In everyday life, when we are talking with someone we know, and he says: “You know, so-and-so has died,” the usual reaction to this question is: How died? Very important, How a person dies. Death is important to a person's sense of self. It is not only negative in nature.

If we look at life philosophically, we know that there is no life without death, the concept of life can only be assessed from the perspective of death.

I once had to communicate with artists and sculptors, and I asked them: “You depict various aspects of a person’s life, you can depict love, friendship, beauty, but how would you depict death?” And no one immediately gave a clear answer.

One sculptor who immortalized the siege of Leningrad promised to think about it. And shortly before his death, he answered me like this: “I would depict death in the image of Christ.” I asked: “Is Christ crucified?” - “No, the ascension of Christ.”

One German sculptor depicted a flying angel, the shadow of whose wings was death. When a person fell into this shadow, he fell into the power of death. Another sculptor depicted death in the form of two boys: one boy sits on a stone, with his head on his knees, his whole head directed downwards.

In the hands of the second boy, there is a pipe, his head is thrown back, he is all focused on following the tune. And the explanation of this sculpture was this: it is impossible to depict death without accompanying life, and life without death.

Death is a natural process. Many writers tried to portray life as immortal, but it was a terrible, terrible immortality. What is endless life - endless repetition of earthly experience, cessation of development or endless aging? It is difficult to even imagine the painful state of a person who is immortal.

Death is a reward, a respite; it is abnormal only when it comes suddenly, when a person is still on the rise, full of strength. And older people want to die. Some old women ask: “Now that she’s healed, it’s time to die.” And the patterns of death that we read about in the literature, when death befell the peasants, were normative in nature.

When a villager felt that he could no longer work as before, that he was becoming a burden to his family, he went to the bathhouse, put on clean clothes, lay down under the icon, said goodbye to his neighbors and relatives and died calmly. His death occurred without the pronounced suffering that occurs when a person struggles with death.

The peasants knew that life is not a dandelion flower that grew, blossomed and scattered with the blow of the wind. Life has deep meaning.

This example of the death of peasants dying after giving themselves permission to die is not a peculiarity of those people; we can find similar examples today. Once a cancer patient came to us. A former military man, he carried himself well and joked: “I went through three wars, pulled death’s mustache, and now its time has come to pull me.”

We, of course, supported him, but suddenly one day he could not get out of bed, and he took it completely unambiguously: “That’s it, I’m dying, I can’t get up anymore.” We told him: “Don’t worry, this is a metastasis, people with metastases in the spine live a long time, we will take care of you, you will get used to it.” - “No, no, this is death, I know.”

And, imagine, after a few days he dies, without having any physiological prerequisites for this. He dies because he decided to die. This means that this good will to death or some kind of projection of death occurs in reality.

It is necessary to allow life to end naturally, because death is programmed at the moment of human conception. A person acquires a unique experience of death during childbirth, at the moment of birth. When you deal with this problem, you can see how intelligently life is structured. As a person is born, so he dies, easily born - easily dies, hard to be born - hard to die.

And the day of a person’s death is also not random, just like the day of birth. Statisticians are the first to raise this problem, discovering that people often have the same date of death and date of birth. Or, when we remember some significant anniversaries of the death of our relatives, it suddenly turns out that the grandmother died and a grandson was born. This transmission across generations and the non-randomness of the day of death and the day of birth is striking.

Clinical death or another life?

Not a single sage has yet understood what death is, what happens during death. Such a stage as clinical death was left practically unattended. A person falls into a comatose state, his breathing and heart stop, but unexpectedly for himself and for others, he returns to life and tells amazing stories.

Natalya Petrovna Bekhtereva recently died. At one time, we often argued, I told about cases of clinical death that were in my practice, and she said that this was all nonsense, that changes were just happening in the brain, and so on. And one day I gave her an example, which she then began to use and tell herself.

I worked for 10 years at the Oncological Institute as a psychotherapist, and one day I was called to see a young woman. During the operation, her heart stopped; it could not be started for a long time, and when she woke up, I was asked to see if her psyche had changed due to the long oxygen starvation of the brain.

I came to the intensive care ward, she was just coming to her senses. I asked: “Can you talk to me?”, “Yes, but I would like to apologize to you, I caused you so much trouble,” “What trouble?”, “Well, of course.” My heart stopped, I experienced such stress, and I saw that it was also a lot of stress for the doctors.”

I was surprised: “How could you see this if you were in a state of deep narcotic sleep, and then your heart stopped?” “Doctor, I would tell you much more if you promise not to send me to a psychiatric hospital.”

And she said the following: when she fell into a narcotic sleep, she suddenly felt as if a soft blow to her feet made something inside her turn, like a screw being turned out. She had the feeling that her soul had turned outward and emerged into some foggy space.

Looking closer, she saw a group of doctors bending over the body. She thought: what a familiar face this woman has! And then suddenly I remembered that it was herself. Suddenly a voice rang out: “Stop the operation immediately, the heart has stopped, you need to start it.”

She thought she had died and remembered with horror that she had not said goodbye to either her mother or her five-year-old daughter. Anxiety for them literally pushed her into the back, she flew out of the operating room and in an instant found herself in her apartment.

She saw a rather peaceful scene - a girl playing with dolls, her grandmother, her mother, sewing something. There was a knock on the door and a neighbor, Lidia Stepanovna, came in. She was holding a small polka dot dress in her hands. “Masha,” said the neighbor, “you always tried to be like your mother, so I sewed for you the same dress as your mother.”

The girl happily rushed to her neighbor, on the way she touched the tablecloth, an antique cup fell, and a teaspoon fell under the carpet. There is noise, the girl is crying, the grandmother exclaims: “Masha, how awkward you are,” Lidia Stepanovna says that the dishes are beating fortunately - a common situation.

And the girl’s mother, forgetting about herself, came up to her daughter, stroked her on the head and said: “Masha, this is not the worst grief in life.” Mashenka looked at her mother, but not seeing her, she turned away. And suddenly, this woman realized that when she touched the girl’s head, she did not feel this touch. Then she rushed to the mirror, and did not see herself in the mirror.

