Amicus Mortis Posts
March 5, 2019 /

A very surprising topic June 16, 2018

The following article is an abridged version of that featured in the Summer 2008 edition of Dialogue, produced by WN Bull.

Michele Knight surprised me when she told me the topic of her doctoral thesis: “ Ways of being: The alchemy of bereavement, grief and post-death contact”.  It is an unusual topic, not because there are not plenty of stories of this happening, in fact, grief literature note frequent reports of “post-death contact” between the bereaved and the deceased.  Often these reports are pathologised, and/or seen as hallucinations brought on by grief, yearning or searching for the deceased by way of locating similarities, resemblances, or unusual coincidences as evidence of the presence of the deceased.  Michele’s approach is not along these lines.

We discussed the tendency to find a “rational explanation” for everything, particularly something that seems beyond our rational understanding.  This approach is part of the air we breathe.  This is where we feel safe, with explanations, causes and diagnoses.  It is the reason why doctors and scientists and all other accepted experts are given respect and attention.  As our conversation continued, I was reminded of a quote from Shakespeare’s Hamlet – “there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy, Horatio”.  These “more things” are the subject matter of Michele’s research.

From very early on in her life, Michele could identify experiences that she would later describe as spiritual.  Put simply, these were experiences of a reality whose explanation lay beyond ‘rational’ thought or intellectual reasoning.  These were matters of the spirit; they needed to be understood from a spiritual perspective rather than from a mental or psychological perspective.

By now, I was aware of feeling a little uncomfortable.  I could not quite identify the source of this discomfort other than perhaps it was resulting from being taken beyond the ordinary level/scope of discourse and explanation into a world where another person’s experiences and stories were on a different plane from mine.  In a less polite part of myself, I heard a voice saying “is Michele a nutter?”

Quickly pulling myself together, I asked, “What Faculty is sponsoring your post-graduate studies?”  “The Faculty of Education and Social Work, at the University of Sydney”, Michele replied.  With an incredulousness which I managed to contain, I asked, “How come they have accepted a topic like yours?”

Michele explained the rigorous process required by the University for candidates wishing to conduct post-graduate research.  She had devoted 12 months of intense investigation in researching her topic, which included writing an intellectually robust 13,000 word proposal.  In addition, she had completed 3 units of study to support her research.  When her proposal was approved by the Faculty Research Committee, she was told this was one of the most impressive presentations the approving authority had received.  I relaxed, but only for a moment.

The rational part of me was still hanging on to the edge of skating rink, so to speak.  To venture out into the movement and meaning that Michele was describing, I needed to take a risk.

Michele was obviously comfortable in the university world.  She could match it with the best of them.  She had two higher degrees, a Bachelor of Health Science, and a Master of Applied Science, both majoring in research and Indigenous health.  She had lectured in Indigenous health for the University, and had tutored Indigenous students for a number of years.  But why this interest in the world of the bereaved especially when it was in such contrast to her academic career and professional development?

As for many of us, Michele’s interests were affected by personal experiences.  Within 18 months her husband died after being diagnosed with cancer, her mother died shortly and her teenage son moved out of home.  Prior to the advent of her husband’s illness, Michele had a premonition that there was suffering ahead, “a dark cloud on the horizon”.

The grief Michele described after these losses was as painful as the stories of loss of many people.  She spoke of her grief as though it were a door which took her into a part of herself into a world she didn’t know existed.  A comforting thought at this time was that if she had entered this world through a door, then she could leave that world in the same way.  Michele spoke of seeing her life unfold through these events, as one area of experience or learning lead to another … which brings me back to the doctoral thesis.

This topic is about spirituality.  Michele explained spirituality as the reality of a world which exists at the edge of and beyond our rational understanding.  While her research and competence are both examples of robust application of “rationality”, they are also a bridge or common ground where people who have not had Michele’s experiences can meet with her.  As I understand it, this meeting point or bridge is what Michele would call meaning which is individually derived from the shared lived experience of aspects of life.

