You were undoubtedly interested, if not somewhat surprised, by the strange title of my report. Indeed, what, you tell me, does the Pink Floyd song have to do with philosophy? Will we really have to listen to yet another of their fancy fans? Or maybe we mean the “perestroika” film “On the Dark Side of the Moon” based on the script of the Weiner brothers? Nope. You are wrong. We will not talk about the Weiners, and not about rock. And the title of the report, although taken from Floyd, imho* most accurately reflects the essence of the topic, which has already been repeatedly discussed by everyone who is not too lazy, and, despite its popularity, has not lost its meaning and relevance. This theme is eternal afterlife secrets. The dark side of the Moon is a song, and just as dark and unknown is the other side of the coin of life - life after death. This is what we will talk about.
*IMHO - In My Humble Opinion - in my humble opinion
Yes, indeed, it would be the greatest mistake to think that a person’s life ends after his death. How is it? - you ask. Here, a man lies, does not breathe, his heart does not beat. Died. There was a man - and he is not. I don't remember whose phrase it was. And really, who can detect life or signs of life in a cold corpse? There is no life in it. Died. Spread over. He ordered me to live long. Duba gave. All these “professional” terms of master Bezenchuk’s funeral affairs accurately reflect the meaning of what is happening. Nothingness. The worst thing that scared me as a child. Having once visited the cemetery in Staromikhailovka, and having learned that people were dying, I began to be afraid. Afraid to die. I could not understand what would happen to me later, after death. Where will I be? Rot in the ground? How is this... How is this all... wrong... I won’t be there?! But... I don't want to die!! I want to live forever!
It's funny to remember now. I understand now. Or I pretend that I understand, but in reality I am trying to understand and comprehend life more correctly. And it's incredibly short. Before we even had time to be born, everything was “Izya”, as M. Zhvanetsky said. According to statistics, the average life age of people is 70 years. And not everyone lives to reach this age. And we don’t devote all our time to life itself - we spend 23 years sleeping, 10 years in reckless and serene childhood, 10 years in study. 70-(23+10+10)=27. We have 27 years to live. Few? I think so too. But we often spend those same 27 years of life in vain - as if death will never happen. But she inevitably comes and tramples everything that we worshiped in this world - beauty, genius, wealth, power... She equalizes everything. A person is born and dies empty-handed.
Every year, death takes more than 60 million human lives from the face of the Earth. One minute passed, and already about 100 people left this world. Every year about 1.5 million tons of human meat, bones, and blood are deposited into the Earth. And it all decomposes like waste that no one needs. So is this really all that remains of the “king of nature,” homo sapiens, a rational man, a thinking being? Over the course of a lifetime, a person gains enormous knowledge. And for what? To become fertilizer later? Food for worms? But this is illogical! - You tell me. It can't be like that! Man is the only one of all living beings on Earth who cognized and split the atom, receiving unlimited and terrible energy into his hands, without wings, flew into the sky, without fins and gills, moves faster than any fish in the water, and finally created supercomputers, which made it possible to connect together millions of people like ourselves in cyberspace….
So here it is. Let's interrupt this divlog, continuing the topic.
By the way, how did you like it? Yes, sure. It was invented. It was invented by the famous inventor and storyteller (and part-time doctor of philosophy) Roger Zelazny. So let's not take it as an immutable truth, rather as FYI* ;-)
Life and death. The greatest blessing and curse in the universe. It’s beautifully said, I’ll have to remember it and show off the quote when the opportunity arises. ;)
But you can object to me - well, about the blessing, this is understandable. We are born, we live – it’s good, it’s just wonderful. What about the curse? Death is understandable, but life is clearly too much. Is there really anyone who doesn't want to live forever? There are no such fools!
Here we can already argue. You live well, right? It's clear. You can live well with joy. Or in joy. What about living as a cripple? Lepers? And live not for a day, not two - but forever... Scary?
*FYI - For Your Information - For your information
The hand fell into the abyss
With a stupid sound “Pli!”
And the volley gave me a pass
To that side of the Earth..
V.Vysotsky
Almost every person begins to think one day. It's time. It's time to go there. But where? What's there on the dark side of the Moon? What awaits us? Greatest joy or greatest curse?
And what's in there? Well, there are two opinions on this question. One is mine and the other is wrong. Joke. As a matter of fact, there are plenty of opinions. Even more than necessary. Each person seeks or builds or chooses a theory about the next world that is as applicable to himself as possible.
Well, how did Archimedes get here? And in general, did we come to listen to a report on the afterlife or all sorts of stories? – I don’t know if anyone will tell me this during the report? He'll probably say it. But the meaning of this ambiguous poem is not at all that the Romans, the bastards, killed Archimedes. The problem is that his calculations were based on sand. On soil, especially unsteady.
In other words, they have the wrong foundation. And we are not talking about Archimedean drawings.
And about theories, about unsteady and stupid to the point of infinity. About principles.
Well, in order to stick to the topic of the report, we will consider three main groups of theories:
1) The theory of materialism. Same as atheism. According to her, there is no soul. Therefore, there is no afterlife. A person dies. That's all. And there is nothing more from him. They will remember it a little more, and then forget it. Well, not everyone, really. Some people are not forgotten. Here, for example, almost in the style of O. Higham:
The Shah rests in the Great Mausoleum.
Day and night, nukers print the step.
One step forward, and then they take two steps back,
This is how the Shah taught them, and Allah himself taught him!
;-)
Continuing to develop the materialist theory, I will tell you why it was so popular among gentlemen materialists. But because..
You were taught by your stupid and ignorant teachers that what lies ahead is nothing, emptiness, rot, that you can’t expect either gratitude or retribution for what you have done. And you accepted these pathetic ideas because they seemed so simple, so obvious to you, and mainly because you were very young, had excellent physical health and death was a distant abstraction for you. Having done evil, you always hoped to escape punishment, because only people like you could punish you. And if you happened to do good, then you demanded immediate rewards from people like you.
Accordingly, that’s how it’s supposed to be. Since there is neither reward for good deeds nor retribution for bad, then anything is possible. And really, who will punish you, who will bring you to your senses? After all, people like you can punish you. But why should they punish you? They are exactly like that. So are you. A raven will not peck out a crow's eye. Therefore, you can easily kill a person, because “The dead don’t bite” (c) Billy Bones. You can kick a cripple, offend a weak person - he will never give you back. Everything is allowed. We can already reach such a limit that we, having trampled such a truly wonderful gift of God as motherhood, surprised everyone and everything with horror, poisoning this wonderful gift with the poison of cynicism, anger and indifference.
The contradiction that literally shocks us is that people, on the one hand, actively advocate for human rights, and on the other hand, advocate abortion, thus trampling life, the most basic right - the right to life of an innocent and defenseless creature. Horror, and that's all. We are trying to abolish the death penalty because we feel sorry for the criminal. And at the same time, we legitimize the murder of an innocent creature; we are absolutely not concerned about the murder of a child who has not yet been born! We feel disgust for the killer, and we bring flowers to another who destroys her child in the beautiful atmosphere of the operating room.
OK. Let's wrap things up with materialism - there's a lot of crap out there, you can't describe it all.
2) The theory of the “circle of life” Mainly Hare Krishnas, Buddhists and others
many sects around them. According to this theory, there is a cycle in the world. Those. the soul of a person after death is infused according to his merits. A person lived dissolutely, being a slave (for example) means he will be born in a higher incarnation, a master, a brahmana, etc. Well, okay. Let us briefly trace the logical chain for this type.
Well, naturally, I don’t keep Hare Krishna literature at home. Although I read it. You need to know the enemy by sight. And, in order not to strain my memory at 2 am;-) I will turn to a fairly competent source:
“I’ve already heard about the transmigration of souls,” responded Švejk. “Once, several years ago, I decided, in order to keep up with others, to engage in, pardon the expression, self-education and went to the reading room of the Prague Industrial Society. But, since I looked unpresentable and my butt was visible, I was unable to educate myself; they did not let me into the reading room and took me out, suspecting that I had come to steal fur coats. Then I put on my festive suit and went to
Museum library. There, my friend and I received a book about the transmigration of souls. In this book I read that one Indian emperor after his death turned into a pig, and when this pig
They stabbed him, he turned into a monkey, from a monkey into a badger, from a badger into a minister. During my military service I became convinced that there was some truth in this. After all, everyone who has at least one star on their epaulettes calls the soldiers either a guinea pig or some other animal name. Therefore, we can assume that a thousand years ago these simple soldiers were famous commanders. And in wartime, such a transmigration of souls is the stupidest thing. The devil knows what metamorphoses will not happen to a person until he becomes, say, a telephone operator, a cook or an infantryman! And suddenly he is killed by a grenade, and his soul inhabits some artillery horse. But here in
The battery, when it reaches a height, is again hit by a shell and blown to pieces by the horse into which the soul of the deceased has been embodied. Now this soul instantly moves into the baggage cow, from which
they prepare goulash for the entire military unit, and from a cow - well, let's say, into a telephone operator, and from a telephone operator.
