Posted: November 18th, 2022

A dying person and post death state

Week 3 Essay
Background: Occasionally a dying person seems to pay a preliminary visit to their post death state. In Final Gifts, Chapter 8, Callanan writes about these experiences. What can we know about the after death experience has fascinated mankind and been the topic of sacred texts throughout history. You can explore this topic as discussed in the course texts and web research also, for instance, Dr. Elizabeth Kubler-Ross’s work on Out of Body Experiences; The Tibetan Book of the Dead; the Egyptian Book of the Dead, or Bertrand Russell essay on “Do We Survive Death?” or he Navajo understanding of death and many more books and essays on the subject.
Your assignment: Using the course texts and internet research which may include references given just above, respond to this question in an essay of about three-six pages:
• Compare the belief systems concerning death for at least three of the religious traditions we have studied so far or others of your choosing. Conclude by stating which of these resonates most strongly with you, and explain why. Your essay should have a minimum of THREE references.

From the Expert: The Death System

In this course, you are working closely with the text Death, Society, and Human Experience by Robert K. Kastenbaum. The text explores the nature of dying and death in our society from a multiplicity of perspectives. Kastenbaum defines the death system: “We face death alone in one sense, but in another and equally valid senses, we face death as part of a society whose expectations, rules, motives and symbols influence our individual encounters. …Most of us phase in and out of the death systems as circumstances dictate” (p. 75). You will be working closely with the text Death, Society, and Human Experience by Robert K. Kastenbaum in this course. The text examines the nature of dying and death in our society from a variety of angles. “We face death alone in one sense, but in another and equally valid sense, we face death as part of a society whose expectations, rules, motives, and symbols influence our individual encounters,” Kastenbaum writes. Most of us enter and exit the death systems as our circumstances dictate” (p. 75).
Death weaves in and out of our lives from disasters like Hurricane Katrina to the controversy about the war in Iraq to the death of someone we love to the warnings on our medicine vials and late night television ads about life insurance. The fact of death is so integrated into our lives that we rarely are aware of how pervasive the concerns related to it are.
The Functions of the Death System
The death system in a society serves many functions for its citizens. It includes warnings and predictions such as our weather service does during the hurricane season. It makes billions of dollars available for research on new sources of medicine like Gila monster venom treatment for diabetes. It involves the creation of pet cemeteries as increasingly isolated members of society consider their pets as their family. It encourages development of grief counseling as a therapeutic offshoot because society now acknowledges the fact of death and the ongoing impact of unexpressed grief.
Most recently, it has brought us the gift of hospice and palliative care, both of which concern the emancipation of powerlessness in the face of death. We have little or no control over whether and when we die, but we do have power to make decisions in relationship to our death. This can be a powerful and persuasive aspect to the spiritual journey toward our end of time on earth. It represents a paradoxical but hopeful sign that perhaps we can face the end of death as well as the beginning of life.
The Development of the Science of Thanatology (Study of Death)
Until after World War II, death was not a general subject of conversation, nor the specific objective of scientific, sociological, psychological and ethical explorations to the extent it has currently become. The wholesale torture and killing of noncombatants shocked the world. People began to talk about death in daily conversations.
Advances in medical technology brought ethical issues about which lives to save and how far to go in accomplishing this to the forefront, whereas previously it was a closely held family and physician decision. The aging of a large sector of society continues to put pressure on our ideas of how to relate with death and dying. Significant continuing social changes give death and its attendant issues a prime seat in our concerns.
From the Expert: The Dying as Social “Nonpersons”

Traditionally, people died in their own homes. Now people generally go to nursing homes and the hospital to die. Many factors contribute to this shift: medical technological advances; the idea that death is so unacceptable that extreme measures have to be applied to keep someone alive; the fact that now often both people in a marriage work and so the woman of the family is no longer available for nursing the elders; and so forth.
Research has discovered that unless a hospitalized dying person has very strong family ties, they are often left alone 18 and more hours a day. The generally held perception is that they no longer have “social value.” Doctors and nurses reduce their concerns and subsequently the care given diminishes. The warehousing of the dying has become so extreme that it has given birth to a social movement to institute proper care for the dying. There is a growing emphasis on hospice and palliative care and on legal documents such as The Five Wishes.
Communication
Although pervasive social behavior implies that the comatose, Alzheimer patients and the dying are beyond the need for communication, this turns out not to be true. Communication, speech or physical touch, whether or not the person can participate, has a significant impact on the dying person’s comfort and ability to die well.
Allowing the dying to talk about what is happening to them and to review their life is a final gift of love, even from a stranger. In this way they die as a person rather than with a sense of being discarded as “something” with no social value.
Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
And you, my father, there on that sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
— Dylan Thomas

