The Mystery of Death

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This is chapter 49 from "Life and Fate", by Vasily Grossman.

"When a person dies, they cross over from the realm of freedom to the realm of slavery. Life is freedom, and dying is a gradual denial of freedom. Consciousness first weakens and then disappears. The life-processes - respiration, the metabolism, the circulation - continue for some time, but an irrevocable move has been made towards slavery; consciousness, the flame of freedom, has died out.

The stars have disappeared from the night sky; the Milky Way has vanished; the sun has gone out; Venus, Mars and Jupiter have been extinguished; millions of leaves have died; the wind and the oceans have faded away; flowers have lost their colour and fragrance; bread has vanished; water has vanished; even the air itself, the sometimes cool, sometimes sultry air, has vanished. The universe inside a person has ceased to exist.

This universe is astonishingly similar to the universe that exists outside people. It is astonishing similar to the universes still reflected within the skulls of millions of living people. But still more astonishing is the fact that this universe had something in it that distinguished the sound of its ocean, the smell of its flowers, the rustle of its leaves, the hues of its granite and the sadness of its autumn fields, both from those of every other universe that exists and ever has existed within people, and from those of the universe that exists eternally outside people.

What constitutes the freedom, the soul of an individual life, is its uniqueness. The reflection of the universe in someone's consciousness is the foundation of his or her power, but life only becomes happiness, is only endowed with freedom and meaning when someone exists as a whole world that has never been repeated in all eternity. Only then can they experience the joy of freedom and kindness, finding in others what they have already found in themselves."

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Our consciousness probably evolved to share experiences - a necessary function for an adaptable, flexible and competent social animal. Of course, to share experiences you first have to have them.

We are used to experiencing in consciousness the objective events of our lives: events and reflection engage in parallel. Death is anomalous. Like your own deep sleep, you don't experience it yourself, although others can. For yourself, you're never dead as such, you experience only the process of dying: that is, being alive.