In horror, she remembered that she was supposed to be in the hospital, that her heart had stopped. She rushed out of the house and found herself in the operating room. And then I heard a voice: “The heart has started, we are doing an operation, but rather, because there may be a repeated cardiac arrest.”

After listening to this woman, I said: “Don’t you want me to come to your house and tell your family that everything is fine, they can see you?” She happily agreed.

I went to the address given to me, my grandmother opened the door, I told how the operation went, and then asked: “Tell me, did your neighbor Lidiya Stepanovna come to you at half past ten?” Do you know her?”, “Didn’t she bring a dress with polka dots?”, “Are you a wizard, doctor?”

I continue to ask, and everything came together down to the details, except for one thing - the spoon was not found. Then I say: “Did you look under the carpet?” They lift the carpet and there is a spoon there.

This story had a great effect on Bekhtereva. And then she herself experienced a similar incident. On the same day, she lost both her stepson and her husband, both of whom committed suicide. It was terribly stressful for her. And then one day, entering the room, she saw her husband, and he addressed her with some words.

She, an excellent psychiatrist, decided that these were hallucinations, returned to another room and asked her relative to see what was in that room. She came up, looked in and recoiled: “Yes, your husband is there!” Then she did what her husband asked, making sure that such cases were not fiction.

She told me: “No one knows the brain better than me (Bekhtereva was the director of the Institute of the Human Brain in St. Petersburg). And I have the feeling that I am standing in front of some huge wall, behind which I hear voices, and I know that there is a wonderful and huge world out there, but I cannot convey to others what I see and hear. Because in order for this to be scientifically valid, everyone must repeat my experience.”

Once I was sitting next to a dying patient. I put a music box that was playing a touching melody, then asked: “Turn it off, is it bothering you?” “No, let it play.” Suddenly her breathing stopped, her relatives rushed: “Do something, she’s not breathing.”

I rashly gave her an injection of adrenaline, and she came to her senses again, turned to me: “Andrey Vladimirovich, what was that?” - “You know, it was clinical death.” She smiled and said: “No, life!”

What is this state that the brain goes into during clinical death? After all, death is death. We register death when we see that breathing has stopped, the heart has stopped, the brain does not work, it cannot perceive information and, moreover, send it out.

So, the brain is only a transmitter, but there is something deeper, more powerful in a person? And here we are faced with the concept of the soul. After all, this concept has almost been supplanted by the concept of the psyche. There is a psyche, but there is no soul.

How would you like to die?

We asked both the healthy and the sick: “How would you like to die?” And people with certain characterological qualities built a model of death in their own way.

People with schizoid type characters, such as Don Quixote, rather strangely characterized their desire: “We would like to die in such a way that no one around us would see my body.”

Epileptoids considered it unthinkable for themselves to lie quietly and wait for death to come; they had to be able to somehow participate in this process.

Cycloids - people like Sancho Panza, would like to die surrounded by their loved ones. Psychasthenics are anxious and suspicious people; they worried about what they would look like when they died. Hysteroids wanted to die at sunrise or sunset, on the seashore, in the mountains.

I compared these desires, but I remembered the words of one monk who said this: “I don’t care what will surround me, what the situation will be around me. It’s important to me that I die while praying, thanking God for giving me life and seeing the power and beauty of His creation.”

Heraclitus of Ephesus said: “A man lights a light for himself on the night of death; and he is not dead, having extinguished his eyes, but is alive; but he comes into contact with the dead - while dozing, while awake - he comes into contact with the dormant,” a phrase that you can puzzle over almost your entire life.

Being in contact with the patient, I could agree with him that when he died, he would try to let me know whether there was something behind the coffin or not. And I received this answer more than once.

I once made an agreement with one woman, she died, and I soon forgot about our agreement. And then one day, when I was at the dacha, I suddenly woke up when the light came on in the room. I thought that I forgot to turn off the light, but then I saw that the same woman was sitting on the bed opposite me. I was happy, started talking to her, and suddenly I remembered - she died!

I thought I was dreaming all this, so I turned away and tried to go to sleep so I could wake up. Some time passed, I raised my head. The light was on again, I looked back in horror - she was still sitting on the bed and looking at me. I want to say something, but I can’t - it’s terrible. I realized what was in front of me dead man. And suddenly she smiled sadly and said: “But this is not a dream.”

Why do I give such examples? Because the uncertainty of what awaits us forces us to return to the old principle: “Do no harm.” That is « “don’t rush death” is a powerful argument against euthanasia. To what extent do we have the right to intervene in the condition that the patient is experiencing? How can we hasten his death when he may be experiencing his greatest life at this moment?

Quality of life and permission to die

What matters is not the number of days we live, but the quality. What does quality of life give? Quality of life gives you the opportunity to be pain-free, the ability to control your consciousness, the opportunity to be surrounded by relatives and family.

Why is communication with relatives so important? Because children often repeat the plot of the lives of their parents or relatives. Sometimes it's in the details that are amazing. And this repetition of life is often a repetition of death.

The blessing of relatives, the parental blessing of a dying person to children is very important, it can even save them later, protect them from something. Again, returning to cultural heritage fairy tales

Remember the plot: an old father dies, he has three sons. He asks: “After my death, go to my grave for three days.” The older brothers either don’t want to go or are afraid, only the younger one, a fool, goes to the grave, and at the end of the third day the father reveals some secret to him.

When a person passes away, he sometimes thinks: “Well, let me die, let me get sick, but let my family be healthy, let the illness end on me, I’ll pay the bills for the whole family.” And so, having set a goal, no matter rationally or affectively, a person receives a meaningful departure from life.

Hospice is a home that offers quality life. Not an easy death, but a quality life. This is a place where a person can end his life meaningfully and deeply, accompanied by relatives.

When a person leaves, the air does not just come out of him, like from a rubber ball, he needs to take a leap, he needs strength in order to step into the unknown. A person must allow himself to take this step. And he receives the first permission from his relatives, then from the medical staff, from volunteers, from the priest and from himself. And this permission to die from oneself is the most difficult thing.

You know that Christ, before suffering and praying in the Garden of Gethsemane, asked his disciples: “Stay with me, do not sleep.” Three times the disciples promised Him to stay awake, but fell asleep without providing support. So here's the hospice in spiritual sense is a place where a person can ask: “Stay with me.”