3) Christian, Orthodox point of view. “God created two worlds: one present, the other - the future, one sensual, the other - spiritual, one in experience, the other in hopes, one is a field for us, the other is a place of reward, one to be in struggle, labor and feat, the other - crowns, rewards, rewards, one made a sea, the other a pier” St. John Chrysostom
The time will come when there will be a Last Judgment. All people from the first to the last person will come to life, and this entire sacred grave will rise and there will be eternal spring, new life.
How will the resurrection of the dead take place? This is a mystery that cannot be fully revealed to us; only a little is known from the prophetic books. But an analogy can be given. Imagine that a battalion spent the night on a hike in a forest clearing. Snow fell at night, and in the moonlight this clearing seemed like a cemetery, and every sleeping soldier looked like a grave mound. But early in the morning they gave the wake-up signal, and every soldier—a grave mound—moved, woke up and stood up. This can only very approximately depict the general resurrection of the dead on the Day of Judgment. So the time will come, and all of humanity will come to life, people will be resurrected in an instant, people of all times and generations, good and evil will be resurrected, and those who remain will change. If a person on earth lived with God, believed in Him, prayed, then the grace of the Holy Spirit remained in him, and on the day of the Resurrection he will come to life to live in God. “On the Resurrection, the bodies of Christians will be glorified and enlightened about the measure of piety of the soul.” - says the Monk Macarius the Great. And that person who was spiritually dead and unable to love God and his neighbors, does good, and prays and died without repentance - he will not be resurrected for eternal life, but will come to life for eternal torment, for the fire of Gehenna. A summons to the Last Judgment is given to a person as soon as he is born, and his entire earthly life is just preparation for the answer that each of us will have to give on the day of the Last Judgment.
By the way, an interesting fact. When Newton was asked how God could resurrect human bodies that had long since decayed, crumbled into dust, and mixed with the earth. Newton did the following experiment: he poured a handful of metal dust mixed with soil into a test tube. Then he mixed it. And then he took a magnet, separated the earth from the metal and said: “If it is easy for us, people, to do such an experiment, then God, who brought the whole world from non-existence into existence, has no difficulty in resurrecting dead people.”
And then a person will become immortal, at which time such memory abilities will open in him that he will remember all his sins that he committed. Everything will be revealed on the last day. Little of! A person will know how many people there are on the globe from first to last, he will know what their names are and who, when and what sins he committed! Everyone will see their deeds, their thoughts, as if in a mirror, and will be horrified. People will say: “Mountains! Cover us!” - but there will be no more death. Every person will be convicted by his conscience, and God will reward every person according to his deeds. What you sow is what you reap: if you sow wheat, you will reap heavenly joy; if you sow wormwood, you will reap eternal sorrow. If you lived on earth with God, you will live with Him in heaven; if you lived with Satan, you will suffer with him in hell.
“Hell and heaven are in heaven,” say the bigots.
I looked into myself and became convinced of the lie:
Hell and heaven are not circles in the palace of the universe,
Hell and heaven are two halves of the soul.
The sky is a sash that clothed my weary body,
The waves of Jeyhun - the ocean gave birth to our tears,
Hell is the spark of our flaming sighs.
Paradise is the rest that is given to us for a moment,
So what is heaven and hell? And is everything really as simple as the notorious Omar Khayyam wrote? I personally think not. In his philosophy, man both punishes and rewards himself. Heaven and hell are two halves of the soul. May be so. But while this is a good metaphor for beautiful poetry, it is not very suitable for our question. After all, we do not set ourselves the goal of drawing a psychological portrait of Khayyam, taking his works as a basis. (By the way, it’s not a bad idea, I’ll have to do it in my free time) Yes, so after all, what is heaven?
Paradise, says Ilya Mitinyai in his instructive words, is the blessed fatherland of our forefathers, this is the dear haven of my hope, this is the only desired object of my love, the last reward of my faith! And who should we ask, brothers - who would tell us: what is heaven? Let's ask about this two godly men who saw him with their own eyes, these are the holy Apostles: John the Theologian and Paul. John says: and he took me up into the spirit to a great and high mountain, and showed me the great city, holy Jerusalem, which comes down from heaven from God (Rev. 21:10)
But this city was only an image of God’s paradise, which, if we were ever worthy to look at, our eyes would be convinced of its beauty, but our minds would still not comprehend what paradise is. The Apostle Paul was caught up to the third heaven, into the very paradise of God, he saw what human eyes had never seen, what the ear had never heard, and what had not entered the heart of man, what God had prepared for those who loved him. (1 Cor. 2:9)
there he heard words that cannot even be told in human language. Two people saw heaven, and the unnies could not comprehend or describe it. No wonder one righteous man once said: “Oh, the paradise of God! We can acquire you, but we cannot comprehend you with our minds!”
Christ our Savior calls paradise immortal and eternal life and endless joy. Your heart will rejoice, and no one will take your joy away from you, says HE (John 16:22) Think for yourself - what is happiness here? Paradise is just a rest that is given to us for a moment. So what next? The moment passed, the joy passed. And the moment of rest is replaced by long sorrow. Suppose you are not currently tormented by a nutrition problem, even if you have a lot of money, even if you are not worried about environmental pollution or the upcoming session;-) but one thing makes your heart skip a beat from time to time - this is the fear of death, the horror of non-existence.
Suppose you would never have died, but then all happiness loses its meaning. You are happy - but you wanted to be happier, and therefore your happiness is incomplete, although you are immortal, you are still unhappy... But what about having such happiness so as not to be afraid of death, not to be afraid of illness, not to know poverty, not envy or any other pressing concern? Ass? But this is heavenly life, a life full of endless joy, which can never diminish, but will always, forever and ever be the same, complete, perfect. The human soul is designed in such a way that it cannot be satisfied with anything, but only with God. Ocean water is bitter and salty, but if one drop of heavenly dew fell into the ocean, it would sweeten its bitterness. If she fell into hell, she would sweeten all its bitterness, extinguish the flames of hell, extinguish all the tears of sinners, and hell would become paradise. Let us remember, by the way, the parable of the rich man and Lazarus. What did the rich man ask for when he found himself in hellfire and saw the beggar Lazarus in heaven?
Father Abraham! Have mercy on me and send Lazarus so that he may dip the end of his finger in water and cool my tongue, because I am tormented in this flame.
What did Abraham tell him?
Child! Remember how on earth you were blissful, and Lazarus suffered, but now here he is consoled, and you suffer. In addition, a great gulf has been established between you and us, which neither you nor we can cross.
Truly, it becomes scary to think that I will end up in the wrong place. Just a chill on the skin.
What will a sinner in hell have to experience? Because when talking about hell and hellfire, a person for some reason does not experience such trepidation when it comes to heaven. What's there? What is Gehenna?
Abandon hope, everyone who enters here.
Dante Allegheri
The road to hell is paved with good intentions. And the terrible slogan hanging on the gates leading to hell, at the very least, destroys all the forces of a person, all his aspirations, all
hope to get out of there. We have a small idea of how the righteous live. What about sinners?
The life of sinful souls before the general judgment, according to the teachings of the Orthodox Church, consists: firstly, in a clear and detailed awareness of the sins with which they offended God in this life, and remorse, which will awaken there with all its strength. Secondly, in painful languor and melancholy because their attachment to the carnal and earthly can no longer find satisfaction, and their desire and taste for the heavenly and spiritual are not revealed and they can no longer reveal it. Thirdly, in distance from God and His saints, and instead in community with others, like unfortunate souls and especially with evil spirits, and in other actual torments of hell, which will, however, be only the beginning and foretaste of eternal torment.
What is hell? Hell is a dark, underground dungeon, a joyless place of crying, a terrible furnace of unquenchable fire, where the souls of sinful people are tormented. Here, God’s justice will sting them with three terrible arrows of its wrath: - repentance without benefit, immeasurable torment without the slightest joy, extreme desire without hope, desire for God, without hope in God.
The arrow of God's wrath is a living memory of a life spent in sins, a bitter memory that produces even more bitter, but useless repentance. The second arrow is the torment of Gehenna itself. So, a collection of every possible and unspeakable torment awaits sinners in hell. All the poisons of sorrows are collected in one cup, all the flames of fire are united together, all eternal torment is in one minute. Eternal torment, without weakening, without end. The third arrow of God that stings the heart of a sinner is the desire for hope, the desire for God without hope for God. Just as the stormy waves of a huge ocean rush to a rocky shore, as if wanting to flood the whole world, but then, hitting the rocks, break into a thousand splashes and return with foam, so the heart of sinners will strive for God, but having met His unchangeable justice, firm like granite, it will break against him to cause him unspeakable sorrow and illness.
