William Wildblood has published an excellent post about a subject that almost nobody (in Western civilization) thinks about, except when compelled: death, and how we ought (yes ought) to prepare for it throughout our mortal lives.
And by death, I don't mean dying.
Dying - and especially the fear of suffering when dying - is a subject that almost obsesses our society, albeit usually in a covert sort of way. Not that dying is unimportant, of course it is (potentially) important; but that the fear of dying seems to block consideration of the overwhelming importance of what happens afterwards, and forever.
The embarrassed evasiveness that greets any attempt to discuss death, would strike our ancestors (or probably most non-Western people) as utterly bizarre. Yet I was exactly like that myself, for most of my life.
Western mainstream public discourse is (by no accident, I presume) restricted to a forced-choice between either an exaggeratedly childish and sentimental fairy-tale depiction of life after death; or else Nothing At All.
Modern people have, apparently, really convinced themselves that the evidence is overwhelming and incontrovertible that death is utter annihilation - and that to think hard about, or to discuss, what happens afterwards - is either a morbid psychopathology, shallowly-idiotic self-deception, or some kind of selfish and dishonest mental manipulation.
Yet, at the same time - and in mainstream public discourse (prestige mass media, corporate communications, officialdom etc) we see the strong encouragement of exactly morbid psychopathology, self-deception and blatant emotional manipulation when it comes to encouraging and exploiting people's fear of dying...
Fear of what suffering might happen, what it (supposedly) might be like, and how suffering may (supposedly) be avoided. These are recurrent themes in the mass media.
Returning to William Wildblood's post:
The everyday has its place... it is wrong to dismiss it as nothing. But that place stands in relation to the spiritual which is primary. And therefore since the spiritual will only fully come into view after death, you must start taking death seriously.
Not in a way that makes earthly life futile for earthly life must be lived and lived properly. At the same time, death is the goal of life, the goal not just the end of it, and you must see it as in a sense the crowning achievement of your life.
That the great majority of people in the contemporary West do not see it like that may be one reason for the widespread dementia that afflicts much of the elderly population.
The obvious reason for that is that people are just living longer, kept going by modern medicine. However, there could be an underlying spiritual purpose behind this too or accompanying it...
It could be that dementia strips away the resistance to the spiritual and leaves its victims on some level more open to the next world. An atheist has by definition erected barriers in his mind. Old age in general and dementia in particular might help to dismantle these barriers...
These are fascinating ideas - and similar thoughts have also occurred to me.
I agree with William that "advances in medicine" and better living conditions (warmer houses, more food) are relevant - but they don't altogether explain the tremendous extension of life among the very severely incapacitated elderly.
As a strong generalization: Dying is easy - it is staying alive that is difficult.
However, many people nowadays live many years longer than they say they want to live, and in a extremely debilitated state.
Yet traditionally, until recent decades; doctors and nurses with extensive experience of elderly people usually said that when someone loses the will to live (for example after the death of a spouse), and are ready to die: then they will soon die - and it used to happen despite even strenuous medical interventions.
This no longer seems to happen.
Of course, it is a matter of specific individual persons; but what often happens is, I think, consistent with what William suggests.
In other words, among those (apparently a majority) who have lived by dogmatic materialism and in utter exclusion of the spirit; and who approach the end of life with the expectation, and even desire for, eternal spirit-annihilation.
Through the effects of ageing and disease; such people may experience a return towards the simple and instinctive world-view akin to that of early childhood; a time of life when the spirit was a matter of spontaneous everyday experience - but in old age an analogous way of thinking is perhaps manifested as impaired cognition, delirium, and psychosis.
If this is going-on (and surely it will not always be the case in everyone of extreme old age or dementia), such persons are perhaps being given an extra chance - by God - to reconsider their choice of death.
Maybe they are offered a further opportunity to re-evaluate their long-standing choice of rejecting even the possibility of God, angels, spirits, life-after-death... and resurrection?
We are always free, and the decision of salvation cannot be compelled: second, third and further chances to recognize spiritual realities may well be rejected.
But when the inner barriers of willed-materialism have been dissolved by illness - then, what were regarded as idiocies and absurdities may become recognized as real possibilities that could be chosen... if that is indeed what we most want for our-selves.
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