DEATH AS A MATTER OF DIGNITY

 The Great Fear

    Americans have been shown that death is to be feared, especially as it is portrayed as being painful, tragic, and having the possibility of dispensing eternal damnation as punishment for the wrong conduct while living. As a result of the fear of the painful, the tragic, and the unknown ideas of death, Americans are concerned ,and may have the fear that there will be a lack of dignity made available to the body during the death experience.

  The media sensationalizes the horror of death in tragic murders and catastrophes. Americans are saturated with Nursing Home and hospital employee negligence, and some are refused help because of the lack of, improper, or insufficient health insurance. Terrified witnesses, reporters, and families and friends of victims add to the shock-effect of stories of tragedy. Children's cartoons are saturated with violence and atrocious misrepresentations of the death experience as characters are regularly maimed, and recovered. To a child who has no concept of the reality of death, the media represents two-dimensional confusion, which may result in mimicking the humorous, yet potentially deadly, caricatures.

  The American expectation and expression of death as tragedy is pronounced as a dying 92-year-old is attached to expensive life-support machinery forcing the body to remain alive, even though the person has been diagnosed as terminal and hopeless. Some of the aged dying, and terminal patients, ask for dignity and that death be allowed to take its natural course. They demand a transition, without the medical marvels which may jog them temporarily back into consciousness and pain before having to begin the death process again. Self-inflicted and Physician Assisted Suicide (PAS) is an option that some may demand when contemplating or experiencing a painful transition. Consequently, dignity while dying (especially as it regards the suffering patient), and religious issues of life after death as proof of personality survival, are being discussed as important contemporary issues in America.

  The question regarding the survival of the personality after death rests largely with the individual's synchronization of personal beliefs, cultural beliefs, scientific data or the lack thereof. Religious leaders define the consequences and rules of the spiritual aspects of the death experience, and psychologists and philosophers define the ambiguities. Scientists and technologists define the elements regarding the physiological and biological aspects of death. Near death survivors and shamans attest to, and present their justification of, the otherworld reality, but humankind objects to the relinquishment of this life, which is shown in the vigorous effort toward life extension.

  Americans focus on possessing the external; clothing, cars, homes, money, and the maintenance or preservation of same, with little time for nurturing the spiritual life. Later, when life is examined as a result of being ill, destitute, or accepting or being forced with the challenge of a leadership role (e.g., foster parenting, or the death of a spouse), one may be faced with a spiritual emergency which will demand necessary changes in thinking regarding one's future.

  The reality that life will end, at some point soon, may justify one's need to prepare for it by setting up funds for proper medical treatment for life maintenance, or funeral expenses to initiate some dignity in the disposition of the body after death. The traditional ways of handling death with the family administering medicine, remaining at the side of the dying loved one, and performing the funereal preparations and burial of the deceased is no longer practiced in America. The traditional system has been replaced with legal procedures of handling the dying and the disposal of the body, which rely upon strangers as specialists, in hospitals, and Director's, in funeral homes. Pre-payment for medical treatment in America does not insure the dignity which should be afforded to those who are dying, yet a return to traditional ways may alleviate the fear.

  The source of teachings on death and dying can be found in a culture's creation mythologies. These creation myths tell a story, explicitly or implicitly, about its heroes and founders, who outlive the seeming finale of death, revealing the destiny
of humankind.

  Religious symbology, practices, and traditions have been maintained by the principle characters or founders of a given religion. Ideology is furthered at some point in history by proponents and adherents who may customize the religion to include contemporary principles of the culture and its new authorities. Those who maintain the original principles of the religion and renounce its modifications are called sectarian or sects. Groups who are separate from the major religions, may also carry the negative nomenclature "cults", yet Christianity and the other major Western religions were all new or original at one point in history.

  Americans, a composite of cultures, share beliefs in sacred traditions primarily of either resurrection or reincarnation, of multiple lifetimes versus one lifetime and resurrection. The major symbols of the Western views of death share something in common.  British historian Arnold Toynbee, wrote that re-embodiment of the dead is the belief of Zoroastrians, Jews, Christians, Muslims, Hindus, and Tibetan Buddhists. The first four teach that humans live one life, the soul survives death, is disembodied, and will be re-embodied at the final Judgment to live forever in the peace of Heaven, or the anguish of Hell. Hindu and Tibetan Buddhist teachings state that souls are reborn in psychosomatic form many times.

  The modern hospice care-giver or the thanatologist specialist, and the native or indigenous are persons who are the chaperons to the door of the otherworld. They emphasize dignity for the dying while they are yet living beings, and inspire the patient to have the courage to release this life as spirit, into the realm of the Creator. The realization of spiritual death and rebirth is taught by shamans and by converted NDE survivors. Spiritual death refers to dying while still alive, and is the process of rebirth in which the fear of physical dying is overcome, the deathless spirit is realized and dignity is achieved.

    Traditional or indigenous societies treat their dying, and their families as an integral unit.  These societies are the modern holistic hospice movement's predecessors.  The traditional ways of handling death and dying is another option that may bring dignity and respect back into the community.