Oh, if only this earthly life of ours, as quickly as it passes, would be forgotten just as quickly! If only we, deprived of pleasures, would also be deprived of memory! But no! What has happened can no longer be undone, and unrepentant sinners will never forget their sins. And forever they will torment his conscience, forever he will repent, but to no avail, forever he will shed tears, but they will not wash away his sins, no! They will further kindle the flame of torment. There is no repentance in hell.
My poor, sinful soul! What have you done to make you suffer so terribly? What have you done wrong that you are tormented here forever? I tasted a drop of honey - and I suffer. And what was carnal pleasure, for the sake of which I gave up my life and soul and heart to indecency? What if not a drop of honey? What about feasts and rejoicings, games and fun? What is this if not a drop of honey? And this satanic joy, when I saw my neighbor in misfortune, when I took revenge on him, reviled him out of envy or malice - what was it if not a drop of honey? And all my riches, which I acquired through iniquity - what was it? And glory and nobility and honor and peace? What was it? Why did I lose my human form? What have I become?
And the boy kept going down, dancing down the steep slope, tap-dancing inconceivably, and white dust flew up from under his heels, and he shouted something at the top of his voice, very loudly, and very cheerfully, and very solemnly, like a song or like a spell, - and Redrick thought that for the first time in the entire existence of the quarry, people were descending along this road as if on a holiday. And at first he didn’t listen to what this talking master key was shouting, but then it was as if something switched on in him, and he heard:
- Happiness for everyone!.. For free!.. As much happiness as you want!.. Everyone gather here!.. Enough for everyone!.. No one will leave offended!.. For free!.. Happiness! For free!..
And then he suddenly fell silent, as if a huge hand had forced a gag into his mouth. AND
Redrick saw how a transparent void, lurking in the shadow of the excavator bucket, grabbed him, lifted him into the air and slowly, with effort, twisted him, like housewives twisting laundry, squeezing out water. Redrick managed to notice how one of the dusty shoes fell off the twitching leg and flew high above the quarry. Then he turned away and sat down. Not a single thought was in his head, and he somehow stopped feeling himself. There was silence all around, and it was especially quiet behind me, there, on the road. Then he remembered the flask without the usual joy, simply as a medicine that it was time to take. He unscrewed the cap and began to drink in small, meager sips, and for the first time in his life he wished there was not alcohol in the flask, but just cold water. Some time passed, and more or less coherent thoughts began to appear in my head. Well, that's all, he thought reluctantly. The road is open. We could go now, but it would be better, of course, to wait a little longer. "Meat grinders" come with tricks. Still, you need to think about it. It’s an unusual thing to think, that’s the problem. What is "think"? To think means to dodge, to feint, to bluff, to deceive, but all this is not suitable here... Well, okay. Monkey, father... Pay for everything, take your soul out of the bastards, let them devour the rubbish, like I ate... Not this, not that, Red... That is, of course, but what does all this mean? What do I need? This is swearing, not thoughts. He grew cold from some terrible premonition and, immediately stepping over the many different considerations that still lay ahead, he fiercely ordered himself: that’s it, Red, you won’t leave here until you figure it out, you’ll die here next to this Ball, you’ll get fried , you will rot, but you will not leave...
Lord, where are the words, where are my thoughts? He hit himself in the face with a half-opened fist. After all, I haven’t had a single thought in my entire life! Wait, Kirill said something like that... Kirill! He frantically delved into his memories, some words came up, familiar and semi-familiar, but it was all wrong, because it was not the words that remained from Kirill, only some vague pictures remained, very kind, but... Meanness, meanness... And here they deceived me, left me without a tongue, the bastards... The punks... Just as I was a punk, I grew old as a punk... This shouldn’t happen! Do you hear? So that in the future this will be prohibited once and for all! Man is born to think (here he is, Kirill, at last!..). But I don’t believe in it. I didn’t believe it before, and I don’t believe it now, and I don’t know why man was born. Born, here he is born. Whoever feeds whatever he can. Let us all be healthy, and let them all die. Who are we? Who are they? You can't understand anything. I feel good - Burbridge feels bad, Burbridge feels good - Glasses feels bad, Hoarse feels good - everyone feels bad, and Hoarse himself feels bad, only he, a fool, imagines that he can somehow escape in time... Lord, this is a mess, a mess! I’ve been fighting with Captain Quarterblad all my life, and he’s been fighting with Khripaty all his life, and, stupefied, he only wanted one thing from me - for me to give up stalking. But how could I quit stalking when I had to feed my family? Go to work? But I don’t want to work for you, your work makes me sick, can you understand that? I believe this: if a person works among you, he always works for one of you, he is a slave and nothing more, but I always wanted to be myself, I wanted to be there, to spit on everyone, on your melancholy and boredom... He I drank the rest of the cognac and slammed my empty flask onto the ground with all my might. The flask jumped up, sparkling in the sun, and rolled away somewhere; he immediately forgot about it. Now he sat, covering his eyes with his hands, and tried not to understand, not to come up with, but at least to see something as it should be, but again he saw only snouts, snouts, snouts... little green... bottles, heaps rags that were once people, columns of numbers... He knew that all this had to be destroyed, and he wanted to destroy it, but he guessed that if all this was destroyed, then there would be nothing left, only flat, bare earth. From powerlessness and despair, he again wanted to lean back and throw his head back; he stood up, mechanically shook off the dust from his pants and began to descend into the quarry.
The sun was hot, red spots floated before my eyes, the air at the bottom of the quarry trembled, and in this trembling it seemed as if the Ball was dancing in place, like a buoy on the waves. He walked past the bucket, superstitiously raising his feet higher and making sure not to step on the black blots, and then, getting bogged down in the looseness, he dragged himself diagonally across the entire quarry towards the dancing and winking Ball. He was covered in sweat, suffocating from the heat, and at the same time a frosty chill ran through him, he was shaking violently, as if with a hangover, and fresh chalk dust creaked on his teeth. And he no longer tried to think. He just repeated to himself with despair, like a prayer: “I’m an animal, you see, I’m an animal. I have no words, they didn’t teach me words, I don’t know how to think, these bastards didn’t let me learn to think. But if you really really so... omnipotent, all-powerful, all-understanding... look into my soul, I know, there is everything you need. I must have never sold my soul to anyone! Get out of me yourself what I want - it can’t be that I want bad!.. Damn it all, because I can’t think of anything except these words of his:
"HAPPINESS FOR EVERYONE, FREE, AND LET NO ONE LEAVE OFFENDED!"
He pulled the pistol from its holster. The gun got caught. It became scary. He pulled harder, then even harder, then with all his might. He clearly saw the sharp movement of what was walking towards him (tall, ragged, emaciated, covered with an unclean beard up to his eyes)... Stupid, he thought, pressing the trigger. There was a shot, there was a flash of an oncoming shot, there was - it seems - Izy's cry... And there was a blow to the chest, from which the sun went out at once...
Well, here it is, Andrey,” the Mentor’s voice said with some solemnity. - You have completed the first round.
The lamp under the green glass shade was switched on, and on the table in
in the circle of light lay a fresh "Leningradskaya Pravda" from a large front page entitled: "The love of Leningraders for Comrade Stalin is limitless." The receiver on the shelf behind me hummed and muttered. Mom was rattling dishes in the kitchen and talking to a neighbor. It smelled like fried fish. In the courtyard outside the window, children were screaming and making noise, and a game of hide and seek was going on. Moist, thawed air blew through the open window. Just a minute ago, all this was completely different from what it is now - much more ordinary and familiar. It had no future. Or rather, separately from the future...
Andrei aimlessly smoothed out the newspaper and said:
- First? Why the first?
“Because there are still many of them ahead,” said the voice of the Mentor.
Then Andrei, trying not to look in the direction from which the
voice, rose and leaned his shoulder against the closet by the window. The black well of the courtyard, faintly illuminated by the yellow rectangles of the windows, was below him and above him, and somewhere far above, in the now completely darkened sky, Vega was burning. It was absolutely impossible to leave all this again, and absolutely - even more so! - it was impossible to stay among all this. Now. After all.
- Izya! Izzy! - a woman’s voice shouted shrilly in the well. - Izya,
go have dinner already!.. Children, have you seen Izya?
And children's voices below shouted:
- Iska! Katzman! Go, your mother is calling you!..
Andrey, all tense, stuck his face to the glass itself, peering
into the darkness. But he saw only indistinguishable shadows darting along the wet black bottom of the well between the piles of wood.
On your own hump and on someone else's
I came up with a simple concept:
it makes no sense to go at a tank with a knife,
but if you really want it, then it’s worth it.