In a conversation with a hard-headed friend about Michele’s research, I was told by my friend that she knew what Michele meant by meaning.  My friend recalled two or three acquaintances, widows and widowers, who had had experiences of their deceased spouses being present in some way, for a time.  In each case, there came a time when that presence was simply no longer there. The absence of the loved one was understood as, “They felt the change when each of us had re-engaged with life”. In other words, the meaning of the experience of presence, something that could not be rationally explained, was a source of comfort and support.  When that comfort and support were no longer needed, the deceased simply weren’t there.

I am not sure what Michele would think about mediums and Ouija boards, but from our conversation, I suspect that she would say this was not what she was interested in.  The meaning she was speaking about was the link between the living and the dead.  There was something ordinary and unforced about this contact.  It was freely given, natural, if you like, and it unlocked or opened up a dimension of the bereaved person’s grief experience.

I was suddenly feeling more comfortable.  This spirituality or meaning was both similar to our ordinary experience, because it impacted on ordinary experience, and different from ordinary experience, because it was not limited by the boundary of human existence, death.

Meaning bridged the gap between our experience of limit and those realities not subject to this boundary.  The experience of meaning can transform death and disaster into the possibilities of new life.  Only meaning can enter the finality of death and the pain of loss and awaken hope.  And, from Michele’s experience and that of the people she was interviewing for her research, contact with deceased people, in whatever forms, gives that meaning.

 
March 5, 2019 /

Things that go bump in the night May 30, 2018

For the past few months I’ve been living in a somewhat crowded house.  It wasn’t crowded in the sense that too many people lived in it, it was crowded in the sense that its previous and long deceased inhabitants also lived there (and quite noisily at times).

The house is built in a location which since the 1800s, and like so many historical sites in Sydney, has seen a fair share of tragedy and death; an Aboriginal massacre, a terrible farmhouse fire in which a mother and her two children perished (and after which her husband, deeply grieving, committed suicide), the death of an Inghams factory worker and the death of the previous home owner.

While I’m no stranger to ‘things that go bump in the night’, I was somewhat taken aback by the persistent nature of the phenomena; doors opening and closing by themselves, lights switching on and off, the continual sound of objects, or of someone, moving around in the kitchen, the sound of children’s footsteps running down the hallway, and knocking and tapping sounds.  There was also a strong sense of presence of children, and toward the end of my stay, their mother.

During this time I developed a rapport with someone I affectionately named ‘Mr Smith’.  I don’t know who Mr Smith was in his previous embodied life, or whether or not it bothered him that I didn’t know his real name. I do know that he was sad to see me go and that he was upset at the circumstances which led up to that, having been a silent witness to all that had occurred while I was there.

I felt ‘safe’ with Mr Smith, who appeared to have a fatherly affection for me, and who had in his own way watched over me during many times of distress.  My great grandmother who was a trance medium in her day, used to say that when we experience such things the dead are simply ‘passing through’ and that there is nothing to fear.  I must admit though that I did jump once or twice, especially on one occasion when I suddenly woke from a deep and dreamless sleep acutely aware of a presence standing outside my bedroom door, which then suddenly opened toward me.  Apart from that, and for most of the time, the non-material inhabitants of the household, and their goings-on, were largely benign.

These tales always make for fascinating reading and experiences such as these, which occur when material and non-material realities intersect, prompt us not only to ponder on our own mortality, but the afterlife in general.  I had the sense that these disembodied beings were somehow ‘anchored’ to the location, perhaps because they had a sense of belonging, for whatever reason, to it.  But they were ‘dead’, why were they there?

I thought a lot about this during my time in the house and often asked myself whether I wanted to be a Mr Smith, or a child running up and down a hallway who occasionally touches the living (I was poked and prodded a few times as well with a wee little finger), or a brooding presence loitering in a kitchen corner?  Do I want to exist in the narrow intersection of two realities, where these events are situated, or do I want to move beyond that, both while I’m living and after my death?

