Amongst my current reading is Closer to the Light, by Melvin Morse, M.D.. It's an account of the author's reseach into near death experiences. From the second chapter:
… doctors don't like to research death. Although most people die in hospitals, the subject of death is almost taboo there.
I recall a conversation with a doctor in which she insisted that it was impossible to come to terms with death. "For you, maybe," I thought, and rather lamented the fact that this was the attitude of someone whose job was to preside over death. It seemed a narrow-minded and immature view, a frozen view, and didn't inspire me with confidence in the medical profession.
From the fourth chapter:
Geoffrey Gorer, an authority on death and dying, says that death has replaced sex as the forbidden topic. Today, sex education is part of the schoolchild's curriculum. Death education is ignored. Says Gorer: "One has the right to cry only if no one else can see or hear. Solitary and shameful mourning is the only recourse, like a sort of masturbation."
Early on in my reading of Closer to the Light it occurred to me that the mystery surrounding death, perhaps being the greatest mystery known to us, is what allows the mental and imaginative wiggle room for the creation of fiction. It is the ultimate guarantor of suspense. Fiction, and art generally, is a kind of questioning within the suspense of mortality. What if all the suspense were suddenly gone? And yet, on the other hand, that art and fiction can 'entertain' at all, rather than simply horrify with the fact that it is a groping in the unknown, suggests a safety net, an intuition that fiction is only fiction. Human life then, is perhaps composed of a kind of balancing act between the creative freedom of suspense and the safety net of intuition. Perhaps.
We don't know yet.
Recently, someone started messaging me and sending me e-mails, to which I responded in, I think, a neutral-to-friendly fashion. For some reason, the conversation got onto the subject of the existence of the soul. My correspondent seemed to wish me to convince him that the soul exists, since I had mentioned some ideas on the matter. I told him that I wasn't interested in persuasion and debate. Although he said he understood this, still the message didn't seem to get through, as soon enough he was repeating his demands, more forcefully, that I prove to him the existence of the soul. Since I found this rather tedious and boorish, and since it indicated to me that he had not understood anything I'd said, anyway, I wrote a rather brusque reply, which may have been an overreaction. Even if it had been, it was a necessary one as it ended what seemed like a doomed correspondence. The guy wrote back with an e-mail of abuse and told me not to bother replying. I didn't.
I've just had a quick look through that correspondence now but can't find what I was looking for. Basically, as I recall, my correspondent mentioned some research currently being conducted into NDEs in which pictures would be placed on high shelves, face up, in hospitals, to see if people who experienced clinical death really leave their bodies and are therefore able to see the pcitures on those shelves. He mentioned this research apparently without knowing the outcome, as he was eagerly anticipating the proof that near death experiences are a hallucination.
Reading Closer to the Light I have thought to myself, whatever my consciousness is, and wherever it goes, at the moment all that I'm reading about is simply contained within my consciousness. This is a book, like any other book. It is not my own experience. For me, it is hearsay. I decided to do a little online research about the author. Since I don't have much energy or patience at the moment, I didn't do that much research, but from what I can gather, and for what it's worth, Melvin Morse, M.D., seems fairly well-known. In the course of this research, however, I turned up articles on what appears to be the study mentioned by my correspondent. I also read a notice on the study by its organiser, one Dr. Parnia. Since I had heard of this study from someone very much hostile to the idea of the existence of the soul, I somehow associated it with that attitude, and was mildly surprised (though I shouldn't have been) to find the tone of the notice very different to the tone adopted by my correspondent. It's probably best if you read it yourself, as I'm bound to be guilty of 'interpretation' if I attempt a precis. In any case, Dr. Parnia does not appear unduly hostile to the idea that there might be such a thing as consciousness separate to the body.
The question for me now, is, whatever the results of the study ultimately turn out to be, whether reassuring or otherwise, from the point of view of one whose entire existence has revolved around the endless suspense and questionng of fiction, do I really want to know?