Bibliography:
1. Eternal afterlife secrets about. Anthony Kaluga 1908
2. For God is with us, St. Ioannikiy Donetsk diocese 1992
3. Law of God, Rev. Seraphim Mosk. Patriarchate 1987
4. Mystical theology of St. Dionysius the Areopagite Moscow 1993
3. Life after death
3.1 Immortal soul
The immortal soul leaves the body and rushes to its eternal abode.
The immortality of the soul seems somehow one-sided: it appears after birth (passes from those who die to those who are born; although, as we know, more people die than are born): it is formed over several years. She is changeable.
A believer in God the Creator prepares for the afterlife “anti-existence” during his lifetime.
After being on Earth, the human soul says goodbye to the body and goes to the kingdom of the gods, where it is rewarded for what it did during material life. The immortal soul retains some connections with the material world, provided that the memory of it is preserved in the world.
The soul is indivisible, incorporeal, unextended and, therefore, indestructible. Nothing can be clearer than the fact that the bodies of nature undergo movement and change every hour; such a being is indestructible by the power of nature, that is, the human soul is naturally immortal.
The individual soul never disappears. She neither dies nor is born. She simply changes bodies like a person changes clothes. This is perfect knowledge. Just as the soul, being in one body, passes from childhood to old age, so at the moment of death it passes into another body. The soul is destined to live in this particular body for a certain number of years.
Simply put: if there is no immortality of the soul, then it must be invented to strengthen moral principles and free a virtuous person from the fear of death, and strengthen it in a sinner. In any case, a person needs to live righteously, overcome the fear of death and believe in the immortality of the soul.
Scientists and all people in general should strive to break out of the cycle of repeated birth and death. We deny the existence of the soul on the grounds that we cannot see or feel it with our gross senses. But in fact, there are many things that we cannot see, such as air, radio waves or sound. The soul knows neither birth nor death. It never came into existence and will never cease to exist. She is unborn, eternal, always existing and original. She does not die when the body dies. Death in science is the natural cessation of life activity in a biological system. In philosophy, human death is viewed as a social phenomenon that requires rational perception and understanding. Already the reconstruction of the burials of Neanderthals indicates that they had ideas about the incompleteness of human existence with death. This idea of the ancients later led to the concept of an immortal, disembodied soul.
3.2 Types of immortality
Immortality is a concept that means overcoming mortality and oblivion of man and the human race. In everyday life in religious, philosophical and scientific literature it is used in various senses. The following types of immortality are possible:
1. The actual mental-physical continuation of an individual’s life after death (personal immortality).
2. The existence after death of a certain impersonal psychic essence, which is absorbed by an absolute spiritual substance, God (metaphysical immortality).
3. Achievement on earth or in the human mind of an eternal quality of life (ideal)
4. Other types of immortality.
A person’s faith in immortality and the desire for it plays the role of a psychological guarantor of the integrity of tribal human existence. They provide psychological protection to a person from the fear of death and give him the opportunity to live a full life, despite the knowledge of the inevitability of his death.
Conclusion
Natural science is an integral and important part of the spiritual culture of mankind, acting at the same time as an indispensable condition for the development of material culture.
A person lives among people, and many people around him are subject to his spiritual influence, and they, in turn, influence him. Consequently, neuropsychic energy is organized in the form of a generalized social superpersonality. She lives long before the birth of a given person and continues to live after his death. In this world his social immortality is manifested.
The world around us is huge. It would seem that disorder and chaos reign in it, but everything in it is interconnected and interdependent, captured by feedback loops and cooperatively coordinated. There is a constant exchange of energy between all objects of the Universe, from an elementary particle and a living cell to stars and the Galaxy.
The most complex phenomena in the Universe, as it turned out with the help of my test work, are the birth of life, the emergence of living organisms and man, who is a perfect rational being, and his disappearance, departure from life to another world. Questions about the origin and essence of life have long been a subject of human interest in his desire to understand the world around him, understand himself and determine his place.
Thus, we can conclude that the definitions of life, death and immortality established in educational literature are varied. There are many such definitions ad infinitum. Many scientists have given interpretations of definitions to such concepts as life, death and immortality.
There is no place on the entire earth where there are no living beings. Deep underground we find worms, under water we find fish and other life forms, and in the sky there are many birds.
In conclusion, I would like to note that all living organisms are born and die and this cannot be changed in any way. These are the laws of nature.
After all, this is why the concept of “immortality” exists. Let people better think that after their death they will come to life again and continue to exist; rather than they will have fear of death.
I would like to note in conclusion of my test work that all the goals and objectives of the work that I set were completed and reflected in the main part of the work. I reviewed the concepts of the origin of life, the basis of death and immortality, gave them general definitions, and also described the opinions of various scientists about these concepts. And also in this test I gave an idea about the human soul and its properties.
List of sources used
I Scientific and methodological literature
1.R.K. Balandin, A.I. Barashkov, A.A. Gorbovsky and others. “Life, death, immortality?..” Minsk “POLYMYA” 1996. – 254 p.
2.A.H. Bhaktivedanta "Life comes from life." – M.: 1999 – 259 p.
3.Gorbachev V.V. Concepts of modern natural science: 2nd edition. – M.: “Publishing house “ONIKSXXI Century”, 2005. – 325 p.
4.Gorelov A.A. Concepts of modern natural science. – M.: Center, 2000. – 356 p.
5.World Encyclopedia: / Main. scientific ed. and comp. A.A. Gritsanov - M.: AST, Mn.: Harvest, Sovrem. Literatora, 2004. – 834 p.
6.S.G. Mamontov and others. Fundamentals of biology: A course for self-education. – M.: Education, 1992. – 386 p.
7. Raymond Moody “Life after life”, Leningrad, 1991. – 325 p.
8. Timofeeva S.S., Medvedeva S.A., Larionova E.Yu. Fundamentals of modern natural science and ecology / Rostov n / D: Phoenix, 2004. - 326 p.
9. Khoroshavina S.G. Course of lectures “Concepts of modern natural science” Rostov-on-Don: “Phoenix”, 2000. – 356 p.
10. Concepts of modern natural science Rostov n/d: “Phoenix”, 2000. - 358 p.
II. Newspaper article
1. Newspaper “Meridian”, May, No. 15, 2006
... " However, this growth does not have those qualitative and quantitative characteristics that are inherent in the growth of living things. There is a dialectical unity between the properties that characterize living things, which manifests itself in time and space throughout the entire organic world, at all levels of organization of living things. Levels of organization of living things In the organization of living things, we mainly distinguish between molecular, cellular, ...
Forests on soil that does not contain mycorrhiza-forming fungi are supplemented with forest soil in small quantities, for example, when sowing acorns, soil from an old oak forest is added (Kontrimavicius, 1982). 5. Biological essence of mycorrhiza Seedlings of many species of forest trees, grown in a sterile nutrient solution and then transferred to meadow soil, will grow poorly and even die from lack of...
They require revision in this direction indicated by me. This has important social consequences, but even more religious and moral consequences. It would be completely wrong to confuse this type of philosophy with the philosophy of pragmatism or with the philosophy of life. The personalistic revolution, which has not yet truly happened in the world, means the overthrow of the power of objectification, the destruction of natural necessity, ...
This is how the author talks about it in Literaturnaya Gazeta, noting his personal interest in a positive solution to the problem of euthanasia. In his opinion, in this case we are talking about “one of the important rights - the right of a seriously ill person to an easy (without suffering), dignified and quick death when the person himself considers it timely.” Is it possible to raise serious objections to...
Introduction
Since ancient times, man has asked himself the question of what is the essence of human existence. Many philosophers and thinkers have tried to answer why a person lives, why he came into this world, why he dies and what happens to him after death.
The orientation of Greek thinkers towards man and his mind is closely connected with the fundamental attitude of the entire Greek culture - with the call for self-knowledge. The saying “Know thyself”, carved on a column at the entrance to the Temple of Apollo at Delphi, was one of the leading ideas at turning points in history.
For Socrates, the meaning of human life lies in philosophizing, in constant self-knowledge, in the eternal search for oneself through testing. Overcoming ignorance involves searching for what is good and evil, beautiful and ugly, truth and error. According to Plato, happiness (bliss) is possible only in the afterlife, when the immortal soul - the ideal essence in man - is freed from the shackles of the mortal body. The nature of man, Plato believes, is determined by his soul, or more precisely, soul and body, but with the primacy of the soul over the body, the divine immortal principle over the mortal, bodily. According to the teachings of Plato, the human soul consists of three parts: the first of them expresses the ideal - rational ability, the second - the lustful-volitional ability, the third - the instinctive-affective one. Depending on which of these parts prevails, the fate of a person, the direction of his activities, and the meaning of his life depend.
When asked what a person should dream about, Antisthenes said: “To die happy.” “He who wants to be immortal,” he said, “must lead a pious and righteous life.” “States perish when they cease to distinguish the bad from the good.”
