La mort, l’autre côté de la vie

Death challenges and overwhelms us. We are assailed by all manner of questions and emotions when we see a loved one pass away or when we consider our own death. But whatever our reaction is, death remains inevitable. In this case why not regulate it? This is what Socrates, Plato, Epicure, Cicero, Plotinus, Montaigne did along with many other philosophers, who came to believe that philosophy is learning to die. By the same token, mystics of all the great traditions made death a key theme of their meditation. They realised that the fear of death simply falls away when one enters into communion with the Absolute. But how can the average person, sometimes distanced from philosophical reflection and a stranger to the benefits of meditation, regulate death? Reflection and contemplation are within everyone’s reach. Furthermore, the soul conceals the treasures of wisdom and the heart shelters an immense reserve of empathy. This is what is needed to regulate death and help those around us to fully experience their lives. It strikes me as unthinkable that life, once started, ends in senseless dissolution into matter, and that the soul, as an ephemeral wonder, succumbs to nothingness having pointlessly been the spiritual and sensory home of such prodigious clarity, of such rich hope and such tender affection. Robert Blais.