And if such a greatest personality - God Incarnate - needed human help, if He said: “I no longer call you slaves. I called you friends,” addressing people, then follow this example and saturate them with spiritual content last days patient is very important.

Prepared the text; photo: Maria Stroganova

If you care about matters of life and death,

I. ORIGIN OF DEATH

1. First mention of death:
Genesis 2:16-17 « And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou shalt eat, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil thou shalt not eat of it, for in the day that thou eatest of it, you will die by death ».
God commanded Adam and Eve not to eat from the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, so as not to die (to die not from the fruit, but from disobedience to God!) They disobeyed. However, Adam and Eve did not die physically when they disobeyed God and ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. However, something happened... From that moment on, they began to physically age and eventually died.

2. How did death appear?
It should be noted that man was created by God to eternal life. Before sin entered the world, people did not grow old or die. But with sin, death entered people's lives. What is the relationship between sin and death?

• Death is the consequence of sin: James 1:15 « ...lust, having conceived, gives birth to sin, and what is done sin gives birth to death ».
• Death is retribution - payment, punishment - for sin: Romans 6:23a " For the wages of sin is death».
• Sin is the weapon (“thorn”) of death: 1 Corinthians 15:56 « The sting of death is sin».
• Death entered man with sin: Romans 5:12 « Therefore, just as by one man sin entered the world, and death by sin, so death spread to all men, because all sinned in him" Even those who were not guilty of Adam's sin began to grow old and die: Romans 5:14 « However, death reigned from Adam to Moses and over those who did not sin, like the crime of Adam" Why? Because the sinful nature is inherited. Adam and Eve were created in the image and likeness of God ( Genesis 5:1 « This is the genealogy of Adam: when God created man, in the likeness of God created it"), and their children (who were born after the Fall) were born in the image and likeness of Adam and Eve: Genesis 5:3 « Adam lived one hundred and thirty years and begat son in his own likeness in his own image».
• On the relationship between sin and death The following places also testify Holy Scripture: Romans 6:16 « Don’t you know that whoever you give yourselves as slaves to obey, you are slaves to whom you obey, or slaves of sin to death, or obedience to righteousness?» Romans 6:21 « For while you were slaves to sin, then you were free from righteousness. What fruit did you have then? Such things of which you yourself are now ashamed, because their end is death ».
• The Bible calls death man's "last enemy": 1 Corinthians 15:26 « The last enemy to be destroyed is death.».

II. VARIETIES OF DEATH.

1. Two types of death
The Bible talks about two types of death: physical and spiritual death.

A. Physical death
Physical death is the death of the body, that is, the separation of the spirit (soul) from the body.

B. Spiritual death
Spiritual death is a state of the human spirit characterized by a breakdown in the relationship with its Creator. Briefly: this is the separation of the spirit [soul] from God. This is how the prophet Isaiah describes this state: Isaiah 59:2 « But your iniquities have produced division between you and your God and your sins hide His face from you, so that you cannot hear».

God promised Adam and Eve that they would die if they ate from the tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. But we know that they did not physically die from eating these fruits. What happened? They (1) died spiritually, and plus they started dying physically(the body began to grow old, get sick and die). In addition, (3) people began to be born spiritually dead - unable to communicate with God, far from God.
A person is born physically alive, but spiritually dead: distant and alienated from the Lord, unable to understand Him and fulfill His commandments. This is why Jesus called such people dead: Matthew 8:21-22 « Another of His disciples said to Him: Lord! let me first go and bury my father. But Jesus said to him: follow me, and leave dead bury your own dead people ».

2. Second death
The Bible also contains the expression “second death”: Revelation 21:8 « But the fearful and unbelieving and the abominable and murderers and fornicators and sorcerers and idolaters and all liars will have their part in the lake that burns with fire and brimstone. This is the second death».
What is the “second death”? Second death there is a culmination and continuation (that is, the logical end) of spiritual death. This eternal division souls with God in the lake of fire.

3. The Bible on the Inevitability of Death
Bible (both Old and New Testaments) teaches that death is inevitable:
Ecclesiastes 9:5 « The living know they will die, and the dead know nothing, and there is no longer any reward for them, because the memory of them is consigned to oblivion, and their love and their hatred and their jealousy have already disappeared, and they no longer have a part forever in anything that is done under the sun».
Ecclesiastes 12:7 « And the dust will return to the earth as it was; A the spirit returned to God Who gave it". Hebrews 9:27 « And how do people you have to die once and then the trial».

So death is inevitable. In the entire history of mankind, only two people did not see death: Enoch and Elijah.
A. ABOUT Enoch V Genesis 5:23-24 said: " And all the days of Enoch were three hundred and sixty-five years. And Enoch walked with God; and he was no more, because God took him" Where he disappeared and what became of him is explained in Hebrews 11:5 « By faith Enoch was translated so that he did not see death; and he was no more, because God had translated him. For before his migration he received a testimony that he pleased God».
B. About how the Lord took the prophet from the earth Elijah, discussed in the second chapter 2 Kings: « When they had crossed over, Elijah said to Elisha, “Ask what you can do before I am taken from you.” And Elisha said, Let the spirit that is in you be doubly upon me. And he said: You are asking something difficult. If you see how I will be taken from you, then it will be so for you, but if you do not see it, it will not be so. As they walked and talked along the way, suddenly a chariot of fire and horses of fire appeared and separated them both, and Elijah rushed into heaven in a whirlwind. Elisha looked and exclaimed: My father, my father, the chariot of Israel and his cavalry! And I didn’t see him again. And he grabbed his clothes and tore them in two» ( Verses 9-12).

III. DELIVERANCE FROM DEATH

So, all people are imprisoned under the power of death: spiritual and physical.
Is there any way out of this situation? Is it possible to somehow avoid death and get rid of its dominance?

Let's try to answer this question using the Holy Scriptures.