Life taught me long ago that there is a vastness beyond this place where the dead and the living intersect with one another.  When my death comes, which is the putting off of the physical body, do I want to be ‘anchored’ to a material location, interacting with the living, or perhaps being bothered by them, or do I want to explore the limitless expanse of the world in which I would now exist?   Well, anyone who reads these posts would know the answer to that question, as I did, within a millisecond.
March 5, 2019 /

A matter of life and death April 14, 2018

When I turn my attention to the last minutes of dying, I was impressed by just how many people displayed a depth of life even here, so close to death.  Instead of ‘nothing’ or ‘unconsciousness’ or disturbing and disorientating hallucinations, I often found a significant prevalence of positive self-reports of comforting experiences and visions that displayed remarkable clarity and a surprising but comforting array of social relations with unseen beings.

The description of these experiences – and there are thousands of well-documented cases world-wide – is often accompanied by a set of hurried scientific explanations.  The lack of academic humility in these often dismissive explanations is commonly eclipsed only by their parallel lack of plausibility and precision.  [Professor Allan Kellehear, pp. 86-88]

From the book, “A matter of life and death: 60 voices share their wisdom”. Rosalind Bradley, 2016, Jessica Kingsley Publishers.
March 5, 2019 /

Musings on the grim reaper March 30, 2018

Do we all know we’ll die?

I assumed that we do, however a colleague in an on-line forum seemed to think otherwise.  She felt that the knowledge (and/or perhaps the idea of death?) lies in the back of our minds.  I feel it does too, but why?  Why is it there?  Why isn’t it in the front of our minds? Why is it that we often don’t engage with death or think about death until it somehow touches us personally?  And why is it that generally (not always) it is something like this which often makes us not only notice death, but begin to pay attention to or perhaps contemplate death, not in a morbid way but in a way that enriches how we live our lives?

My research explores after death contact and the impact of that on the experient.  The literature terms these experiences, as amongst other definitions, “extraordinary” but for me they are ordinary and simply a part of life. When I was a child I first became aware of the fact that when people ‘died’ they didn’t really die because I could see them and interact with them.  But as I grew older, the vivacity of those experiences faded.  As I grew and found my place in the world responsibilities and duties overshadowed the vividness of the world I experienced as a child.  I forgot.

On a far grander scale, perhaps humanity’s history corresponds to the child just mentioned, and perhaps in the growth of that history in time, death has been forgotten, has fallen away from the front of the collective mind so to speak, so that now it sits in its recesses and can only be seen or remembered when life, through a death event, makes one remember.

I have always felt that death is somehow intimately linked to the intrinsic spirituality of an individual.  In what state do we want to die?  In what state do I want to die?  How do we want to enter the spiritual universe?  How do I want to enter the spiritual universe?  What do we want to take with us?  What do I want to take with me?  All we can take with us is what we’ve made of ourselves, nothing else, no letters after our names, no titles before them, nothing material, only what we are at that moment in time, only what I am at that moment in time.

I wonder if one of the reasons that we don’t talk about death may be because we have forgotten about it?  Perhaps in humanity’s past people understood why they were alive much better than they do today.  I have found that often, not always, but often, that a death-related event wakes a person up and propels them inward.  They become contemplative, they ponder, they ask meaningful questions and a psychospiritual shift appears to occur within them.  They wonder why they were born, what their purpose in life is, and whether or not there is an afterlife.

Whether we acknowledge it to ourselves or not, I feel that we do know that we die, we just don’t think about it.  And while that may be said, I feel that the real question is, “Why are we alive in the first place if only to die anyway?”  The answer in contained in the question.
March 5, 2019 /

Death down under February 14, 2018

Many people today would agree that death has been ‘sanitised’, because for most of us living in the 21st Century and in Australian society, death occurs in a medical setting.  In earlier years, we were born, and died, at home.  Death was more communal, we were more engaged with the process of caring for the dying and death itself, we washed and prepared the body for burial and we were our own funeral directors. The body was generally kept in the home prior to burial where visiting family and friends could pay their respects, commune with others and spend time with the deceased.  Today, as one attendee said at a recent Death Cafe, “We don’t see the process, we’re just told about the death and then we go to the funeral”.