    Traditional care in indigenous communities is provided by a psychopomp, a shaman who is familiar with the many death rites and care of the dying. The psychopomp interacts with the patient's family and the community, and death is portrayed as an explainable, inevitable part, or extension of life.  The shamanic community highlights the achievement of a "good death" as a death without pain or fear, and to depart this world with dignity.

    Native Americans and Africans, as earth-centered peoples learn that death (according to their shamans and NDE survivors) is the beginning of the extension of spiritual life, and the survival of the personality in the otherworld.  The NDE survivor's philosophy regarding the experience of seeing the light when dying, is akin to that which is spoken by the Tibetan Buddhist psychopomp who serves as a bridge into the otherworld (Bardo) of death.  The Tibetan and native American, particularly the Navajo, remarkably intertwine in cosmogonies regarding the sacredness of the mountains, lakes, and winds in their intimate connection to the earth.

    Through ritual and spiritual practice the Tibetan, Native, and African shaman maintain effective healing, transformation, and identity, utilizing the circle as a symbol of awakening and connecting to the nature of the spirit.  As they motivate themselves onward, psychopomps believe that the mind is the vital controller which brings balance to a person.  Seeking harmony in all phases of life, from birth to death, shamans believe that an individual's life changes from various periods of growth whether physical (menarche, pregnancy, cycles of adolescence, illness,) emotional, mental, or spiritual (often due to physical, mental and emotional growth).  As the person changes a particular ritual is added, deleted, or altered.

    The ceremonies of the respect for life and death are similar for shamans around the world.  Lakota shaman Lame Deer's interests in the survival and dignity of humanity led him to establish a friendship with the 14th Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso who felt honored as they participated in a Sweat Lodge ceremony.  Lame Deer also participated in ceremonies with the Kamapa of Tibet and The Sami (Laplanders, who also have tipi's and similar songs and purification ceremonies).  Inuit Eskimo shamans (who have Yuwipi ceremonies like the Lakota) celebrated with Lame Deer, as did Druid shamans at Stonehenge who worshipped at sacred stones like the Native Americans.  The French Druids from Brittany utilize the Oak Leaf in the same manner as the Native American sacred pipe, and Lame Deer found that Celtic shamans, like the Lakota, received visions of plants, animals, and celestial bodies. For the Lakota death is not feared because there is no death, only a distinguished type of sleep, there is, however, the unacceptable death of the soul, caused by unrighteous living.

    African deceased are recognized as part of the cosmological order, and are their link to the otherworld as reincarnations that replenish lineage, and the "veneration of departed ancestors is a major characteristic of all traditional religions.  Traditional shamans also stress that all relationships must be repaired prior to an effective healing, or for awareness in the death experience.

    Reincarnation (also called transmigration) blends the law of evolution in a natural way, ascertaining spiritual awakening through the succession of lifetimes.  Certain death rituals of Tibetan monks and Navajo shaman psychopomps are uncannily familiar, both recite prayers and chants.  The tone of the chanting relieves stress for the dying.  Mantras, or holy words, are said for the patients recovery, if they fail the chants continue until the dying has achieved a dignified death.

    The natives abhorred American sideshows and museums which utilized and displayed their dead in  disrespect during the 1800's to the early 1970's.  Those of African descent were also outraged at the brutal hangings of their people, who were murdered by racist Americans, and displayed in public areas. Natives and Africans believed that in the afterlife the personality continued the same as lived in life:

    Many Indians [and Africans] perceived not only that the  
    next life was a continuation of the present mode of
    existence but also that the souls of people often
    remained in various places where they had died or
    suffered traumatic events.

Chief Seattle was forced to sign the Treaty of Medicine Creek in 1854. Deloria (1994) reviews Chief Seattle's famous speech and states, "In it he distinguished between tribal beliefs and the attitude of the Christians who were taking control of the land-at least in a legal sense.
The speech, in part, states:

  To us the ashes of our ancestors are sacred and their
  resting place is hallowed ground. You wander far from
  the graves of your ancestors and seemingly without
  regret...They are soon forgotten and never return. Our
  dead never forget the beautiful world that gave them
  being....Every part of this soil is sacred in the
  estimation of my people...And when the last Red Man
  shall have perished, and the memory of my tribe shall
  have become a myth...At night when the streets of your
  cities and villages are silent and you think them
  deserted, they will throng with the returning hosts
  that once filled and still love this beautiful
  land...be just and deal kindly with my people, for the
  dead are not powerless. Dead, did I say ? There is no
  death, only a change of worlds.

Reincarnation, was opposed by the Sadducees, the capitalists of the New Testament time period, however, Dr. Leslie D. Weatherhead advises:

  the early Christian Church accepted it [reincarnation]
  until the council of Constantinople in 553 A.D. and
  then discarded it by a vote of 3 to 2. Even Origin
  [185-254 C.E., who was excommunicated for his views
  regarding the soul's immortality], St. Augustine, and
  St. Francis of Assisi accepted it.
 

Mystics and initiates are believed to depart this life quickly with much energy, as stated by St. Paul:

  Listen! I will unfold a mystery: we shall not all die,
  but we shall all be changed in a flash, in the
  twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet-call. For
  the trumpet will sound, and the dead will rise
  imperishable, and we shall be changed. (I Corinthians 15:51-52)

This article is the copyrighted work of Professor E.L. Holmes and may not be used and/or published
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