1. Is it possible to avoid the inevitable??
Let me use the following example to illustrate a solution to this problem. Question: In what case can you avoid punishment? Answer: In the event that (a) you are innocent or in the event that (b) your guilt is forgiven.
Let's apply this to our topic:
A). A sinless person can avoid death, but there are no such people on earth.
b). A sinner can avoid death only if his sins are forgiven.
Forgiveness is never free (free of charge). Forgiveness always implies that the forgiver bears losses for the debtor. This is true both in relation to sins. But sins can only be forgiven by God himself. That is why, for the forgiveness of our sins, the Lord God had to suffer in our place. The Word of God teaches that " ...there is no forgiveness without shedding blood» ( Hebrews 9:22). Since God grants forgiveness of sins, God had to shed blood when he came to earth in the flesh. And so it happened...

A. This is how the Word of God testifies to this:
1 Peter 2:24 « He Himself bore our sins in His body on the tree, so that we, having gotten rid of sins, lived for righteousness: by His stripes you were healed».
1 Peter 3:18 « Christ to lead us to God, one day suffered for our sins righteous for the unjust, having been put to death in the flesh but made alive in the Spirit».
1 John 2:2 « He is propitiation for our sins, and not only for ours, but also for the sins of the whole world». 1 John 3:5 « And you know that He appeared in order to take our sins and that in Him there is no sin».
1 Corinthians 15:3-4 « For I originally taught you what I also received, that is, that Christ died for our sins, according to the Scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He rose again on the third day, according to the Scriptures...»
Galatians 1:3-5 « …grace and peace to you from God the Father and our Lord Jesus Christ, Who gave Himself for our sins to deliver us from the present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father; To him be glory forever and ever. Amen».

B. This is Good News: God offers us salvation and eternal life through faith in the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, who died for our sins on the cross:
John 3:16 « For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.».
In other words, the meaning of the Good News is that it tells a person how he can avoid the inevitable, that is, death!

Someone might say:“Eternal life is the opposite of spiritual death, and salvation and the gift of eternal life is deliverance from spiritual death. What about physical death? Is it possible to somehow avoid physical decay?

Let's look at this issue too.

2. Salvation - is there salvation from spiritual or physical death?

A. God's Promise:
The Lord made a promise in the Old Testament: Isaiah 25:8 « Death will be swallowed up forever And the Lord God will wipe away tears from all faces, and take away the reproach of His people throughout all the earth; for thus says the Lord». Hosea 13:14 « From the power of hell I will redeem them, I will deliver you from death and X. Death! where is your sting? hell! where is your victory? I will have no remorse for that».
Question: What is God's promise?
Answer: God promises to deliver people from the power of death.

B. Fulfilling God's Promise
God fulfills his promise in the New Testament. To do this, He takes two steps:
The first step in delivering people from the power of death is the Redemption of the soul(redemption): Matthew 20:28 « ...since the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve and to give his soul as a ransom for many ». => This is deliverance from spiritual death.
The second step in delivering people from the power of death is the Redemption of the body: Romans 8:18-23 « For I think that the sufferings of this present time are not worth anything in comparison with the glory that will be revealed in us. For the creation awaits with hope the revelation of the sons of God, because the creation was not subjected to vanity voluntarily, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in the hope that the creation itself[creation] will be freed from slavery to decay into the freedom of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation groans and suffers together until now; and not only she, but we ourselves, having the firstfruits of the Spirit, and we groan within ourselves, waiting for adoption, redemption of our body ». => This is deliverance from physical death.

It is important to understand that a person has no hope of salvation from physical death unless he has received salvation from spiritual death. And the one who has found salvation from sins, even if he dies physically, will live again: John 6:47 « Truly, truly, I say to you, he who believes in Me has eternal life ». John 8:25-26 « Jesus said to her: I am the resurrection and the life; believer in Me, even if he dies, he will come to life. And everyone who lives and believes in Me, will never die ».

Here's how the Bible says it:
A. Just as death entered the world through Adam, so life will enter the world through Christ: 1 Corinthians 15:20-26 « But Christ rose from the dead, the firstborn of those who died. For how death through a person, So through a person and resurrection of the dead . How in Adam everyone dies, So in Christ all will live, each in its own order: Christ the firstborn, then Christ’s at His coming. And then the end, when He will hand over the Kingdom to God and the Father, when He will abolish all authority and all authority and power. For He must reign until He has put all enemies under His feet. The last enemy destroyed - death ».

B. We will not all die: 1 Corinthians 15:51-57 « I tell you a secret: We will not all die, but we will all change suddenly, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet; for the trumpet will sound, and the dead will rise incorruptible, and we will change. For This corruptible must put on incorruptibility, And for this mortal to put on immortality. When this corruptible has put on incorruption, and this mortal has put on immortality, then the written word will come true: death is swallowed up in victory. Death! where is your sting? hell! where is your victory? The sting of death is sin; and the power of sin is the law. Thanks be to God who has given us victory by the Lord our Jesus Christ!» => This is the fulfillment of the promise made by God in the Old Testament.
This is also evidenced by 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18 « I do not want to leave you, brothers, in ignorance about the dead, so that you do not grieve like others who have no hope. For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, then God will bring with Him those who sleep in Jesus. For we say this to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive and remain until the coming of the Lord will not warn those who have died, because the Lord Himself will come down from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the Archangel and the trumpet of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first; then we those who remain alive will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will always be with the Lord. So comfort one another with these words».

It is very important to pay attention to the fact that not only Christians will be resurrected and put on immortal bodies. The Bible says that wicked people will also be resurrected. But the difference is that the righteous will receive immortal bodies to spend eternity with God, while the wicked will receive: John 5:28-29 « Do not marvel at this; for the time is coming in which all who are in the tombs will hear the voice of the Son of God; and those who did good will go out into resurrection of life, and those who did evil - in resurrection of condemnation ». Revelation 20:6 « Blessed and holy is he who has part in first resurrection: the second death has no power over them" In other words, the one who is resurrected in the resurrection of life will acquire an incorruptible body for eternal life. And the one who rises in the resurrection of judgment will find the lake of fire and the second death.

So, the Lord God did everything possible so that we - His creation - would find eternal deliverance from the power of sin and death. The Lord has the keys to hell and death: Revelation 1:17-18 « …don't be afraid; I am the First and the Last, and the living; and he was dead, and behold, he is alive forever and ever, Amen; And I have the keys of hell and death ».