In contrast to this social shielding (or some may say denial) of death and the dead, Anthropologist and theologian Douglas Davies notes that “talking about death has never been more popular” (2007, 48).  This is an observation that both nationally and internationally does appear to bear some testament because there appears to be an increasing community awareness, and an intent, to reclaim our death and burial and to wrest it from the medicalised model in which “a good death” (De Jong and Clarke 2009, 61), where one has some modicum of choice and control in how, when and where one dies, is not always available.

What is taking place in the national and international community?  Publicised events devoted to raising death-awareness and to promoting death education populate social media platforms.  Death-dedicated websites, blogs and Facebook pages dot the online landscape of the world-wide web.  Workshops, seminars, conferences and MOOC’s (Massive Open Online Course) provide death education, information sharing and professional networking opportunities for those working in an end-of-life context, and hard and soft copy journal articles and books populate library and book store shelves. For all intents and purposes, it appears that many people, Australians included, want to either explore their mortality, perhaps regain a sense of ownership or control over it, or at the very least try to understand and find a sense of meaning in it.

While there is a plethora of international initiatives, in Australia national initiatives are slowly but steadily increasing.

In New South Wales for example, The Groundswell Project (www.thegroundswellproject.com/), a not-for-profit organisation which utilises innovative arts and health programs to create social and cultural change about death and dying was established in 2010, while the Afterlife Explorers Conference  (http://www.afterlifeexplorers.com.au/), which endeavours to unite science and spirituality with the intention of increasing community and individual awareness of the survival of consciousness beyond the body, held its inaugural conference in Sydney in 2015 and has now become an annual event.

Another organisation, Dying with Dignity (https://dwdnsw.org.au/) a not-for-profit which has branches in all Australian states,  actively advocates for the dying and seeks to change legislation to introduce medically assisted dying laws while in 2016, the CareSearch Palliative Care Knowledge Network offered for the first time their Dying2Learn MOOC, a 5-week online course designed to raise awareness and foster social discussion about death and dying in Australia   (https://www.caresearch.com.au/caresearch/tabid/2868/Default.aspx).  In 2015 Michael Barbato, Palliative Care physician, death educator and researcher offered the first of his ongoing Midwifing Death training courses (http://www.midwifingdeath.com.au/), while in 2016 the first annual event of the Festival of Death and Dying (http://deathfest.net/) was held  in Sydney, followed by Melbourne in 2017  (with future plans to hold the event in Adelaide in 2018).

So, maybe the question isn’t “Are we a death-denying society?”, but rather, “Who has ownership of our death?”

 

 
March 5, 2019 /

There’s something about grass … January 10, 2018

Over 30 years ago I had a dream in which grass featured.  It was newly growing, short, brilliantly green and formed a short-carpeted layer over the ground.  The reason I remember it is not because I obviously kept a written record of the dream, but because of what I was told the dream, in particular the grass, symbolised.

The grass was a representation of my inner spiritual life which was young, growing and alive.  It was a dream of hope and encouragement for me, and an indication that my efforts to work on myself were making a tangible difference; something fundamental was occurring and a foundation was being laid down.

Just recently I had a second dream about grass.  I was with my adult-son who was talking animatedly about the lawn, in particular, not to cut it.  I looked down to a thickly carpeted, luxuriously green, bed of beautifully ‘alive’ grass which stood some 2 inches high.  I took some steps, feeling the grass give slightly as it cushioned my feet.  Suddenly I found myself in the grass itself, looking up at the blades and seeing the blue sky stretching overhead.  Each blade towered above me, and as I stood in this ‘forest’ marvelling at all that was around me, I felt something difficult to put into words; a sense of establishment.  Then, and just as suddenly, I found myself back where I was when the dream commenced, standing on the lawn listening to my son talking, again with that sense of animation.