From the Expert: Hospice and Palliative Care
The Hospice Concept
Hospice is a concept of caring derived from medieval times, symbolizing a place where travelers, pilgrims and the sick, wounded or dying could find rest and comfort. The contemporary hospice offers a comprehensive program of care to patients and families facing a life threatening illness. Hospice is primarily a concept of care, not a specific place of care.
Hospice emphasizes palliative rather than curative treatment; quality rather than quantity of life. The dying are comforted. Professional medical care is given, and sophisticated symptom relief provided. The patient and family are both included in the care plan and emotional, spiritual and practical support is given based on the patient’s wishes and family’s needs. Trained volunteers can offer respite care for family members as well as meaningful support to the patient.
Hospice affirms life and regards dying as a normal process. Hospice neither hastens nor postpones death. Hospice provides personalized services and a caring community so that patients and families can attain the necessary preparation for a death that is satisfactory to them.
Those involved in the process of dying have a variety of physical, spiritual, emotional and social needs. The nature of dying is so unique that the goal of the hospice team is to be sensitive and responsive to the special requirements of each individual and family.
Hospice care is provided to patients who have a limited life expectancy. Although most hospice patients are cancer patients, hospices accept anyone regardless of age or type of illness. These patients have also made a decision to spend their last months at home or in a homelike setting. (www.hospicenet.org/html/concept.html)
The Parameters of Pain Management
Pain management is a prime aspect of care for the terminally ill and has, in recent years, become a medical specialty. In some cases the physician involved in a case may seem unable or unwilling to provide adequate control pain. This is when a pain management specialist may be called in.
Aggressive pain management can make the difference between a peaceful death and one in which suffering is so extreme and prolonged that Helped suicide becomes a consideration, although illegal (currently, except in Oregon). The right-to-die movement maintains that high quality pain management would lower the number of people who explore voluntarily ending their life before they would die.
Palliative care or “comfort care” focuses on providing relief to a terminally ill person. “The goal is not to cure, but to provide comfort and maintain the highest possible quality of life for as long as life remains. Well-rounded palliative care programs also address mental health and spiritual needs. The focus is not on death, but on compassionate specialized care for the living.” It offers support for the whole person and those friends and family who are attending them and sharing their last days. Palliative care may occur in hospice or hospital facilities or in the home.
(www.hospicenet.org/html/concept.html)

From the Expert: Overview of Suicide and Identifying Problem Areas

Most of us, even with our inevitable dramas of hope and fear, want to live forever. Why, then, are 30,000 Americans motivated to commit suicide every year? Every 18 minutes, another person commits suicide and every day, 80 Americans take their own lives and over 1,900 Americans visit emergency departments because of unsuccessful attempts. The increasing suicide rates, particularly among teens and young adults and the elderly, have brought suicide to eleventh place in the list of leading causes of death for Americans.
Suicide Prevention
Suicide prevention has become a national issue, motivated by the increasing statistics. The National Strategy for Suicide Prevention (NSSP) represents the combined work of advocates, clinicians, researchers and survivors around the nation. It lays out a framework for action to prevent suicide and guides development of an array of services and programs that must be developed. It is designed to be a catalyst for social change with the power to transform attitudes, policies, and services. The NSSP Goals and Objectives for Action was published by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services in May of 2001, with leadership from the Surgeon General.
Specific programs are to be developed to address the projected causes in different age groups and genders. For instance:
Suicidal behaviors in young people are usually the result of a process that involves multiple social, economic, familial, and individual risk factors with mental health problems playing an important part in its development. Identified risk factors for suicide and attempted suicide for young people include the following: mood disorders, substance abuse disorders, certain personality disorders, low socioeconomic status, childhood maltreatment, parental separation or divorce, inappropriate access to firearms, and interpersonal conflicts or losses. For young people 15-24 years old, suicide is among the three leading causes of death.
The Meanings of Suicide
As with many extreme acts, the antisocial aspect of suicide can reveal a great deal about our worldview and values. Kastebaum, (p. 219) discusses the conclusions that Emile Durkheim, the father of sociology, came to regarding the individual meanings of suicide. These include a desire for reunion with loved ones; for rest and refuge; for revenge; as a penalty for personal failure or as a mistake. Durkheim also defines four categories of suicide: there is egotistic, altruistic, anomic (people cast adrift by the failure of social institutions like unemployment), and fatalistic (excessive control by society so that a person feels totally blocked and oppressed). Examples might include slavery as a fatalistic situation; kamikazi pilots in WWII as a heroic and devotional act rather than revenge.
Religious traditions hold varying views about suicide: In Judaism and Christianity, only God has the power to grant life and death, so suicide may be considered a sin. In Buddhism and Hinduism, generally, suicide will have negative karmic repercussions and does not lead to everlasting peace but to reincarnations with intensified suffering. However, centuries old traditions of the Samurai warrior in Japan allowed for an honorable suicide called seppuku. In Islam, martyrdom in the cause of protecting Islam is celebrated, and the martyr is believed to be rewarded in heaven immediately.
There is a story about the Rumanian army in WWI which was surrounded by the enemy and sure to be annihilated. The soldiers, rather than accept defeat, dressed in their best uniforms and carrying the national flag, charged towards certain death. What was the meaning of suicide in this case, a mistake, egotism, heroism or…?
Famous Suicides
A number of famous individuals are known to have committed suicide throughout history: Marc Antony and Cleopatra, Vincent van Gogh, Adolf Hitler, Marilyn Monroe, Sid Vicious, and the poet Sylvia Plath, among many others.
In 1963, with a growing reputation as a writer, Plath killed herself at the age of 30. After sealing off the kitchen so that her two young children would not be injured, she put her head in the oven and died of gas inhalation. (http://www.poemhunter.com/sylvia-plath/)
She wrote:
I am inhabited by a cry. Nightly it flaps out looking, with its hooks, for something to love. I am terrified by this dark thing that sleeps in me; All day I feel its soft, feathery turnings, its malignity.
Dying is an art, like everything else. I do it exceptionally well. I do it so it feels like hell. I do it so it feels real. I guess you could say I’ve a call.
Perhaps when we find ourselves wanting everything it is because we are dangerously near wanting nothing.
You don’t believe in God, or life-after-death, so you can’t hope for sugar plums when your non–existent soul rises.
I talk to God but the sky is empty.
(http://womenshistory.about.com/od/quotes/a/sylvia_plath.htm)
From the Expert: Violent Deaths
Murder
Murder is the purposeful taking of another person’s life, illegal in most situations. In the United States murder is considered the benchmark crime for trends because its statistics are the most reliable. In 2006, after significantly increasing year by year, the incidence of murders decreased to a 1960’s level. There are several predominating motives for murder: auxiliary to the commission of another crime; family conflict; mental illness; revenge, and so forth.
When we turn to the situation of murder internationally, Kastenbaum (p. 250) writes “Never before in history has there been such a degree of infliction of deprivation, cruelty and death upon millions of people. Never before have there be so many victims of human violence.” The estimated number of murders is 25 million deaths not including direct war casualties.
Terrorism and Genocide