Today He is like in prison Old Testament with the people of Israel, invites everyone to make a free choice between life and death: Deuteronomy 30:19 « I call heaven and earth as witnesses before you today: life and death I offered you a blessing and a curse. Choose life so that you and your descendants may live...»

Since the appearance of man, he has always been tormented by questions of the mystery of birth and death. It is impossible to live forever, and, probably, it will not be long before scientists invent an elixir of immortality. Everyone is concerned about the question of how a person feels when he dies. What is happening at this moment? These questions have always worried people, and until now scientists have not found an answer to them.

Interpretation of death

Death is a natural process of ending our existence. Without it, it is impossible to imagine the evolution of life on earth. What happens when a person dies? This question has interested and will continue to interest humanity as long as it exists.

Passing away proves to some extent that it is survival of the fittest and the fittest. Without it, biological progress would have been impossible, and man might never have appeared.

Despite the fact that this natural process has always interested people, talking about death is difficult and difficult. First of all, because a psychological problem arises. Talking about it, we seem to be mentally approaching the end of our life, which is why we don’t want to talk about death in any context.

On the other hand, it is difficult to talk about death, because we, the living, have not experienced it, so we cannot say what a person feels when he dies.

Some compare death to simply falling asleep, while others argue that it is a kind of forgetting, when a person completely forgets about everything. But neither one nor the other, of course, is right. These analogies cannot be called adequate. We can only say that death is the disappearance of our consciousness.

Many continue to believe that after his death a person simply passes into another world, where he exists not at the level of the physical body, but at the level of the soul.

It's safe to say that research into death will always continue, but it will never provide a definitive answer about how people feel at this moment. This is simply impossible; no one has ever returned from the other world to tell us how and what is happening there.

How does a person feel when he dies?

Physical sensations probably at this moment depend on what led to death. Therefore, they can be painful or not, and some believe that they are quite pleasant.

Everyone has their own inner feelings in the face of death. Most people have some kind of fear sitting inside, they seem to resist and do not want to accept it, clinging to life with all their might.

Scientific evidence shows that after the heart muscle stops, the brain still lives for a few seconds, the person no longer feels anything, but is still conscious. Some believe that it is at this time that life’s results are summed up.

Unfortunately, no one can answer the question of how a person dies and what happens. All these sensations are most likely strictly individual.

Biological classification of death

Since the very concept of death is a biological term, classification must be approached from this point of view. Based on this, the following categories of death can be distinguished:

1. Natural.
2. Unnatural.

Natural death can be classified as physiological death, which can occur due to:

• Aging of the body.
• Fetal underdevelopment. Therefore, he dies almost immediately after birth or while still in the womb.

Unnatural death is divided into the following types:

• Death from disease (infections, cardiovascular diseases).
• Sudden.
• Sudden.
• Death from external factors (mechanical damage, respiratory failure, exposure to electric current or low temperatures, medical intervention).

This is how we can roughly characterize death from a biological point of view.

Socio-legal classification

If we talk about death from this perspective, then it can be:

• Violent (murder, suicide).
• Non-violent (epidemics, industrial accidents, occupational diseases).

Violent death is always associated with external influence, while non-violent death is caused by senile flabbiness, illness or physical disabilities.

In any type of death, damage or illness triggers pathological processes, which are the direct cause of death.

Even if the cause of death is known, it is still impossible to say what a person sees when he dies. This question will remain unanswered.

Signs of death

It is possible to identify initial and reliable signs that indicate that a person has died. The first group includes:

• The body is motionless.
• Pale skin.
• There is no consciousness.
• Breathing stopped, no pulse.
• There is no reaction to external stimuli.
• The pupils do not react to light.
• The body becomes cold.

Signs that indicate 100% death:

• The corpse is numb and cold, and cadaveric spots begin to appear.
• Late cadaveric manifestations: decomposition, mummification.

The first signs can be confused by an ignorant person with loss of consciousness, so only a doctor should pronounce death.

Stages of death

Death may take different periods of time. This can last minutes, or in some cases hours or days. Dying is a dynamic process, in which death does not occur immediately, but gradually, if you do not mean instant death.

The following stages of dying can be distinguished:

1. Preagonal state. The processes of blood circulation and breathing are disrupted, this leads to the fact that the tissues begin to lack oxygen. This condition can last for several hours or several days.
2. Terminal pause. Breathing stops, the work of the heart muscle is disrupted, and brain activity stops. This period lasts only a few minutes.
3. Agony. The body suddenly begins to fight for survival. At this time, short pauses in breathing and weakening of cardiac activity occur, as a result of which all organ systems cannot function normally. Changes appearance person: the eyes become sunken, the nose becomes sharp, the lower jaw begins to sag.
4. Clinical death. Breathing and blood circulation stop. During this period, a person can still be revived if no more than 5-6 minutes have passed. It is after returning to life at this stage that many people talk about what happens when a person dies.
5. Biological death. The body finally ceases to exist.

After death, many organs remain viable for several hours. This is very important, and it is during this period that they can be used for transplantation into another person.

Clinical death

It can be called a transitional stage between the final death of the organism and life. The heart stops working, breathing stops, all signs of the body’s vital functions disappear.

Within 5-6 minutes, irreversible processes have not yet started in the brain, so at this time there is every chance of bringing a person back to life. Adequate resuscitation actions will make the heart beat again and the organs function.

Signs of clinical death

If you carefully observe a person, you can easily determine the onset of clinical death. She has the following symptoms:

1. There is no pulse.
2. Breathing stops.
3. The heart stops working.
4. Severely dilated pupils.
5. There are no reflexes.
6. The person is unconscious.
7. The skin is pale.
8. The body is in an unnatural position.

To determine the onset of this moment, you need to feel the pulse and look at the pupils. Clinical death differs from biological death in that the pupils retain the ability to react to light.

The pulse can be felt in the carotid artery. This is usually done simultaneously with checking the pupils to speed up the diagnosis of clinical death.

If a person is not helped during this period, then biological death will occur, and then it will be impossible to bring him back to life.

