Understanding Death: The Most Important Event of Your Life by BahaiBookstore.com

By John S. Hatcher

Wilmette, Illinois

All rights reserved. Published 2009 Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper ∞ 12 11 10 09 4 3 2 1 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Hatcher, John, Dr. Understanding death : the most important event of your life / by John S. Hatcher. p. cm. ISBN 978-1-931847-72-8 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Death. 2. Death— Religious aspects—Bahai Faith. 3. Hatcher, John, Dr. I. Title. BD444.H38 2009 297.9’323—dc22 2009024257

Cover design by Robert A. Reddy Book design by Patrick Falso

c o nte nts Preface…ix 1 / The Art of Dying Gracefully…1 2 / A Dialogue in Plato’s Womb…15 3 / Raising a Willful Fetus…31 4 / Death and Human Ontology…53 5 / The Lamb White Days…77 6 / Achilles’ Choice versus Moral Resolve…97 7 / Jumping Train in Nashville…125 8 / A New Mizán for a Broken Bump…151 9 / On the Road Again…179 10 / The Fear of Death in Madrid…201 11 / The Art of Dying…233 12 / Aging as a Training Technique…259 13 / Even Manifestations Grieve…281 Conclusion…309

1 T h e A rt o f Dy i n g G rac e f ul ly Caius is a Man Man is Mortal Caius is Mortal What prompted me to write this book is that I am dying. I don’t have a terminal disease, but I am, like Caius, a man, and an aging one at that. And thus far in the history of human beings—at least on planet Earth—this classic (and classical) syllogism has proved invariably accurate. So far every one of us has met the same fate, though we don’t dare discuss it much because it’s so . . . defeatist. Consequently, at age sixty-eight, the laws of statistics and probability dictate that I would do well to focus my attention more acutely on that point of transition, that “milestone” that I will most surely experience before many more years have passed. The problem is that the term death has such a negative and ³nal connotation that I am loathe to use it. Like most others, I prefer euphemisms like “pass,” “pass on,” “pass away,” “ascend” (a bit presumptuous on my part), or “kick the bucket” (more in keeping with my present country environment). But I have chosen for our purposes to employ the term “milestone”

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because I have come to believe that we continue to exist after our body gives out, as I hope to demonstrate later on. So I have taken it upon myself to write this book—for myself more than for you—to explore and hopefully to demystify this natural and inevitable milestone in all our lives. My objective is partially to deal head-on with a subject that is rarely discussed dispassionately and frankly, even though it is, so far as we know, a rather important climax to (or milestone for) everything we undertake in this, the physical portion of our lives. For even though I believe that our consciousness and individuality continue beyond this milestone, I cannot in all honesty say that I am ready and prepared for that transformation or that I am without anxiety or fear at its inexorable approach.

A S u b j e c t ive Per spective This brings me to an important forewarning to the reader. Because it is primarily my own death I will be discussing, I will be speaking from an unabashedly subjective point of view. This is not a matter of my being an expert on the matter, but, then, I suppose I am as much an expert on aging and dying as any other mortal human, except for those who have already died or possibly those who have had a near-death experience, and I will certainly use their observations as a part of this discussion. Psychologists, gerontologists, and oncologists could help us make better academic generalizations about what the aging and dying among us go through, and I will include their comments as well if it helps. But I’m not really interested in generalizations about what it feels like to get old, to be old, or how old people act or live or die. I have not entitled our conversation “Understanding Death” because I think I have come up with sage advice about how to do it well. Rather, it is my hope that this discussion will help me come to terms with this next stage of my life. 2

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According to all the standards that I once held, I am old. What is more, almost every month another of my former colleagues at the university dies o². I see old friends at a funeral, and a few months later I’m at their funeral. When I survey the obituary page, I notice that the mean age of those who have “passed on” is about my age or close to it. I certainly don’t intend for this to be an elegy or lament about the abominable treatment or status of the elderly in our society. I am not a social reformer per se, and I still feel spunky enough to handle most things that come my way. But I would rather deal with the fact that even though every one of us is on “death row” awaiting one and all the same fate, we never seem to have an open, honest, and forthright conversation about this fact. We somehow think we can ignore this elephant in the room. But the elephant will not leave. To repeat a passage I cited in an earlier book, The Purpose of Physical Reality, “Death is a subject that is evaded, ignored, and denied by our youth-worshipping, progressoriented society. It is almost as if we have taken on death as just another disease to be conquered.”