In contrast to Slavic paganism (the main ideological dominants of which were the anthropomorphization of nature and the naturalization of man) and the Hellenic type of culture (where the heroic person was the measure of all things), Christianity adopted by Russia dictated a qualitatively different concept of man. The basis of all foundations and the measure of all things became the highest spiritual substantial principle.
Through the awareness of his smallness, sinfulness, even insignificance before the absoluteness of the ideal and in the pursuit of it, a person received the prospect of spiritual development, his consciousness becomes dynamically directed towards moral improvement. Conscience, moral purity, the desire to do good and perform spiritual deeds become the core of personal self-awareness and behavior of the best representatives of the Russian people, the guarantors of their social development. The means of moral, spiritual formation, the struggle of the individual against its suppression at different stages of the medieval history of Rus' were different - from the desire for spiritual self-deepening in the spirit of Nile of Sorsky to the rebellious protest of Archpriest Avvakum in defense of folk traditions from their deliberate destruction from above.
The problem of man occupies one of the central places in the philosophy of the French Enlightenment. French materialists contrasted their understanding of man with religious and philosophical anthropology and resolutely rejected the dualistic interpretation of human nature as a combination of a corporeal, material substance and an immaterial, immortal soul. As for deist philosophers, Rousseau allowed the immortality of the soul and reward after death, while Voltaire denied that the soul is immortal, and regarding the possibility of “divine justice” in the afterlife, he preferred to remain “reverently silent.”
In his interpretation of human nature, Voltaire opposed Pascal, rejecting not only his dualism, but also the philosopher’s main idea that man is one of the weakest and most insignificant creatures in nature, a kind of “thinking reed.” People are not as pitiful and not as evil as Pascal believed, Voltaire emphasizes. He contrasts Pascal’s idea of loneliness and abandonment with his thesis about man as a social being striving for the formation of “cultural communities.” Voltaire also does not accept Pascal's condemnation of human passions and egoism. “Self-love” and other attractions and passions are, according to Voltaire, the root cause of all human actions, the impulse that unites people and leads to the formation of prosperous cities and great states.
The desire for a consistently materialistic solution to the problem of man was clearly expressed in the works of La Mettrie, Diderot and Helvetius. The leitmotif of their philosophical anthropology is the position about the material unity of man, the close dependence of the “faculties of the soul”, all mental processes, from sensation to thinking, from the nervous system and brain, from the state of the “bodily substance”. In accordance with this point of view, the death of the body was considered as the reason for the cessation of all human mental activity, as a natural and logical end of earthly life, the only possible and real one.
Chapter 1. Man in search of the meaning of life.
Unlike animals, instincts do not dictate to a person what he needs, and unlike a person of yesterday, traditions do not dictate to a person today what he owes. Not knowing either what he needs or what he owes, a person has lost a clear idea of what he wants. As a result, he either wants the same thing as others (conformism) or does what others want from him (totalitarianism).
Meaning must be found, but cannot be created. You can only create subjective meaning, a simple feeling of meaning, or nonsense. Meaning not only must, but can also be found, and in the search for meaning a person is guided by his conscience. In a word, conscience is an organ of meaning. It can be defined as the ability to discover the unique and unique meaning that lies in any situation. Meaning is always also the specific meaning of a specific situation. This is always a “demand of the moment”, which is always addressed to a specific person. And just as each individual situation is unique, so is each individual person.
Every day and every hour offers a new meaning, and every person expects a different meaning. There is a meaning for everyone, and for everyone there is a special meaning. From all this it follows that the meaning must change both from situation to situation and from person to person. However, meaning is omnipresent. There is no person for whom life does not have something ready to do, and there is no situation in which life would not give us the opportunity to find meaning.
A person not only seeks meaning due to his desire for meaning, but also finds it, namely in three ways. First, he can see meaning in action, in creating something. Secondly, he sees meaning in experiencing something, and finally, he sees meaning in loving someone. But even in a hopeless situation in front of which he is helpless, he is able to see the meaning.
There are no situations in life that are truly meaningless. This can be explained by the fact that the negative aspects of human existence that seem to us - in particular, the tragic triad of suffering, guilt and death - can also be transformed into something positive, into achievement, if we approach them from the right position and with adequate installation.
By realizing meaning, a person realizes himself. By realizing the meaning contained in suffering, we realize the most human in a person. We mature, we grow, we outgrow ourselves. It is where we are helpless and hopeless, unable to change the situation, that is where we are called, we feel the need to change ourselves.
There is a definition that says that meanings and values are nothing more than reactive formations and defense mechanisms. But are meanings and values as relative and subjective as they are believed to be? Meaning is relative insofar as it relates to a particular person involved in a particular situation. We can say that the meaning changes, firstly, from person to person and, secondly, from one day to another, even from hour to hour. Of course, it is preferable to talk about uniqueness rather than about the relativity of meanings. Uniqueness, however, is a quality not only of a situation, but also of life as a whole, since life is a string of unique situations. Man is unique both in essence and in existence. In the ultimate analysis, no one can be replaced - due to the uniqueness of each human being. And the life of each person is unique in that no one can repeat it. There is no such thing as a universal meaning in life, only the unique meanings of individual situations. However, among them there are those that have something in common, and, therefore, there are meanings that are inherent in the people of a certain society, and even moreover, meanings that are shared by many people throughout history. These meanings are what is meant by values. Thus, values can be defined as universals of meaning that crystallize in typical situations faced by society or even all of humanity.
Possessing values makes it easier for a person to find meaning, at least in typical situations, it eliminates the need to make decisions. But, unfortunately, he has to pay for this relief, because, unlike the unique meanings that permeate unique situations, it may turn out that two values are in conflict with each other. And the contradictions of values are reflected in the human soul in the form of value conflicts.
The impression that two values contradict each other is the consequence of missing a whole dimension. What is this measurement? This is a hierarchical order of values. According to Max Scheller, evaluation implicitly implies a preference for one value over another. The rank of a value is experienced along with the value itself. In other words, the experience of a certain value includes the experience that it is higher than some other. Consequently, we come to the conclusion that there is no room for value conflicts. However, experiencing a hierarchical order of values does not relieve a person from making decisions.
Attractions push a person, values attract. A person is always free to accept or reject the value that is offered to him by a situation. This is also true of the hierarchical order of values that are conveyed by moral and ethical traditions and norms. They must pass the test of a person's conscience - unless he refuses to obey his conscience and suppresses its voice.
Meaning is what is meant by the person who asks the question, or by the situation, which also implies a question that requires an answer. Of course, a person is free to answer the questions that life asks him. But this freedom should not be confused with arbitrariness. It must be understood from the point of view of responsibility. A person is responsible for the correct answer to a question, for finding the true meaning of a situation. And meaning is something that needs to be found rather than imparted, discovered rather than invented.
Meanings cannot be given arbitrarily, but must be found responsibly. Meaning should be sought with the help of conscience. Indeed, conscience guides a person in his search for meaning. Conscience can be defined as a person's intuitive ability to find meaning in a situation. In addition to being intuitive, conscience is a creative ability. Conscience also has the ability to detect unique meanings that contradict accepted values. A living, clear and accurate conscience is the only thing that gives a person the opportunity to resist the effects of an existential vacuum - conformism and totalitarianism.
The story of the poet Arseny Tarkovsky about his experience of out-of-body existence is interesting. This happened to Tarkovsky in January 1944, after several leg reamputations, when he died in a front-line hospital from gangrene. He lay in a small, cramped room with a very low ceiling. The light bulb hanging above the bed did not have a switch, and had to be unscrewed by hand. One day, while unscrewing a light bulb, Tarkovsky felt that his soul (consciousness) had slipped out of his body in a spiral - unscrewed, like a light bulb from its socket. Surprised, he looked down and saw his body. It was completely motionless, like that of a person sleeping in a dead sleep. Then for some reason he wanted to see what was going on in the next room. He began to slowly “leak” through the wall, but at some point he felt that a little more and he would never be able to return to his body. This scared him. He again hovered over the bed and with some strange effort slid into the body, as if into a boat.
The West, which was consistently sick in the 20th century with various ideological fashions, ranging from Theosophy to Zen Buddhism, at some point felt the need to return to classical rationalism. At the same time, the mysterious moments of existence were not rejected, but were explained by combining three components: evidence of sensory experience, rationalistic analysis (natural science multiplied by formal logic), mystical (mythological, religious) knowledge. In the 1970s, Western readers were overwhelmed by a wave of literature devoted to what. previously there was an unspoken taboo. Doctors were especially eager to write about death. A pioneer here was Dr. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, author of the books “On Death and Dying” (1969) and “Death Does Not Exist” (1977). Among other serious works, I will highlight the following: J. Meyers “Voices on the Edge of Eternity” (1973), Osis and Haraldson “At the Hour of Death” (1976), Betty Maltz “My Impressions of Eternity” (1977), D. R. Wikler “ Journey to the Other Side" (1977), M. Rovsling "Behind the Door of Death" (1978), Tim Le Hay "Life After Life" (1980), I. Stevenson "Twenty Cases That Make You Think About Reincarnation" (1980), Seraphim Rose "The Soul After Death" (1982), Stanislav and Christina Grof "Shining Cities and Hellfires", Lyell Watson "Romeo's Mistake", Michael Sabom "Death Calls" (1982), Kenneth Ring "The Tragedy of Waiting" Piotr Kalinowski "The Passage" (1991).