How to recognize approaching death

Many philosophers and doctors compare the process of birth and death with each other. They are always individual. It is impossible to predict with accuracy when a person will leave this world and how it will happen. However, most dying people experience similar symptoms as death approaches. How a person dies may not even be influenced by the reasons that triggered the onset of this process.

Just before death, certain psychological and physical changes occur in the body. Among the most striking and frequently encountered are the following:

1. There is less and less energy left, and drowsiness and weakness throughout the body often occur.
2. The frequency and depth of breathing changes. Periods of stopping are replaced by frequent and deep breaths.
3. Changes occur in the senses, a person can hear or see something that others cannot hear.
4. Appetite becomes weak or practically disappears.
5. Changes in organ systems lead to urine that is too dark and stools that are difficult to pass.
6. There are temperature fluctuations. High can suddenly give way to low.
7. The person completely loses interest in the outside world.

When a person is seriously ill, other symptoms may occur before death.

A person's feelings at the moment of drowning

If you ask the question of how a person feels when he dies, the answer may depend on the cause and circumstances of death. This happens differently for everyone, but in any case, at this moment there is an acute lack of oxygen in the brain.

After the movement of blood is stopped, regardless of the method, after about 10 seconds the person loses consciousness, and a little later the death of the body occurs.

If the cause of death is drowning, then the moment a person finds himself under water, he begins to panic. Since it is impossible to do without breathing, after a while the drowning person has to take a breath, but instead of air, water enters the lungs.

As the lungs fill with water, a feeling of burning and fullness appears in the chest. Gradually, after a few minutes, calm appears, which indicates that consciousness will soon leave the person, and this will lead to death.

The lifespan of a person in water will also depend on its temperature. The colder it is, the faster the body becomes hypothermic. Even if a person is afloat and not underwater, the chances of survival decrease every minute.

An already lifeless body can still be taken out of the water and brought back to life if not too much time has passed. The first thing you need to do is release Airways from water, and then carry out full resuscitation measures.

Feelings during a heart attack

In some cases, it happens that a person suddenly falls and dies. Most often, death from a heart attack does not occur suddenly, but the development of the disease occurs gradually. Myocardial infarction does not affect a person immediately; for some time, people may feel some discomfort in the chest, but try not to pay attention to it. This is a big mistake that ends in death.

If you're prone to heart attacks, don't expect things to go away on their own. Such hope may cost you your life. After cardiac arrest, only a few seconds will pass until the person loses consciousness. A few more minutes, and death is already taking our loved one away.

If the patient is in the hospital, then he has a chance to get out if doctors detect cardiac arrest in time and carry out resuscitation measures.

Body temperature and death

Many people are interested in the question of at what temperature a person dies. Most are still with school days They remember from biology lessons that for humans a body temperature above 42 degrees is considered fatal.

Some scientists attribute fatalities to high temperature with the properties of water, the molecules of which change their structure. But these are only guesses and assumptions that science has yet to deal with.

If we consider the question of at what temperature a person dies, when hypothermia of the body begins, then we can say that already when the body cools down to 30 degrees, a person loses consciousness. If no measures are taken at this moment, death will occur.

Many such cases happen to people who are intoxicated, who fall asleep right on the street in winter and never wake up.

Emotional changes on the eve of death

Usually, before death, a person becomes completely indifferent to everything that happens around him. He ceases to be oriented in time and dates, becomes silent, but some, on the contrary, begin to constantly talk about the road ahead.

A loved one who is dying may begin to tell you that they talked to or saw deceased relatives. Another extreme manifestation at this time is a state of psychosis. It is always difficult for loved ones to bear all this, so you can consult a doctor and get advice about taking medications to alleviate the condition of the dying person.

If a person falls into a state of stupor or often sleeps for a long time, do not try to stir him up or wake him up, just be there, hold his hand, talk. Many people, even in a coma, can hear everything perfectly.

Death is always difficult; each of us will cross this line between life and non-existence in due time. When this happens and under what circumstances, what you will feel about it, unfortunately, is impossible to predict. This is a purely individual feeling for everyone.

Death is not something we like to think about, but it is something that awaits us all. Rare thoughts about her fill us with fear and horror. It's easy to lie awake at night and think about what it will be like. Will it hurt? Will it be scary? Will it be a release or is it just panic and pain? Until this happens to us, we will not know what happens after we take our last breath.

But we can get a pretty good idea of ​​the moments leading up to it. There are people who were on the verge of death, but did not cross it, and who wrote down all their sensations.

1. George Orwell's throat wound

The famous writer George Orwell was shot through the throat during... civil war in Spain in 1937, where he saw action. “The sensation of being hit by a bullet is very interesting,” Orwell wrote after it happened, “and I think it is worth describing in detail.”

“To put it bluntly, it felt like I was in the middle of an explosion. I heard a loud bang and saw a blinding flash around me, I felt a strong jolt - no pain, just a strong jolt, the same as when I was hit electric shock; at the same time there came a feeling of extreme weakness and the understanding that I was wounded and completely curled up.”

He didn't know how badly he was hurt until he tried to move his arm. She didn't move. He tried to speak, but nothing came out. Then he heard one of the soldiers say that the bullet had gone through his neck. Orwell realized that he was dying.

“My first thought, quite traditionally, was about my wife,” he wrote. “My second thought was great sadness at having to leave this world.” He was upset that he was dying by an absurd accident. "It is pointless!"

He couldn't bring himself to be angry at the man who shot him. “If at that moment he had been captured and appeared before me, I would only have congratulated him on his good shooting.”

2 Grant Allen's Drowning Death

Grant Allen nearly drowned while ice skating. Allen insists he was dead in an instant. “As far as I can tell,” he wrote, “I was absolutely dead, and I cannot imagine that it was possible to be any deader.”

While Allen was skating, the ice cracked underneath him and he fell headfirst into the icy water. He tried to swim to the surface, but hit his head on the hard crust of ice.

Allen couldn't think clearly. “I was dazed by the cold and confused by the suddenness of the unexpected dive,” he wrote. Instead of looking for a hole, he began banging his head on the ice, trying to break it. "I sighed and swallowed. a large number of water. I felt my lungs fill up. There came a moment of waiting, during which I knew full well that I was drowning; and then I died."