Dreams tell us all sorts of things about our inner self, our lives, and the universe in which we live, and while some dreams can be a replaying of daily events which have occurred, others quite pointedly reveal psychospiritual difficulties which need to be addressed as they do psychospiritual gains.  This is one of those dreams, and it is as much a dream of confirmation as it is of hope and encouragement.

2017 was an exceptionally difficult year and there were many times when I felt that the chaos of external life overshadowed my work efforts.  This dream tells me that didn’t happen.  This dream affirms that my inner spiritual life is alive, and that something foundational has been established, something that will anchor me to the spiritual universe.  In this there is hope, and in this there is affirmation that the best is indeed, yet to be.
March 5, 2019 /

Perfection December 19, 2017

Little things perfection make, but perfection is no little thing.

Graham Bryce, 1928-2017.

December in the Gregorian calendar, and especially in the period leading up Christmas, is often a time for reflection and review.  For many people I know, myself included, the year has been challenging and it seemed that often world events, in a strangely synchronistic way, mirrored the discord and discontent present in many of the lives which touched mine.

On Tuesday, during the week which led up to Christmas, the father of a dear and close friend of mine died.  Although I never had the opportunity of meeting him in person, I nonetheless gleaned aspects of his life through the eyes of his son, my friend Robert.  Robert’s father was fondly known, amongst other things, for pearls of wisdom, one of which is quoted above, “Little things perfection make, but perfection is no little thing”.

Whenever Robert mentioned this in conversation, I would ponder on it because it would turn me inward, on which occasions I would contrast it with my efforts to work upon myself.  As I sat in the funeral service, which took place in the first week of the New Year, I read through the Order of Service.  Something made me turn the booklet over and on the back page was written, Little things perfection make but perfection is no little thing.

I sat reflecting on the year that had gone and the times during which when I felt that I wasn’t working on myself.  Pressures and worries from external life intruded and were a distraction but then, little by little, I remembered, I observed, I non-identified.  I thought about something I had written may years ago; When we die and pass into the spiritual universe our external knowledge disappears; it is our being which grants us entry into a particular spiritual society or community.  And then I saw the relationship between effort and being, which was encompassed in the words spoken by Robert’s father.

It can seem that our efforts are little, but then the aim is indeed, no little thing.

 
March 4, 2019 /

Multidimensional reality November 14, 2017

Lived experiences: Other worldly phenomena

“I was in an utterly black, dark void.  It is very difficult to explain, but I felt as if I were moving in a vacuum, just through blackness.  Yet, I was quite conscious.  It was like being in a cylinder which had no air in it.  It was a feeling of limbo, of being half-way here, and half-way somewhere else.”

“I was more conscious of my mind at the time than of the physical body.  The mind was the most important part, instead of the shape of the body.  And before, all my life, it had been exactly reversed.  The body was my main interest and what was going on in my mind, well, it was just going on, and that’s all.  But after this happened, my mind was the main point of attraction, and the body was second – it was only something to encase my mind.  I didn’t care if I had a body or not.  It didn’t matter because for all I cared my mind was what was important.”

“I knew I was dying and that there was nothing I could do about it, because no one could hear me … I was out of my body, there’s no doubt about it, because I could see my own body there on the operating room table.  My soul was out!  All this made me feel very bad at first, but then, this really bright light came … It was just a tremendous amount of light, nothing like a big bright flash-light, it was just too much light.  And it gave off heat to me; I felt a warm sensation … At first, when the light came, I wasn’t sure what was happening, but then, it asked, it kind of asked me if I was ready to die.  It was like talking to a person but a person wasn’t there … Yet from the moment the light spoke to me, I felt really good – secure and loved.  The love which came from it is just unimaginable, indescribable …”

Thinkers of the day: Other worldly phenomena

“We have learnt that the exploration of the eternal world by the methods of physical science leads not to a concrete reality but to a shadow world of symbols, beneath which those methods are unadapted for penetrating.”