But the greatest number of readers were attracted by R. Moody’s book “Life after Life” (1976) and its sequel “Reflections on Death after Death” (1983).
In the first book, Moody described and analyzed 150 cases in which people who had been in a state of clinical death clearly remembered what happened to them and had the experience of near-death visions associated with the feeling (or reality) of out-of-body existence (we will denote it by the abbreviation OBC). The following stages are characteristic of the RVO process: cessation of all physiological functions of the body (and the dying person still has time to hear the words of the doctor who ascertains the death); increasing unpleasant noises; the dying person leaves the body and rushes at high speed through a tunnel, at the end of which light is visible, sometimes a luminous being; his whole life passes before the dying person; he meets deceased relatives and friends; at some point there is a feeling of a boundary, due to which it is no longer possible to return to the body; the dying person returns to the body “by force of will” or sometimes against his will. According to Moody's research, there are 11 clearly distinguishable stages in the process of dying and returning from the dead (American cardiologist Seib lists 10 such phases).
According to the American psychologist Kenneth Ring, who studied 102 cases of “return from the other world,” 60% of the “returnees” experienced an indescribable feeling of peace, 37% hovered above their own body, 26% remembered all kinds of panoramic visions, 23% entered a tunnel, well, cellar , gateway or bag, 16% were fascinated by the amazing light, 8% met with deceased relatives. There are also descriptions of hell among the “returnees” - this is evidenced by the messages of the same R. Moody, as well as M. Sabom, J. Ritchie, B. Maltz. Dr. Maurice Rovsling in the book “Beyond Death's Door” talks about his patient, “who, during a cardiac arrest, went to hell. During the process of revival, he came to his senses several times, but his heart stopped again. When he was in our world and gained the gift of speech , he still saw hell, was in a panic and asked the doctors to continue reviving. These procedures are painful, and usually patients, returning to earthly life, ask to stop them. After two days, the patient had no memories of what happened. He forgot everything, he. I have never been to hell and never seen any hell."
It is also worth noting the difficult experience of RVO among suicides brought back to life. Their visions are gloomy, joyless, and sometimes simply terrible. According to K. Ring, the testimonies of the “returnees,” while differing in some details, coincide in the main, regardless of the nationality, age, gender, place of residence and religious affiliation of those being studied. The Australian doctor P. Kalinovsky also speaks about this, although he notes that “sometimes people see what they expect to see. Christians see angels, the Mother of God, Jesus Christ, patriarchs. Hindus see Hindu temples; nonbelievers see figures in white, young men, sometimes they don’t see anything, but they feel a “presence.” Psychologists saw the image of their father in the light or understood it as a “collective consciousness” and so on.”
According to E. Kübler-Ross, only 10% of people who were on the verge of death or experienced clinical death could clearly remember what they experienced at the same time. Other researchers cite higher figures - from 15 to 35%.
Here are a few more stories as reported by researchers or told by the “returnees” themselves.
"A British Air Force doctor suffered an accident while taking off from a small rural airfield. He was thrown out of the cockpit, fell on his back and lay without any signs of life. From the hollow in which he found himself after the accident, the airfield building is not visible, but nevertheless the doctor is clear saw all the stages of the rescue operation. He remembers that he looked at the accident from a height of about two hundred feet and saw his body lying nearby. Watching the foreman and the surviving pilot run to his body, he wondered why they needed it, wanting his. They left him alone. He saw the ambulance drive out of the hangar and immediately stall. He saw the driver get out, start the car with the handle, jump into the cab, drive a little and slow down to grab the orderly in the back seat. He watched. , as the ambulance stopped near the hospital, where the orderly took something, and then moved to the scene of the disaster. Then the doctor, who had not yet regained consciousness, felt that he was moving away from the airfield, flying over the island of Cornwall and rushing at great speed over the Atlantic. Suddenly the journey ended, and he woke up to see an orderly pouring a solution of smelling salts down his throat. A later investigation into the circumstances of the accident showed full correspondence of all the details of the story with the actual events."
“One day I had a heart attack. I suddenly found myself in a black vacuum, and I realized that I had left my physical body. I knew that I was dying, and I thought: “God, I wouldn’t live like this if I wish I knew what would happen now. Please help me." And immediately I began to emerge from this blackness and saw something pale gray, and I continued to move, slide in this space. Then I saw a gray tunnel and headed towards it. It seemed to me that I was moving towards not as fast as I would like, because I realized that, moving closer, I would be able to see something through it. Behind this tunnel, they looked the same as on the ground. such that could be mistaken for mood pictures.
“Everything was permeated with an amazing light: life-giving, golden yellow, warm and soft, completely different from the light that we see on earth. As I approached, I felt like I was walking through a tunnel. It was an amazing, joyful feeling. There are simply no words in human language that could describe this. But my time to move beyond this fog has probably not yet come. Right in front of me I saw my uncle Karl, who died many years ago. He blocked my path, saying: “Go back, your work on earth is not finished yet. Now go back.” I didn't want to go, but I had no choice, so I returned to my body. And again I felt this terrible pain in my chest and heard my little son crying and shouting: “God, bring mommy back!”
"I saw them lift my body and pull it out from under the steering wheel, I felt as if I was being dragged through some kind of confined space, something like a funnel. It was dark and black, and I was quickly moving through this funnel back to my body. When I was “poured” back, it seemed to me that this “infusion” began from the head, as if I was entering from the head. I didn’t feel that I could somehow reason about it, I didn’t even. time to think. Before that, I was a few yards away from my body, and all events suddenly took a reverse course. I didn’t even have time to figure out what was happening, I was “poured” into my body.”
"I was taken to the hospital in critical condition. They said that I would not survive, they invited my relatives because I was going to die soon. My relatives came in and surrounded my bed. The moment the doctor decided that I had died, my relatives became distant to me, as if they began to move away from me. It really looked as if I was not moving away from them, but they began to move further and further away from me. It became darker, and, nevertheless, I saw them. Then I lost consciousness and did not see what was happening in the room.
“I was in a narrow Y-shaped tunnel, similar to the curved back of this chair. This tunnel was shaped like my body. My arms and legs seemed to be folded at the seams. I began to enter this tunnel, moving forward. It was as dark as dark can be. I moved down through it. Then I looked forward and saw a beautiful polished door without any handles. From under the edges of the door I saw a very bright light. Its rays came out in such a way that it was clear that everyone there, outside the door, was very happy. These rays moved and rotated all the time. It seemed that everyone outside the door was terribly busy. I looked at all this and said: “Lord, here I am. If you want, take me!” But the owner brought me back, and so quickly that it took my breath away."
"I heard how the doctors said that I had died. And then I felt how I began to fall or, as it were, to float through some kind of blackness, some kind of closed space. It is impossible to describe in words. Everything was very black, and only in the distance could I see this light. A very, very bright light, but small at first. It grew larger as I approached it. I tried to get closer to this light, because I felt that it was Christ. I was not trying to get there. it was scary. It was more or less pleasant. As a Christian, I immediately associated this light with Christ, who said: “I am the light of the world.” I said to myself: “If this is so, if I must die, I know what awaits me in.” end, there, in this world."
“I got up and went into another room to pour something to drink, and it was at that moment, as I was later told, that my appendicitis had perforated, I felt very weak and fell. Then everything seemed to float violently, and I felt the vibration of my a creature tearing out of the body, and heard beautiful music. I floated around the room and then through the door I was transported to the veranda. And there it seemed to me that some kind of cloud began to gather around me through the pink fog. And then I floated past through the partition. as if she wasn’t there at all, towards the transparent clear light.
“He was beautiful, so brilliant, so radiant, but he didn’t dazzle me at all. It was an unearthly light. I had never truly seen anyone in this light, and yet she contained a special individuality... It was the light of absolute understanding and perfect love. In my mind I heard: “Do you love me?” This was not said in the form of a specific question, but I think the meaning can be expressed as follows: “If you really love me, come back and finish what you started in your life.” And all this time I felt surrounded by overwhelming love and compassion."