T h e Qu est of Our S afa ri I know we cannot capture or slay the elephant of death, and who would want to? He’s peaceable enough. He does nothing speci³cally to interrupt all that we would do in our lives. We can move around him, arrange our furniture so that he’s hardly noticeable, perhaps hang a nice tapestry across his back or place some ·owers in his trunk. My now deceased friend Gertrude Ridgell used to collect elephants, had them on every surface in her living room—porcelain, crystal, or clay. Perhaps now I understand why. Familiarity does not always breed contempt. Sometimes it makes us fearless. 3

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So wouldn’t it be nice if, instead of trying to ignore him, we tried to understand him, tame him, and make him our friend and companion? I realize that many will consider this quest somewhat ludicrous or unnecessary. Death is what it is, and all our speculation, study, and talk will not change what it is. In fact, our pursuit reminds me of a passage from literature that touches upon this notion of who can claim to be an expert about death. I should warn you that as a retired professor of literature, I will make these allusions from time to time, not to demonstrate my breadth of knowledge, but simply because in some areas of living, more of my experience comes from having lived life vicariously through great works of literary masters than from any exotic life I might have lived. Big game hunting, for example, is strictly for Hemingway types. In any case, this passage is from Chaucer’s “Friar’s Tale” about a corrupt summoner who is going about the land trying to elicit bribes, mostly from the impoverished, in return for not issuing them a summons to the ecclesiastical court to stand trial for some sin he will accuse them of having committed. As he travels, he encounters a ³end from hell, an emissary of Satan who is gathering souls. The summoner in his hubris challenges the ³end to a contest to see who is the better trickster. Without going into needless detail, the summoner gets tricked himself by a sly elderly lady, loses the bet, and is doomed to hell. A bit unperturbed, the summoner, who had earlier asked the ³end eagerly what hell is like and how it operates, is now angry that he has lost the bet, even more so than that he has lost his soul, since he had pretty well abandoned it long before. So the ³end consoles the summoner, saying, “Don’t be angry. . . . You shall be in hell with me tonight where you shall learn more about our operations than a Master of Divinity.” My point in this obscure allusion is that since each of us would like more than anything to know about death and the afterlife, we, 4

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too, might ply philosophers, theologians, and spiritualists with endless questions about what they think the milestone of death is about, but the fact is that after our own “passing,” each of us will also come to know more about the afterlife “than a Master of Divinity.” We will all become experts when our time comes—possibly tomorrow, possibly this afternoon, given the possibility of a sudden and unexpected departure from physical reality. Nevertheless, let us plod ahead as best we can to see if we can come to understand this implacable quarry because ours is a worthy quest, as relevant to our present lives as any task could be. I would not be writing this if I did not feel we could discover some worthwhile methods of coming to terms with death—some respectable answers to the essential questions about aging, death, and the afterlife. I also suspect we can discover insights that are not the usual pat answers, not the illogical or baseless myths with which we have been plied our whole lives. This is not to say that our conclusions need disparage or disdain the best of what others have discovered in their own journeys into the jungles of theology or philosophy to track down that enigmatic beast that sometimes emerges in the dark of night to startle us from the quietude of sleep.

M appi n g the Journey Our investigation, like our lives, will proceed according to a series of milestones, turning points that section out the sequence of our lives, or at least the “normal” paradigm we have devised for those of us who endure to old age. We will begin with our prenatal experiences in the uterine world where, though alive and kicking, we don’t seem to have much control over our destiny. We do seem already to have a fully developed personality, or so I have observed as my own children emerged at their second major milestone of birth, the ³rst being conception itself when 5

