Our Life on Planet Earth: Part 1 – The fear of death and getting old.

The complex of problems dealing with fear is an all-pervasive problem of the world we live in. It is very fascinating to know that the old indian philosophies e.g the vedas call this material world the „world of fear“ in opposition to the divine world Vaikhunta, the „world without fear“. The phenomenon of fear, „to be afraid of something“ is considered to be the distinctive criterion between the divine and the martial world in the indian philosophy.

It’s not about to duck out of fear, its about to overcome it. Maybe first of all in a prestage – to see through it. If we take a look at what people are afraid of in general, we’ll discover something very interesting. There are studies about fear and scientists have investigated this issue. The conclusion is: All individual fears, all different fears (regardless of what someone is afraid of) disembogue in the fear of death. That’s the primeval fear, the source of fear of all other fears. Formulated the other way round: If you try and achieve to eliminate the fear of death, you don’t have to be afraid of anything else anymore.

But where does this fear of death come from?

At the very least because of uncertainty. And uncertainty in turn comes from lack of knowledge. And the lack of knowledge in our culture roots in a very simple problem: People don’t have the courage to ask those question about death and mortality.

What is the deal with death? What happens afterwards?

Only the precursor of death, to be getting old and the slow but steady resolving of the body are quite honestly tabooed. It does not fit into our society which is orientated towards power, fitness and youth. That simply doesn’t fit in the picture. As a consequence there is fear instead. 

This topic is handled differently in other cultures, the questions about death are not tabooed. If you ask questions about death and it’s opposite, the birth, you’ll get answers. It is simply part of it. In other cultural areas, religion and culture are designed to give answers to those questions.

In our cultural area you’re most likely fobbed off with this answer: ‘Noone knows it! No one knows about death, no one ever returned form the dead!‘

No one can tell you what it is and what happens after death. If you continue to drill ahead and ask those questions you won’t hear much. All you’ll hear is a story about an eternal heaven and an eternal hell. But no one can tell you exactly what it is and how it works.

You’ll find answers in the indian philosophies for example because death is a central topic there.

There’s also a very interesting quote by Sokrates (famous greek philosopher, 469 – 399 before christ): „The whole life is about to learn to die“.

What does it mean? Well, if you want to live properly, you have to understand what ‚death’ and ‚dying’ is all about. Otherwise you miss life. You miss to live and ‘find‘ your life.

If you deal with this topic – death – you’ll be able to slowly resolve the fear. I can’t say I’m completley free from fear. It would be an exaggeration to say I’m free from the fear of death. I’ll have to pass this exam when it’s my turn. Then it will be shown how much of it is true – what I believe and what I have said.

With every answer you get to your questions, with every insight you gain, with every question freed from taboos, the fear loses itself piece by piece. The more you face this topic, the more you’re freed from this fear.

Break those taboos,  have the courage to ask those questions, have the courage to research and question it.

Form what I can tell: It works very well and you’ll be surprised about how many answers there actually are.

I’ve been dealing with this topic since the last 25 years. It was a shock experience when I was young and my grandfather died. I was 13. I can still remember it, it was a sunday morning, around 8:30 am and the phone rang and I was still in bed…. It was a changing point in my life. You can’t handle your emotions when you’re young. It was the first time I faced the ‘problem‘ of mortality. If you don’t experience it, you’ll never care. But that’s not the world we live in. We all have to deal with it at some point. Whether we like it or not.

I started reading books which didn’t really give me satisfying answers. They dealt with near-death experiences, so not really what I was looking for. As a young person you don’t ask much, you’re embarrassed, afraid…whom should you ask anyway? I even went to a psychologist when I was about 15 years old but cancelled it very early, that was definitely not the way to ‘solve this problem‘ and answer my questions. 

Religion in our cultural area, specifically the catholic belief, didn’t have answers for me as well. You start to give up and I had nowhere else to go and no one else to ask. Until I started reading about occidental philosophy, specifically the vedas, the old indian wisdoms. Like I said in my introduction post: "You don't seek. You find." If you're interested in something, answers will pop up automatically, they come to you, in different ways. I’ve been studying different religions and reading books, about the world we see and about the world we don’t see. 

I have met many different people, visionaries, seers, witches, fortune-tellers, clairvoyants, swamis, priests, monks, everything you can think of. And just as if you compare all religions you’ll always find those similarities, something they all have in common.

I’m very much into philosophy, not only the vedas. They have been a great point to start from though. I’d say I have a good foundation to talk about ‘life’‘. And I don’t just mean the things we use to see, I also mean everything we don’t or can’t see.

That was Part 1.

Thank you for taking the time to read it.

I decided to make different posts, just because its way too much for 1 post. Maybe  1 more, 2 more... not sure yet. There are different topics  I’d like to talk about in detail and not just mention them casually.

Maybe you’ll pop in for the next part.

See you!