No one denies the phenomenon of post-mortem visions in people who were in a state of clinical death. The question is the interpretation of the nature of these visions. The President of the French Tantalological Association, Louis-Vincens Thomas, believes that both fanatical mystics who try to use the OBC phenomenon to promote their ideas and those who simplistically reduce the phenomenon to hallucinations are wrong. Most of the patients interviewed by Moody are believers, usually Christians. Their existential experience seems to indicate the unconditional existence of God and that our soul is immortal. Dr. Karlis Ozis, who collected data on 3,800 patients who were on the verge of death, notes that believers have visions more often than non-believers. At the same time, obvious elements of Buddhism are woven into the Christian experience of the “returnees”.
- Life
- Life concept
- The meaning and purpose of life
- Death
- Death from a scientific point of view
- Death as the denial of life
- The essence of death in Russian philosophy
- Bioethics
- Concept of bioethics
- Dialogue between philosophy and bioethics
Conclusion
Introduction
The theme of “human life and death” is immense. Almost all philosophers have spoken about it to one degree or another.
The mysteries of life and death, the problems of the immortality of the soul - this worries everyone. This problem is relevant for all times. But the whole significance of the problem of death, its definition, its understanding is to solve problems associated with life: to understand what the meaning of life is, how to live here on Earth, why to live, how to live your life so that there was no feeling of dissatisfaction with the life lived, a feeling of its uselessness, failure. Addressing the problem of death has moral value when death is considered as the result of life, its overall summary assessment, as comprehension of the deep foundations of human existence. Therefore, the task of philosophy is not to study “other worlds”, but to create a concept of life and death. And there is no doubt that, ultimately, this concept will be developed in the near future.
Life and death are the eternal problem of human existence. And it is the eternal dispute between a person’s desire for a morally worthy life and the frailty of his physical existence.
The problem of life and death is global, personal, world-historical, and purely individual. This is how every philosophical problem should be. And today it is being increasingly discussed in philosophy and ethics, moving to its rightfully central place in philosophy, and constitutes one of the signs of the renewal of spiritual life in our country.
- Life
- Life concept
In the 20th century the concept of life deepened significantly. A qualitative structural difference between life at all its stages is that the structure of living things is dynamic and labile. Living things are not limited to protein as a substrate and metabolism as a function. Modern science has fully proven that the qualitative difference between living and nonliving things lies in the structure of their compounds, in structure and connections, in the features of functions, in the characteristics and organization of interacting processes. At the same time, complete unity was established in the composition of the chemical elements of living and nonliving things.
In the second half of the 20th century, the following definition was proposed: life is a way of existence of matter that naturally arises at the level of high-molecular compounds and is characterized by dynamic, labile structures, a self-exchange function, as well as processes of self-regulation, self-healing and accumulation of hereditary information. In this definition, life is a dialectical unity of three features - form, functions, processes, while F. Engels' definition is a dialectical unity of two features - form and functions.
From other definitions of modern scientists: Russian Chelikov and Canadian Selye. According to the first, life is a way of existence of a specifically heterogeneous material substrate, the universality and uniqueness of which determine the expedient self-reproduction of all forms of the organic world in their unity and diversity. According to the definition of the famous Canadian biologist G. Selye (1907-1982), life is a process of continuous adaptation of organisms to constantly changing conditions of the external and internal environment. Adaptations consist in maintaining the structure and functions of all key systems of the body when exposed to environmental factors of various nature. Adaptations are the basis for the stability and productivity of all organisms.
In research into the problem of the origin of life, several main approaches can be distinguished. First of all, the substance approach should be mentioned. It was developed by A.I. Oparin, J. Haldane. The key significance for the origin of life, according to this approach, is the presence of a certain substance and its certain structures. One of the prominent representatives of this trend, V.A. Engelhardt believed that a genuine study of the problem of life should be based on the data of chemistry, and not mathematics. As for Oparin, he emphasized the irreducibility of biology to physics and chemistry.
The next important approach is the functional approach, the main authors of which were A. N. Kolmogorov and A. A. Lyapunov. Proponents of this approach considered a living organism as a thermodynamic “black box”, i.e. they were only interested in the signals at the entrance to the system and at the exit from it. They considered the presence of “controlled processes” of information transfer to be a distinctive feature of living organisms. They did not attach much importance to the connection of life with certain chemical elements and even accepted the possibility of non-protein forms of life. One of the representatives of this trend, V.N. Veselovsky, recognized “dynamic self-preservation” as the defining feature of living things.
Life has its own unique specificity, its own quality and various bright facets. “Living forms... - wrote P. Kemp and K. Arms, - are an expression of the ceaseless flow of matter and energy that flows through the organism and at the same time creates it... We find these continuous changes at all levels of biological organization. In cells there is a constant destruction of the chemical compounds that make it up, but in this destruction it continues to exist as a whole. In a multicellular organism, cells continuously die off and are replaced by new ones, but the organisms continue to exist as a whole. In a biocenosis, or species, some individuals die, while others, new ones, are born. Thus, any organic system seems to exist continuously.”
For a person, life is an integral activity, vital activity in the deepest sense of the word. Against the background of life, a person carries out special or specialized forms of activity, such as communication, cognition, practical activity, work, rest, etc. These forms of activity exist and develop only in the general context of life, the life activity of the subject.
There are three levels of human life or three human lives:
1. Plant life is nutrition, excretion, growth, reproduction, adaptation.
2. Animal life is gathering, hunting, protection, sexual and other communication, caring and raising children, orientation activities, play activities.
3. Cultural life or life in culture is knowledge, management, invention, craft, sports, art (art), philosophy.
This division of life was already outlined by Aristotle. These three lives are relatively independent, equally important for a person, interact, influence and mediate each other. As a result, we have one very diverse, rich, contradictory human life.
The presence of a third level of life in a person makes his life fundamentally different from the life of a plant or animal, and this difference increases with every step along the path of cultural progress.
Based on what has been said, we can give the following definition: a person’s life is his life as a living being and life in culture.
- The meaning of life and the purpose of life
The question of the meaning of life at all stages of history has caused fierce debate. Various philosophical and theological systems not only approached the explanation of the meaning of life from different points of view, but also made this issue the subject of ideological debate. Cyrenaics, Socrates, Aristotle, Epicureans and Stoics, philosophers and theologians of the Middle Ages, German natural philosophers, representatives of the philosophy of life of the early 20th century, the predecessors of modern existentialism, made attempts to solve the problem of the meaning of human existence. Some people, including some philosophers, believe that the meaning of life is to seek that meaning. ON THE. Berdyaev, for example, wrote: “Even though I don’t know the meaning of life, the search for meaning already gives meaning to life, and I will devote my life to this search for meaning. This view of the meaning of life is nothing more than a play on words. Searching all the time, all your life for the meaning of life is some kind of infantilism. An adult, mature person, one way or another, finds the meaning of life and realizes it, lives a meaningful life. A person who is looking for the meaning of life, just trying to find it, is an undecided, unformed person who has not yet emerged as a solver of life’s problems. The meaning of life is similar to a goal. Before achieving a goal, moving from goal to result, a person must determine a goal for himself and set it. But goal setting is only the first stage. A person performs actions not only to set and define a goal, but in order to achieve it. So is the meaning of life. Finding the meaning of life is the first part of the problem. The second part is the realization of the meaning of life, a meaningful, meaningful life.
Further, it is very important, on the one hand, to seek and find the meaning of life, and, on the other, not to overestimate the importance of this issue, not to get hung up on the search for the meaning of life. Life is partly meaningful and partly not.
Life has meaning to the extent that it is meaningful, intelligently organized, and humanly significant.
The goal “sets” the integrity of the activity. If this is the purpose of life, then it determines the integrity of life. For a person who does not have a goal in life, life is not realized as an organic whole in the biosocial, i.e., human sense. “Life without a goal is a man without a head,” says popular wisdom.
Not every person sets a goal in life, but if he does, then the person considers it as targeted activity.
in real life there is a whole goal tree. The purpose of life is the main or general purpose of life. In addition to it, there are either subordinate, intermediate, or secondary goals. Subordinate and intermediate goals are goals, the implementation of which opens the way to the main goal of life and brings us closer to it. Side or parallel goals are goals that shape the whole life and determine the full harmonious development of a person. In their sum they are no less important than the main goal of life. In some situations, a conflict arises between the main goal of life and secondary goals. This conflict can end either in the victory of the main goal of life or in the victory of secondary goals.
The main goal of life is a goal, the implementation of which justifies the life of a person as a whole, as an individual, a subject standing somewhere on an equal footing with society, aware of his goals as the goals of a person in general or the goals of a particular community of people. In the main goal of life, according to the logic of things, the aspirations of man as an individual and the goals of society merge together. The problem of determining the purpose of life is akin to the problem of choosing a profession. Moreover, the first is, as a rule, a continuation of the second. Chance, necessity, external circumstances, incentives, and internal motivations “participate” in the formation of the purpose of life.
In some cases, it also happens that a person does not stop at choosing one goal in life.