His life did not flash before his eyes. “On the contrary, I felt only a feeling of cold and dampness and shortness of breath, a cruel wild struggle, a terrible sensation of suffocation, and then it was all over.” His friends managed to pull him out and pump him out. But before that, Allen was in a state of clinical death.

“The actual moment of death is as painless as falling asleep,” Allen writes. “All unpleasant sensations are associated with the struggle that preceded death.”

3. Death by snake venom by Carl Patterson Schmidt

In 1957, snake expert Patterson Schmidt was bitten while trying to identify one. Over the next 24 hours, he wrote down his feelings as the poison took his life.

“4:30-5:30 p.m.,” he wrote down when he got home. “On the commuter train ride to Homewood, severe nausea but no vomiting.”

He managed to fall asleep for a couple of hours, but woke up at midnight. “Urine at 12:20,” he wrote down. “Mostly blood, but not much overall.” Later he a short time woke up again in a violent fit of vomiting.

His last entry was at 6:30 am. “Slight bleeding from the bowels, with frequent irritation in the anus,” he wrote. “The mouth and nose continue to bleed, but not excessively.” Closer to lunch, he called his wife in a panic. When the doctors arrived, he was drenched in sweat and unable to respond. He was pronounced dead at 3:00 p.m.

4. Death from tuberculosis of H.G. Wells

Science fiction writer H.G. Wells nearly died in the late 1800s while he was still young. He had consumption, which today is called tuberculosis. Nobody expected him to survive.

The attack began while playing football. “There was a huge pain in my side. My courage left me. I couldn't run. I couldn’t sit down,” he wrote. Wells excused himself and went into the house. “In the house I felt completely sick. I lay down. Later, I needed to go to the toilet and discovered that the chamber pot was half filled with scarlet blood. It was the most frightening moment of my life. I didn't know what to do. I lay down again and waited for someone to come.”

A doctor later told Wells he had no more than six months to live. Wells continued to go to school while the disease ate away at his body. But at night he had to deal with thoughts of his inevitable death.

“I hated the thought of death to the very bone,” Wells writes. “I was angry that I didn’t become famous, that I didn’t look at the world.” Worst of all, however, were the unfulfilled sexual desires of a young, dying teenager. “What made me even more angry was that I was in the network of abstinence, and this threatened me with the fact that I should die a virgin.” He felt uncontrollable rage towards women he could not sleep with.

The fear of non-existence scared him most of all. “Although my mind did not believe in immortality, I discovered that it was impossible to imagine myself not existing,” he wrote. “I had a nightmare feeling of approaching this non-existence of consciousness.”

Wells, of course, survived. His body defeated the disease. However, his fear of dissolving into oblivion changed his entire life. This was the moment that sparked his determination to make his mark on history as a writer.

5. Death by poison gas Kassem Ida

In 2013, Syrian rebel Kassem Eid was in Damascus when the city was hit by a sarin gas attack. Kassem heard the rocket hit the ground, but contrary to expectations, it did not explode. Instead, gas began to come out of it.

“It lasted a few seconds, then I lost the ability to breathe,” Eade said. “I felt like my chest was on fire.” My eyes burned like hell. I couldn't even scream."

He started beating his chest, trying to force himself to breathe. “It was very painful,” he said. “It felt like someone was tearing my chest apart with a knife made of fire.”

His neighbor knocked on the door asking for help. Her children were dying, vomit with some white substance flowing from their mouths. She, like most of those around her, was saying goodbye to life. “I watched hundreds of people die, suffocating. My heart practically stopped. And I lay next to dead bodies."

Ida was pulled out from under a pile of bodies when he managed to give a sign that he was alive. He survived, but went down the road to hell. “This kind of death,” he later said, “is one of the ugliest ways of dying that has ever existed in human history.”

6. Heavenly Visions of Anita Moorjani

“It was wonderful,” says Anita Moorjani of her brush with death in 2006. When Anita was dying of cancer and there was no hope of survival, she fell into a coma. However, Murjani believes that it was something more: in fact, she crossed the line of life and death.

“It’s hard to describe,” Moorjani says. “I felt like I left my body and my consciousness expanded, I was everywhere, in a god-like state, I could see my loved ones and feel the presence of other souls.”

“When I entered this other dimension, I felt an overwhelming sense of love and peace. I didn't feel any pain. I realized my purpose in life and what I should do. I realized that getting rid of cancer was always within me.”

After Anita came out of her coma, her body went through a miraculous recovery. During four days 70 percent of cancer cells disappeared. Within five weeks it was completely healed.

7. Matthew Botsford's Hellish Visions

Not every vision afterlife so peaceful. Matthew Botsford fell into a coma, as did Moorjani, and saw what he believes to be otherworldly glimpses. But his visions were not at all so joyful.

He received a bullet in the back of the head. “For a brief moment I felt a hot, excruciatingly painful, needle-like piercing at the top of my head,” he says. “Then I was enveloped in complete darkness, as if my eyes were filled with thick black ink.”

For the next 27 days, his body remained in a coma. But his soul, Botsford believes, was in hell. “I felt like I was in some kind of cage,” he says. “The cold penetrated me to the very marrow of my bones.”

He felt naked, helpless and surrounded by demonic creatures. “I felt the evil physically pressing on my body,” he explained.

He could feel nothing but evil. “Not a breath was heard,” he says. – There were no thoughts at all. I didn’t have any thoughts, but there was a feeling of hopelessness, fear and hopeless pessimism.”

8. Ancient description the dying impressions of Pierre-Jean du Monchot

The oldest description of near-death experiences ever found was created in the 18th century by the French physician Pierre-Jean du Monchot. He was interviewing a man with a fever who had briefly lost consciousness. Du Montchot wrote down what the patient told him.

“He reported that he had lost all external sensations,” du Monchot wrote. “He saw such a pure and bright light that he thought he was in heaven. He remembered this feeling very well and confirmed that he had never experienced more have a nice moment».

Du Montchot had heard about this before. He wrote that similar experiences were recorded at least as far back as the 12th century, when a theologian wrote: “I am now approaching the point where our souls part from our bodies, the latter illuminated by rays of light from the former.”