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whatever we become is set in motion “like a fat gold watch,” as Sylvia Plath calls the newly conceived child in her poem “Morning Song.” Next we will discuss the primal stirrings of life during childhood, or at least as childhood should be. We will then examine our awakening from that special time of grace when we are mostly oblivious to our own transience, until that point when we ³rst become aware of our own mortality. In particular we will take note of some of the theories pro²ered about the power and importance of this time when, according to some, we are newly emerged from the realm of the spirit and are attuned to the sacred verities of life. We will consider to what extent these early notions of life, nature, and self become a repository we revisit and draw on for the rest of our lives. And so we will proceed from milestone to milestone until, at last, we try to assess the wisdom we have accumulated through the years. We will talk frankly about the degree to which our lives can become shaped more by our desire to reject our mortality than by positive forces, and that we are we impelled more by anxiety, fear, and consternation than we are by love, the desire for knowledge, and the pursuit of truth. Related to this assessment will be our examination of some attempts to bring about a degree of reassurance, consolation, and peace of mind in spite of our awareness of our own mortality as well as the fears we harbor for our children and grandchildren. Finally, we will discover how the teachings of the Bahá’í Faith in regard to life, aging, dying, and the afterlife might o²er consolation and resolution for the most di¹cult questions we will encounter along the way, especially those that concern our own mortality. In fact, we will discover how some of the more cogent arguments about aging, death, and the afterlife discussed by great minds of the past have set the stage for the very enlightenment that is now available through the authoritative Bahá’í texts.

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W h y Ba há’í? The reason we will often consult the Bahá’í texts and teachings regarding life in relation to death and to the afterlife is in large part because I am a member of the Bahá’í Faith. I have been since 1959, my sophomore year at Vanderbilt when I converted from the Methodist Church after studying the Bahá’í religion rather intensely for three years. But please don’t worry about my trying to convert you or convince you I am right or that the Bahá’í Faith is the single valid source of salvation or of consolation about being mortal. I intend to examine various opinions, beliefs, and theories about death even though I approach this subject personally convinced that there is an afterlife, that our conscious self continues to exist after our bodies malfunction, and that this afterlife experience will be tailored to our individual situations. After all, since no two people have had the exact same life experience, it only makes sense, especially if we assume God is as reasonable as we are. However, you may be assured that though I approach this subject as a person of faith, I am no less a²ected by the process of aging and possibly no less intrigued by or apprehensive about approaching death than most other people. True, I am comforted and sustained by my beliefs, but I am still in need of this discussion, even as I suspect most people are. For while I am constantly amazed by the depth of logic set forth in the Bahá’í writings about the reality of human existence, I am no less curious by the prospect of what will happen to me when my body no longer exists, though I have to confess I am less concerned than I might have been when it was unwrinkled, taut, and mildly attractive. Perhaps I am not supposed to admit all this. The writings of my own faith assert unambiguously that any exact knowledge about the process of the continuation of our lives is purposefully withheld from us so 7

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that we can go about ful³lling the purpose ordained for our earthly existence. The Bahá’í writings imply, even while assuring us that death is “a messenger of joy” and a point of release from the constraints of physical limitations, that this bewilderment, this awe and wonder are likewise purposeful, and that the details about the afterlife are veiled from our exact knowledge for a very speci³c reason: “If any man be told that which hath been ordained for such a soul in the worlds of God, the Lord of the throne on high and of earth below, his whole being will instantly blaze out in his great longing to attain that most exalted, that sancti³ed and resplendent station (Bahá’u’lláh, Gleanings, no. 81.1). In short, one reason we are not told by the Prophets or Manifestations of God more exact information about the afterlife is that if we knew how wonderful that reality is, we would not be able to restrain ourselves from “crossing over”—a euphemism for suicide. In this same passage, another reason for this veiling of the afterlife is implied—we need to focus on preparing ourselves for that next stage of existence by developing those spiritual faculties and capacities that we require if we are to navigate in a metaphysical environment: The nature of the soul after death can never be described, nor is it meet and permissible to reveal its whole character to the eyes of men. The Prophets and Messengers of God have been sent down for the sole purpose of guiding mankind to the straight Path of Truth. The purpose underlying Their revelation hath been to educate all men, that they may, at the hour of death, ascend, in the utmost purity and sanctity and with absolute detachment, to the throne of the Most High. (Bahá’u’lláh, Gleanings, no, 81.1) Notice that in this same statement, Bahá’u’lláh, the Prophet and Founder of the Bahá’í Faith, has implied another obvious but worthy 8

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