Sir Arthur S. Eddington, (1882-1944).  Science and the unseen world.  1929 Swarthmore Lecture. University of Michigan: Macmillan

 

“Physicists who are trying to understand nature may work in many different fields and by many different methods; one may dig, one may sow, one may reap.  But the final harvest will always be a sheaf of mathematical formulae.  These will never describe nature itself, but only our observations on nature.  Our studies can never put us into contact with reality; we can never penetrate beyond the impressions that reality implants in our minds.”

Sir James H. Jeans (1877-1946). Physics and Philosophy, 1981, p. 15. New York: Dover Publications, Inc.

 

“By and large, the scientific community still holds to the mechanistic viewpoint in which consciousness is seen as an epiphenomenon that mysteriously developed after billions of years of blind, mechanical, material processes.  This is the way of looking at the world with which transpersonal experiences and quantum physics are both incompatible.”

Ronald L. Boyer and Saniel Bonder, (1981).  ‘The Part and the Whole: Death and the Scientific World View (An Interview with Stanislav Grof, M.D.)”.  The Laughing Man, 2(3), 36.

 

“Well, I think the most important finding is that people who come close to death tend to report very similar kinds of experiences. In other words, there is a pattern of experiencing that doesn’t seem to depend on age, circumstances, religious beliefs, and so forth. And it doesn’t seem to make a difference whether they are actually in a biological crisis or just psychologically close to death but physically unharmed. And it is very difficult to explain this experiential pattern through some kind of simple, physiological, biochemical triggering mechanism in the nervous system. It is obviously a much more complex phenomenon.”

Ronald L. Boyer and Saniel Bonder, (1981).  “The Part and the Whole: Death and the Scientific World View (An Interview with Stanislav Grof, M.D.)”.  The Laughing Man, 2(3), 31.

 

“The influences of the senses has in most men overpowered the mind to the degree that the walls of space and time have come to look solid, real and insurmountable; and to speak with levity of these limits in the world is the sign of insanity.”

Ralph W. Emerson, (1803-1882). “The Oversoul”. Essays. 1845, p. 196. London: H. G. Clarke and Co.

 
March 4, 2019 /

Eternal recurrence October 18, 2017

Some months ago I was randomly flipping through a book published in 1924 by psychiatrist Carl Wickland M.D. “Thirty Years Among the Dead”.  According to the blurb on the inside sleeve jacket:

Carl August Wickland (February 14, 1861 – November 13, 1945) was a psychiatrist, a paranormal researcher and a non-fiction author. Wickland was born in 1861 at Liden, Norland Province, Sweden. His father taught him cabinet making in his youth. Later he studied watchmaking. In 1881 he arrived in St. Paul, Minn. after having emigrated from Sweden the year before. He married Anna W. Anderson in 1896 and they moved to Chicago so that he could attend Durham Medical College from which he graduated in 1900. He became a general practitioner of medicine and specialized in researching mental illnesses. In 1909, Wickland became chief psychiatrist at the National Psychopathic Institute of Chicago. He continued in that position until 1918 when he and his wife moved to Los Angeles, California. Wickland, in collaboration with his assistants, Nelle Watts, and Celia and Orlando Goerz, wrote and published in 1924, Thirty Years Among the Dead a book that detailed their experiences in abnormal psychology. Wickland believed that the doctrine of reincarnation was incorrect: The theory of reincarnation can undoubtedly be traced to early stages of mankind when departed spirits took possession of the bodies of sensitive individuals and lived and acted through them, thus seemingly indicating reincarnation. But in reality this was only spirit obsession or possession.

The book provides first-hand accounts of interactions between what are described as discarnate earth-bound entities and the living, citing hundreds of cases of what the author terms ‘spirit possession’, which after being cast out by various means result in the hapless human host returning to a normal temperament.  In reading through Wickland’s accounts, there are a number of consistent themes which emerge from the narrative accounts, one of which is reincarnation, a spiritual belief-system influencing millions of human beings past and present.

When embodied, and prior to physical death, these spiritual beings believed that after death they would reincarnate (be reborn in human form) so they could continue learning life lessons which for whatever reason they didn’t learn the first-time round.  This endless recurrence, according to them, would continue for however many lifetimes it would take for them to perfect themselves.

