimed to promote salvation, is considered in Christian anthropology as preparation for eternity, in which a saved person acquires an incorruptible spiritual body for eternal bliss in communion with God, and a lost sinner is condemned to eternal torment. Understood as a step into the eschatological future, death is a means of showing a person his place in existence, the meaning and price of any event, emphasizing that everything earthly stands in the eschatological perspective of God’s judgment. In the Christian understanding of man, his spiritual principle - spirit, soul - carries out sacred functions, communication with God, performs constant worship, sacrifice in the temple of the body. In the liturgical worldview, a person appears as an embodied cult, a temple. “...A rational animal, mortal... flesh, animated by a soul that has reason and intelligence,” - John of Damascus formulated the idea of human nature adopted by Christianity. In the context of the teaching that God “communicated the soul to man by his inspiration,” the image of man as a rational being becomes an indication of the existence of God, a guarantee of the religious need inherent in human nature. “Through you, man, distinguished by honor, like a rational animal, received as his inheritance the thought of the Divine,” exclaims Gregory the Theologian in his “Song to God.” Man, according to Christian anthropology, contains “a deposit of God-consciousness,” and his soul is considered as “Christian by nature.” “The knowledge of the existence of God,” wrote John of Damascus, “God himself planted in the nature of everyone.”
Christian anthropology is an essential aspect of religion, which proclaims the incarnation and incarnation of God, offering a pan-human union - a covenant in the God-man Jesus Christ, who atoned for human sin. The ideal of man appears in it as a universal man, oriented towards the universal brotherhood of peoples, conceived and created by a social, multi-personal being; all men are born in equal dignity, called to earnest labor, and have Equal rights to the blessings of life. The most important category of existence for man as a bearer of the image and likeness of the Triune God is the love of all for all, and the Christian ideal of moral improvement corresponds to the innate desire of the human spirit to fulfill its life purpose. Christian theological anthropology, being a theoretical level of religious consciousness, thus poses and tries to resolve the real and important problem of the disharmony of the essence and existence of man. A comparison of religious ideas about the origin and purpose of man reveals how wide the range of views on his earthly and heavenly existence, internal and external possibilities, freedom and duty is. This diversity of views corresponds to the versatility of human existence. But understanding the contradiction of the existence and essence of man, reflecting him as a historical, social being, creation and creator of culture constitutes the main anthropological content of religions.
http://mixport.ru/referat/referat/77040/
Philosophical and theological anthropology
Questions life and death at all times were some of the most mysterious, disturbing and mystical. Since ancient times, people have tried to understand the answers to them with the help of various teachings and religions. And this is not surprising, since knowledge of who we are in our essence and what will happen to us after earthly life is closely related to such important concepts for humans as the meaning of life, finitude or the eternity of existence.
In this article I would like to consider such issues as the nature of the human soul, the meaning of earthly life, the process of dying and transition to another world, as well as our posthumous existence from three points of view:
Representations of world religions: Hinduism, Buddhism, Christianity and Islam;
- research of the 20th century: the experience of people who experienced clinical death, as well as memories of people who underwent sessions of regressive hypnosis;
- channeled information received from the subtle world.
In the first part we will briefly look at representations of world religions on these issues.
All world religions arose one and a half thousand or more years ago. Their main tenets, presented in the sacred books and scriptures, were intended primarily for the consciousness and worldview of ancient people, for whom there were often no moral and ethical ideas. Therefore, the emergence of certain rules, traditions, and laws in those days was a big leap in the development of the people. Religious teachings also contained norms that allowed the people to survive and prosper, for example, such as prohibitions on contraception, extramarital and same-sex relationships, and, on the contrary, welcoming large families and polygamy. So that the ideology of religion itself could survive and successfully spread among other peoples, elements of the “stick” (karma, devil, hell) and “carrot” (heaven, mercy and protection of God) were often added to the teachings, and the absolute unshakable truth of religion was proclaimed, implying intolerance towards other beliefs.
Hinduism
Who we are at our core : Hinduism is a family of very diverse philosophical systems and beliefs, but the vast majority of Hindus believe that the spirit or soul, called "atman", is the eternal, original, true essence of each individual.
The meaning of earthly life : Hinduism is inextricably linked with the belief in reincarnation (samsara) - the cycle of life and death, the reincarnation of the soul after death into the bodies of animals, people, gods, and with the belief in karma - “the law of action and retribution.” The goal of atman is to achieve moksha (nirvana), i.e. free yourself from the cycle of birth and death, and come to eternal happiness and peace.
According to the monistic/pantheistic theological schools of Hinduism, atman is initially indistinguishable from the supreme spirit of Brahman (“One and Indivisible”) and the goal of human life is to realize one’s true Self and oneness with all that exists and with God. However, most Hindus belonging to the so-called dualistic schools believe that the atman is in constant dependence on God, and the achievement of nirvana is possible only through the renunciation of material desires, through love of God and by the grace of God.
The dying process : In Hinduism, death is seen as a temporary cessation of physical activity. At the moment of death, the subtle body transfers the soul to another gross body. This process is similar to how air carries smell. It is often impossible to see where the scent of a rose comes from, but it is obvious that it was carried by the wind. Likewise, the process of transmigration of souls is difficult to follow. According to the level of consciousness at the time of death, the soul enters the womb of a certain mother through the seed of the father, and then develops the body that was given to it by the mother. It could be the body of a person, a cat, a dog, etc. This is the process of reincarnation in the Hindu mind.