In the United States our way of life changed forever with the Islamic attack on the World Trade Center. We had experienced the Oklahoma City bombing, which was shocking, but it was perpetrated by our own local terrorists. 9/11 was an invasion from the outside and we have been looking over our shoulders ever since. Our shared national sense that we were buffered from the aggressive actions of the rest of the world was destroyed. The American spirit, as exemplified in the musical Oklahoma, which had been previously weakened by our experiences in the Viet Nam war, was no more.
Elsewhere in the world terrorism has been a way of life for decades with groups and their issues rising into prominence, like Black September, and then in a few years being replaced by another group, al Qaeda or Islamic Jihad, and other self-proclaimed terrorist with a different issue with the world outside their cosmos.
Attempts to wipe out entire ethnic groups, like that in Dafur, have erupted throughout the world. The number of victims has escalated with our great advances in technology and weaponry.
War
While scholars and politicians wrestle with the question whether there is such a thing as the “just war,” no one disputes the fact that wars cost money, enormous collateral damage, and hundreds to perhaps millions of lives. For example, in World War I, the Allies alone lost 5.1 million troops. (www.pbs.org/greatwar/resources/casdeath_pop.html)
War is deadly, and perhaps more tragically so due to the intense nature of war, its overwhelming consequences socially, politically, and internationally, and the fact that it is commonly young men and women who fight and die. In the same way terrorism and genocide have prevailed through history, despite their horror, war has also sadly marched into every century since the dawn of time.
Accidents and Disasters
Individual accidental deaths have always occurred. Our increasingly speedy and pressured lifestyle contributes to the statistics. Sometimes these deaths are just accidental. Bill H. lost a leg making skiing history by skiing down a couloir in the Teton Mountains that no one had dared before. Years later, an avid sailor, he decided to take a modest sailboat from Hawaii back to his home in California. He pressured his younger son to accompany him. The night before setting off, Dylan, the son, had vivid bad dreams and a strong feeling that he did not want to make the trip. He reneged. Bill H. was never seen again. All that was found was a life preserver with the name of his boat on it.
Manmade accidents on the scale of Chernobyl and Fukushima Daichi nuclear disasters attest to the dangers of advancing technology, where we use forces of nature barely understood and under control. Accidents of nature or natural disasters are themselves sometimes of such magnitude that the world reels in the aftermath. Recently events of that ilk include Hurricane Katrina and the Asian tsunami of 2004.
These devastating phenomena have occurred periodically throughout history: the ancient city of Tyre was destroyed by a massive tidal wave; Mt. Vesuvius’ eruption destroyed Pompeii. We may ask the question today, are our modern ways not only producing global warning, but opening the situation to an increase in these extreme events? The winter of 2015 in the northeastern part of the United States is another example perhaps of global change – or is it just nature doing what it does every so often?

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