According to information received from them after physical death however, and as recorded by Wickland, what appears to have happened is that after their death they realised that this belief was a fallacy because try as they might, they could not ever reincarnate.

This ensued great lamentation from all of them in the light of what they now knew; they had wasted their time and they wanted others not to do the same as they had done.  Many of them had lived lives focused on materialism, indolence and self-centredness and with little if any thought of spiritual or related matters.  Now in eternity, they realised they should have focused on living lives of love to others and love to God.

Since experiencing my own bereavements, I’ve become acutely aware of the passing of time and of the reality of how little time we as planetary dwellers do have to live out our lives as embodied beings.  Why are we born, why do we die, and why do I feel that what happens in between those two events is of critical importance to the individual?  Why is it of critical importance to me?  And if it is of critical importance to me, is it of critical importance to others?  According to Wickland’s record, it is, especially if one believes in reincarnation.  Why do I constantly feel that death is trying to teach me how to live?  And why do I feel that this is something deeply and profoundly important to my spiritual well-being and impending spiritual destiny?

Perhaps the following statement offers some insight, “This planetary life is only a preparation for a much greater life” (pers. com. Philip W. Groves, 16 December 1998).  Aye, there’s the rub.

 
March 4, 2019 /

Mortality awareness September 15, 2017

“… the promise of death and the experience of dying,
more than any other force in life, can move a human being to grow.”

Elizabeth Kubler-Ross, Death: The final stage of growth, 1975.

I came across the term “mortality awareness” (Taylor n.d.)[2] in an online article I read recently.  The author, Steve Taylor, with a depth of insight and sensitivity discusses death as “the great taboo” of the late 20th and early 21st centuries, noting that this death-denying attitude renders potentially transformative aspects of mortality awareness less accessible.  In 2007, some years earlier perhaps than Taylor, Anthropologist and Theologian Douglas Davies wrote an article, Death special: The great taboo, which featured in the New Scientist October issue.  One paragraph in particular resonated with me:

Talking about death has never been more popular, and death is an increasingly common theme for film and television … There are thousands of websites dealing with the subject, many sorts of memorials, growing numbers of journals and courses on death studies, adverts encouraging us to write wills or plan our own funerals, and hundreds of support groups and self-help books. Ideas and theories of grief have become fashionable, and grief counsellors are available to help the bereaved. There is also growing interest in doctor-assisted suicide and euthanasia for terminally ill people who desire a managed end to their life.

10 years post Davies’ statement, I would have to say that death literacy is well and truly established.  Dedicated end-of-life conferences and events, organisations raising and promoting death awareness, the natural burial and eco-funeral movement, and the global Death Café social franchise offer a host of options, choices and self-education opportunities for even the most discerning ‘death devotee’.  Why then, do we still so often hear the familiar refrain that contemporary Western society is a death denying-society?

Are we?  I don’t think we are.  We know we die, we know those close to us die, we know people living all over the planet die; death and decay is everywhere.  And nor does Sociologist Allan Kellehear who argued that Western societies are not “death-denying” by any of the major criteria posed in the literature on the subject, furthermore, “to say that our contemporary societies are ‘death-denying’ has no theoretical or practical explanatory value.”  What is it then that the term death-denying is analogous too?

Kübler-Ross, E. (1975). Death: The final stage of growth. NY, NY: Simon & Schuster.

Taylor, S. (n.d.). Mortality and mindfulness: How intense encounters with death can generate spontaneous mindfulness.  Available online https://www.stevenmtaylor.com/academic-articles/mortality-mindfulness-intense-encounters-death-can-generate-spontaneous-mindfulness/

Davies,D. (2007). Death special: The great taboo.  New Scientist, 10 October 2007.  Available online https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg19626252-000-death-special-the-great-taboo/

Kellehear, A. (1984). Are we a ‘death-denying’ society?  A sociological review. Social Science Medicine, 18(9), 713-723.