Thus, one can see two sides of conscious life activity: goal setting(search for a goal, choosing a goal) and focus(purposefulness, movement towards a goal, or rather, from a goal to a result). Both sides are equally important for a person. Live in in a sense there is a unity of purpose and aimlessness, i.e. the unity of organization and disorganization, work and rest, tension and relaxation. Aimlessness is realized, first of all, in the fact that, along with the main goal of life, there are many secondary goals. The search and implementation of a secondary goal (and at the same time a distraction from the main goal) can be interpreted as aimlessness. They say that you can’t work all the time, think about one thing, that you need to be distracted, have fun, relax, relieve tension, and switch to another type of activity. It is no coincidence that modern man pays more and more attention to side activities and hobbies, intuitively realizing that the stress of work, the main goal, the main business of life can simply destroy him.
- Death
Death from a scientific point of view
Sometimes the concept of partial death is distinguished, i.e. death of a group of cells, part or whole organ. In single-celled organisms - protozoa - the natural death of an individual manifests itself in the form of division, since it is associated with the cessation of the existence of a given individual and the emergence of two new ones in its place. The death of an individual is usually accompanied by the formation of a corpse. Depending on the causes of death, higher animals and humans are distinguished: natural death (also called physiological), which occurs as a result of a long, consistently developing extinction of the main vital functions of the body as a result of aging, and premature death (sometimes called pathological), caused by painful conditions of the body, damage to vital organs (brain, heart, lungs, liver, etc.). Premature death can be sudden, i.e. occur within a few minutes or even seconds (for example, with a heart attack). Violent death can be the result of an accident, suicide, or murder.
The death of warm-blooded animals and humans is associated with the cessation, first of all, of breathing and blood circulation. Therefore, there are 2 main stages of death: the so-called clinical death and the so-called biological, or true, death that follows it. After the period of clinical death, when a full restoration of vital functions is still possible, biological death occurs - the irreversible cessation of physiological processes in cells and tissues. All processes associated with death are studied by thanatology.
- Death as the denial of life
Death is not something absolutely opposed to life, it is a necessary moment and the result of the vital activity of the organism. The transition from life to death is natural, but people have always perceived death as the most terrible and incomprehensible phenomenon for humans. Death in the mythological beliefs of ancient peoples is not a natural, inevitable phenomenon, but is the result of the machinations of evil spirits, which, making their way into the human body, gradually destroy it.
Later religions contrasted life and death with each other as something completely opposite. For a Christian, a Muslim, a Buddhist, real life is only the “external side” of posthumous existence, an otherworldly life, supposedly more valuable than earthly life.
Fear of death is a natural and, paradoxically, useful feeling in a certain sense. Death awaits everyone - both weak and strong, both happy and unhappy. Biological death is an eternal problem that many generations of people have thought about. This question stood before both philosophers and ordinary people, and before genius and before ordinary people. Death is the end of everything; there is no escape from it.
Progressive thinkers strongly opposed the fear of death. “To be afraid of death is to imagine yourself wise without being wise,” said Socrates to the judge who sentenced him to death. Epicurus more clearly showed in his famous saying the meaninglessness of the fear of death: “death is nothing for us,” he says, “for when we exist, death is not yet present, and when death is present, we no longer exist.”
The fear of death disappears in people who feel the fullness of their life activity, who feel the necessity of their life for others.
In every individual destiny, death, in the end, always triumphs over life in the biological sense. However, in the succession of continuously reborn generations, life triumphs over death, even in the biological sense. Each individual person is mortal, but humanity is immortal.
If death is a necessary moment of life, in the depths of the psyche of the living there must be a peculiar instinct for a positive attitude towards death, when the body has completely used up its vital forces.
- The essence of death in Russian philosophy
In the history of Russian philosophy, these ideas received an original, in some respects, embodiment in the “project of a common cause” by N.F. Fedorov, a very controversial Russian thinker.
In the “philosophy of the common cause” N.F. Fedorov, raising the question of “brotherhood or kinship, about the reasons for the non-brotherly, not related, i.e. non-peaceful state of the world and about the means to restore kinship”, addresses on behalf of the “non-scientists” to scientists, spiritual and secular, believers and non-believers, in order, through joint activity, to contribute to the regulation of “all worlds by all resurrected generations. He believes that “as soon as we consider the earth as a cemetery, and nature as a deadly force, the political question will be replaced by the physical, and the physical will not be separated from the astronomical, that is, the earth will be recognized as a celestial body, and the stars as earths.”
So, the meaning of life is defined by N.F. Fedorov in a very “original” way: it is opposed to humanism, which affirms man as an individual and personality, and not just as “a part of the whole” - “the son of man.” From this definition it follows that all means, including science, must be subordinated to some “ultimate goal”, the knowledge of “what should be”, namely the unification of everyone in the common task of turning the blind force of nature into an instrument of human reason for the return of the repressed »
Meanwhile, he believed that death is simply the result or expression of immaturity, a dependent, non-original life, an inability to mutually restore or maintain life.
“People are still immature, half-beings: but the fullness of personal existence, personal perfection is possible only with general perfection. Coming of age is the painlessness of immortality, but without the resurrection of the dead, the immortality of the living is impossible.
The question of the phenomenon of death and immortality cannot have final solutions suitable for everyone. But it denotes a general ideological position and life paths for resolving these issues, which are so dissimilar and unique intellectually and emotionally for each individual.
- Bioethics
Concept of bioethics
- Dialogue between philosophy and bioethics
Yes, philosophy, by inertia, plays with words, especially such as “death”, “dead”, “mortal existence”, and, at the same time, philosophy understands perfectly well that there is a real, so to speak, genuine death - “biological death” . But the event of death itself, the criteria for the fact of death, have never been the subject of philosophical reflection. “The irreversibility of biological death, its objective, point-by-point character is a modern scientific fact,” categorically declares, for example, Baudrillard on the pages of his famous work “Symbolic Exchange and Death” and continues: “Death should in no case be understood as a real event that occurs with some subject and body, but as some form - in certain cases, a form of social relations..."
The word “death,” well known to every living person, is “biological” or true death. Traditional criteria for death refer to the statement of biological death. But what does “tradition” mean in the context of the search for the criterion of “true” death?
“Biological death” is the same cultural construct as “brain death.” I mean, first of all, the concept of “biological death”. It was born not so long ago - four centuries ago with the hands of the father of modern Western philosophy, Rene Descartes. Descartes' dualism still rules the world of human consciousness. Modern death was finally formalized during the Enlightenment. “The understanding of death as natural, profane and irreversible is the main sign of “Enlightenment” and Reason... Traditional “biological death” exists as a metaphor, and bioethics does not even notice this, and philosophy is silent. Biological death appeared as an instantaneous event, a “mathematical point”, and, therefore, an imaginary event that has neither place nor time and, therefore, no meaning for human beings. And here philosophy cannot look down on modern bioethics. From the very beginning it was absolutely impossible, moreover, there was no need for philosophy to determine or establish the moment of death - this was the concern of doctors under the guidance of Nature. And all that remained for philosophy itself was to comprehend its attitude to a possible event, but, however, never touch the event itself, as if it really did not exist. Death as disappearance, as a simple biological point, made everyone equal and, as such, an instant, was inaccessible to man. That is why biological death acted as a kind of symbol of immortality for the former person.
In modern science, death is a process with rather vague parameters, and, accordingly, the criteria for death and the very statement of the fact of death represent, in the opinion of the most radical innovators, a point arbitrarily placed by the hands of science and medicine on the line of life. Compared to religious ideas about death, neither biological death nor brain death make any sense. Ultimately, in despising continental philosophy, modern medicine plays with the same pure metaphors. And, if this final point is set not by nature, but by medicine, if, thanks to the achievements of science, the human body loses its previous biological, i.e. “mortal” framework, then perhaps the fact of death itself is nothing more than an absurd, fatal mistake of nature? “Now society has rebelled against death. More precisely, it is ashamed of death, more ashamed than afraid. It behaves as if death does not exist
Problems of the finitude of human existence, the limits of consciousness, either retreat to the periphery of philosophical analysis, or turn into a linguistic game devoid of meaning and real content in the field of historical and philosophical studies. It is natural that new areas of human culture are developing, arguing about the essence of death as if not a single line had been written in the civilized world until now. “Death is a strictly biological concept that relates only to the human body, and not to the individual,” says one of the fathers of modern bioethics, Bernart.
Conclusion
Life and death... Aren't these stages of the same process? Isn't dying part of life? Today philosophers and scientists are trying to ask difficult questions. It’s just unclear to what extent we know how to answer them today. Have you completely forgotten how?.. How can you be useful to a living, competent meeting when discussing such an abandoned topic? Maybe the experience of your life - everyone has their own. The experience of your own death?.. This is already more interesting. But here complex games usually begin: “No one has returned from there yet,” “those returning have no proof that they really went there,” “halfway is not yet,” etc.
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