Camille Flammarion, 1888
Life Beyond Death
The purpose of death
The nature of life beyond death
How we can prepare for death
How we can assist the dying
To die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier.
Walt Whitman - Song of Myself
We live our lives in denial, as if death will never come. But sooner or later, death comes to every body. And with it come a number of urgent questions. What is death? Is there life after death...or an afterlife? What's the point of life and death, and how can we make sense of it all?
Most of us only begin to ask these questions at the end of life, when the certainty of death can no longer be ignored. Then we're caught by surprise and ill-equipped to deal with the situation at hand. A perfectly natural and even beautiful stage of life becomes overcast with fear and confusion.
Why wait 'til the end? Why not ask these questions now, while there's time to make a serious inquiry? We might discover something completely unexpected. What if our fear of death is unfounded? What if, as Walt Whitman says, "to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier"?