Existence after death : After many rebirths, the soul eventually becomes disillusioned with the limited and fleeting pleasures given to it by this world, and begins to search for higher forms of pleasure, which can only be achieved through spiritual experience. After prolonged spiritual practice (sadhana), the individual eventually realizes his eternal spiritual nature - that is, he realizes the fact that his true Self is the eternal soul, and not the mortal material body. At this stage, he no longer desires material pleasures, since - in comparison with spiritual bliss - they seem insignificant. When all material desires cease, the soul is no longer born and is liberated from the cycle of samsara.
The teaching of Advaita Vedanta states that after achieving moksha (nirvana), the atman ceases to exist as a person and merges with the impersonal Brahman. Followers of the dualistic dvaita schools identify themselves as particles of Brahman, eternally possessing individuality. After achieving moksha, they expect to go to one of the lokas (planets) of the spiritual world, and remain there forever, enjoying an eternal relationship with God in one of His forms.
Buddhism
There are two main branches of Buddhism - Mahayana (northern Buddhism), which borrows the ideas of reincarnation and the eternal atman from Hinduism, and Theravada (southern, early Buddhism).
Who we are at our core : Unlike monotheistic religions (Judaism, Christianity, Islam), in Theravada Buddhism there is neither an omnipotent creator God nor a personal God, nor an eternal soul. The concept of the soul in Buddhism is replaced by the doctrine of a continuous stream of consciousness (santana) or a holistic stream of successive states, behind which there is no absolute support.
The meaning of earthly life : According to the teachings of the Buddha, life is suffering, the cause of which is the desires and passions of people. To get rid of suffering, you need to renounce earthly passions and desires. This can be achieved by following the path of salvation indicated by the Buddha - the teaching of the Four Noble Truths. The essence of this teaching is this: The world is suffering. Illness, old age and death are the lot of all beings. The cause of suffering is the constant desire to satisfy all emerging needs, leading to disappointment, the emergence of karma and the cycle of samsara (rebirth). Calmness and renunciation of desires is liberation and the path to nirvana.
The dying process : According to Theravada, the Self is the transitory combination of the five elements (five skandhas): matter, bodily sensations, perceptions, urges and consciousness. At the time of death, these five elements disintegrate. At the same time, it is recognized that the “dissolution” of individuality at the moment of death is not the absolute end of life, but rather the beginning of a new phase of existence. It is believed that a certain subtle karmic quality, having absorbed the “five elements”, passes into a new body, bringing with it a new combination that helps to enter a “new life” with new life experiences. Some scriptures indicate that the "karma of the five elements" in the form of the "embryo consciousness" passes into the womb.
Existence after death : According to the teachings of early Buddhism, a living being can be born at one of five levels of existence: among the inhabitants of hell, animals, spirits, human beings and celestial beings. Like Hinduism, this choice is determined by desire and karma, and the process of reincarnation continues until the living being either "disintegrates" at death or achieves shunyata, the "great emptiness" - a perfection that only a few achieve.
Christianity
Who we are at our core : In the view of Christians, a person is the unity of a body born of parents and a soul created by God “... in his own image and likeness.” The birth of the soul is directly related to the moment of the birth of the body. The soul “is a substance (essence) end-to-end and incorporeal” (Nemesius). “Our soul is a simple being, endowed with reason and immortal, but which, however, does not exist before the body” (Theodoret of Cyrus). Already at the moment of conception, the original sin of his ancestors, Adam and Eve, is transferred to a person.
The meaning of earthly life : All souls have free will. The Christian teaching about the ideal purpose of man lies in all-round spiritual improvement (“...be perfect, as your Heavenly Father is perfect”), renunciation of sinful deeds and thoughts, faith in God, as well as the fulfillment of the sacraments of baptism, Eucharist, confirmation, repentance etc. The meaning of human life lies in deliverance from original sin through baptism, as well as in a righteous life pleasing to God, and the salvation of one’s soul from hell and demons after the transition to another world.
The dying process : According to Christian beliefs, after the death of a person’s body, his soul continues to live. Upon leaving the body, the soul finds itself among other spirits, good and evil. Usually she reaches out to those who are closer to her spirit. During the first two days, she enjoys relative freedom and can visit places on earth that are dear to her.
Existence after death : On the third day, the soul goes through “ordeals” - legions of evil spirits block its path and accuse it of various sins, into which they themselves involved it. According to various Orthodox revelations, there are twenty such obstacles, the so-called “ordeals,” at each of which one or another sin is tortured; Having gone through one ordeal, the soul comes to the next. And only after successfully passing all of them can the soul continue its path without being immediately plunged into hell. Then, having successfully gone through the ordeal and worshiped God, the soul visits the heavenly abodes and hellish abysses for another thirty-seven days, not yet knowing where it will remain, and only on the fortieth day is it assigned a place until the resurrection of the dead. Catholicism also has the concept of “purgatory” - this is a place and state of temporary punishment for sins, after which the souls of people enter heaven. After the coming Last Judgment, souls will forever go to heaven for eternal bliss or to hell for eternal torment.
Islam
Who we are at our core : Islamic tradition represents the human being as a soul (nafs - soul, personality, blood, living body). The concepts of "body", "soul" and "mind" are blurred, but the idea of the immortality of the spirit is at the core of the Qur'an. All souls are immortal and created by Allah, the creator of all things.
The meaning of earthly life : Strict adherence to faith in Allah, Angels, Holy Scriptures, Prophets. Every Muslim is obliged to constantly purify and improve spiritually, morally and physically, striving to become an impeccable person. Allah completely determines the fate of his creations.
The dying process : It is believed that after a funeral, two angels, Munkar and Nakir, with black faces, terrifying voices, piercing blue eyes and hair flowing to the ground, come to the ungodly person in the grave. They interrogate the deceased about the good or evil deeds he committed during his lifetime. This interrogation is called "judgment in the grave"; All devout Muslims expect such a trial.