However, du Monchot did not believe that this was a spiritual experience. “The blood and all tissue fluids begin to flow faster,” he wrote, “and it is this acceleration of the flow of blood that awakens bright and strong sensations; its calm and even distribution makes the sensation pleasant.”

9. Death from cancer Chris Gutierrez

When Chris Gutierrez was battling pancreatic cancer, she simultaneously wrote her blog. When it became clear that she would not survive, she wrote one final entry, trying to describe what it felt like to die. She wrote: “You will not want to die like this.”

“I had collapsed lungs twice. I had swelling that made me look like the woman in a Botero painting. The swelling prevented me from walking. I could barely bend my knees to walk down the stairs. This could lead to tissue destruction and sepsis. I had days when I woke up thinking I was drowning because I had bile coming down my throat and my stomach was burning.”

She was angry. “I feel disappointed,” she wrote. – I was planning to invest in real estate. But I will never do this again.”

Most of all, however, she was worried about her family and the people who cared for her. “I just want to die without too much pain, surrounded by those I love,” she wrote. “Those who will be present during my agony must be people who love me.”

10. Death in the palliative care unit of the scientific community

The knowledge of death became such an obsession that it began to be studied. A whole community of experts is doing research, drawing on the specific stories of each individual, to try to get the best understanding of how death manifests itself. Their knowledge is not based on personal experience, but they are based on the experiences of people who have died in a palliative care unit.

“Hunger goes away first, then thirst goes away,” says Dr. James Hellenbeck. “Then speech disappears, then visions begin. The last to disappear, as a rule, are hearing and touch.”

It does not hurt. Scientists say that when death comes slowly and naturally, there is no suffering. Our perceptions, according to Dr. David Hui, become weaker as we die. "You may not even be aware of what's going on."

Dr. Jimoh Borjigin says visions of light are common. “Many cardiac arrest survivors describe feeling these amazing sensations during the unconscious period,” she says. – They see light and then they describe it as something more real than real world».

But what comes after the coming of the light is one of those things that is impossible to know. “Most people who die then close their eyes and appear to fall asleep,” says Dr. Hellenbeck. “From now on... we can only guess what is really going on.”

Especially for readers based on an article from listverse.com

If death had been his teacher, then she, being much wiser than him, would have kept him from sin. But he forgot about death and drowned in a quagmire of evils, because he did not want to have such an adviser who is dearer than everyone else, that is, death.

This is how death keeps us from sin.

The flesh thinks against the spirit, as the holy Apostle Paul says (see Gal. 5:17). When the body rises up to fight against the soul in order to defile it, then ask death:

- What do you say, death? Should I commit this sin that my body is pushing me to do?

And she will answer you:

“Do not commit a sin, for you will come into my hands and I will throw you into Gehenna!”

Is the devil inciting you to steal? Ask death. And she will tell you:

- Do not steal, because this is a commandment, and you will come into my hands!

Is the devil luring you into fornication? Does the devil encourage you to use foul language, drunkenness, smoking, and all kinds of evil? Ask death:

- What do you want me to do, death?

And see what death tells you:

“Don’t do this, because you will fall into my hands!” You'll die soon! After all, no one will remain here, and I will throw you into Gehenna!

So, death benefits us, and we should always have it before our eyes! And when the devil incites you to commit a sin, ask death:

- What do you say, death? You are my teacher! What should I do?

“Don’t do this, because the wages of sin is death, and you will die in soul and fall into my clutches, and I will cast you into Gehenna, and you will suffer there forever and ever!”

Therefore, this is how good death is if we appoint it as our advisor! Thinking about death always keeps us from sin and teaches us to do only good. Therefore, woe to the one who forgets about death, for he will die in body in due time, but dies in soul at the very moment when he commits a sin.

If we always had death before our eyes, we would not commit sin not only in deed, but also in word and thought, because God judges sin by thought in the same way as committed sin.

What does the divine father Ephraim the Syrian say? “Do not fall into negligence, my brethren, thinking about sins as if they are light. If sins were light in thought, then Christ Himself, the wisdom of God, would not have charged the lust of a woman with adultery and hatred of a brother with murder.” You just passionately thought about a woman - and became an adulterer! Just thought with anger about your brother - and you already hate him, you are a murderer! You heard? Adultery because of one thought and murder because of hatred of a brother.

Do you see? However, death does not leave you here either. Death keeps you from turning to sin not only in deed, but also in thought. Because God judges thoughts as actions, in the Law of Grace.

For He did not come to break the law, but to bring it to perfection. In the Old Law it was written: “Thou shalt not steal” (Deut. 5:19). And here, in the Law of Grace, do not even wish for another thing. So, Christ restrains you so that you do not even think with passion about the thing of another.

My brothers, blessed and blessed is the man who took death as his advisor. Always when laziness will fight him, so that he does not perform prayer, does not fulfill the penance given by his confessor; when the devil will fight him so that he does not observe fasts, allows himself modest food when this is not possible; or when the devil fights him so that he steals, or hoards property, or takes revenge on another, or fornicates, or curses, or gets drunk, or smokes, let him ask death:

- What do you say, death, should I do this?

And death will tell him:

- No. Do not do that! For the wages of sin is death. I will immediately come after sin, take you away and throw you into Gehenna!

This is how death, which we fear, is our greatest friend and best adviser through life, into eternal life.

Our philosophy as Christians is not to avoid death.

Our philosophy as Christians is not to avoid death. And what? Prepare to die! Wait for her to come to us. But as? Cleanly confess our sins, perform our penance, make peace with everyone, stop committing sins, do good deeds - and then we will wait for death, just as we wait for a big parade, as we wait for a great holiday.

Listen to what Saint Ephraim says: “A man, convicted by his conscience of sins, is very afraid of death, but a righteous man awaits death as a great holiday!” So that it comes, he transfers it from death to life, for the present age is the death of the soul for those who are enslaved by it [this age].

We are afraid: “Oh woe is me, death will come!” We're afraid! But let's not be afraid of death. Let us become afraid of sin, for sin plunges us into death. For the wages of sin is death, and the real death of the soul is in sin!