What is the name of death scientifically. How does a person feel when they die? Clinical death

In everyday life, when we talk with someone from our acquaintances, and he says: “You know, such and such died,” the usual reaction to this is the question: how died? Very important, how a person dies. Death is important for a person's sense of self. It is not only negative.

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

Once I had to communicate with artists and sculptors, and I asked them: "You depict different aspects of a person's life, you can depict love, friendship, beauty, but how would you depict death?" And no one gave an immediately intelligible answer.

One sculptor who immortalized the blockade of Leningrad promised to think it over. And shortly before his death, he answered me like this: "I would portray death in the image of Christ." I asked: "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 image of two boys: one boy sits on a stone, resting his head on his knees, he is all directed downward.

The second boy has a flute in his hands, his head is thrown back, he is all directed after the motive. And the explanation for this sculpture was as follows: it is impossible to depict death without accompanying life, and life without death.

Death is a natural process. Many writers have 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 even difficult to 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 the person is still on the rise, is full of strength.

And the elderly want death. Some old women ask: "Here, healed, it's time to die." And the patterns of death that we read about in the literature, when death befell the peasants, were of a normative nature.

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

The peasants knew that life is not a dandelion flower that grew, blossomed and scattered under the breeze. Life has a deep meaning.

This example of the death of peasants dying after giving themselves permission to die is not a feature of those people, we can meet similar examples today. Somehow we were admitted to an oncological patient. A former military man, he behaved well and joked: "I went through three wars, pulled death by the mustache, and now it's time for her to pull me up."

We, of course, supported him, but suddenly one day he could not get out of bed and took it completely unequivocally: "That's it, I'm dying, I can't get up." We told him: "Do not 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, in a few days he dies, having no physiological prerequisites for this. He dies because he chose to die. This means that this good will to death or some kind of projection of death takes place in reality.

It is necessary to provide life with a natural end, because death is programmed even at the moment of conception of a person. A peculiar experience of death is acquired by a person in childbirth, at the moment of birth. When you deal with this problem, you can see how intelligently life is built. As a person is born, so he dies, easily born - easy to die, hard to be born - hard to die.

And the day of a person's death is also not accidental, like his birthday. Statisticians are the first to raise this problem, discovering the frequent coincidence in people of the date of death and the date of birth. Or, when we remember some significant anniversaries of the death of our relatives, it suddenly turns out that the grandmother died - a granddaughter was born. This transmission to generations and the nonrandomness of the day of death and birthday is striking.

Clinical death or another life?

Not a single sage has yet understood what death is, what happens at the time of death. Such a stage as clinical death was practically ignored. A person falls into a coma, his breathing stops, his heart stops, 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 taking place in the brain, and so on. And once I gave her an example, which she later began to use and tell.

I worked for 10 years at the Cancer Institute as a psychotherapist, and once I was called to a young woman. During the operation, her heart stopped, they could not start it 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 unit, she was just coming to her senses. I asked: "Can you talk to me?" - "Yes, only I would like to apologize to you, I caused you so much trouble." - "What troubles?" - “Well, of course. My heart stopped, I went through such stress, and I saw that for the doctors it was also a great stress. "

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 a lot more if you promise not to send me to a mental hospital."

And she said the following: when she plunged into a narcotic sleep, she suddenly felt that as if a soft blow to her feet made something inside her turn, like a screw was twisting. She had the feeling that her soul had turned out and went out into some kind of 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 she suddenly 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 was dead, and with horror remembered that she had not said goodbye to either her mother or her five-year-old daughter. Anxiety for them literally pushed her in the back, she flew out of the operating room and in an instant found herself in her apartment.

She saw a rather peaceful scene - the girl was playing with dolls, her grandmother, her mother, was sewing something. There was a knock at the door, and a neighbor, Lidia Stepanovna, entered. She was holding a small polka-dot dress. “Mashenka,” said the neighbor, “you all the time tried to be like your mother, so I sewed for you the same dress as your mother’s.”

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

And the girl's mother, forgetting about herself, went up to her daughter, stroked her 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 had 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 started up, we are doing the operation, but rather, because there may be a repeated cardiac arrest."

After listening to this woman, I said: "Do you want me to come to your house and tell my family that everything is all right, they can see you?" She happily agreed.

I drove to the address given to me, my grandmother opened the door, I told you about the operation, and then asked: "Tell me, at half past ten, did your neighbor Lydia Stepanovna come to see you?" - "I came, and you know her?" - "Did she bring a dress with polka dots?" - "Are you a wizard, doctor?"

I keep asking, and everything came together 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.

This story greatly influenced Bekhtereva. And then she herself experienced a similar incident. One day she lost both her stepson and her husband, both committed suicide. It was a terrible stress for her. And then one day, entering the room, she saw her husband, and he turned to 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 staggered back: "Yes, there is your husband!" Then she did what her husband asked for, 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 kind of huge wall, behind which I hear voices, and I know that there is a wonderful and huge world, but I cannot convey to others what I see and hear. Because in order for it to be scientifically substantiated, everyone must repeat my experience. "

Once I was sitting near a dying patient. I put on the music box, which played a touching melody, then asked: "Turn it off, bothers you?" - "No, let him play." Suddenly her breathing stopped, her relatives rushed: "Do something, she is not breathing."

In the heat of the moment I gave her an injection of adrenaline, and she came to herself 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 into which the brain passes during clinical death? After all, death is death. We fix 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, stronger 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. The psyche is, but the soul is not.

How would you like to die?

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

People with a schizoid type of character, such as Don Quixote, characterized their desire in a rather strange way: "We would like to die so that none of those around us could see my body."

Epileptoids - considered it inconceivable for themselves to lie quietly and wait for death to come, they should have been able to somehow participate in this process.

Cycloids are people like Sancho Panza who would like to die surrounded by relatives. Psychasthenics are anxious and suspicious people, worried about how they will look when they die. Hysteroids wanted to die at sunrise or sunset, on the seashore, in the mountains.

I compared these desires, but I remember the words of one monk who said: “I don't care what will surround me, what will be the situation around me. It is important for me that I die during prayer, thanking God for sending me life, and I saw the power and beauty of His creation. "

Heraclitus of Ephesus said: “On the night of death, a man kindles a light for himself; and he is not dead, extinguishing his eyes, but alive; but he comes into contact with the dead - dozing, while awake - comes into contact with the dormant, ”- a phrase over which one can puzzle almost all his life.

Being in contact with the patient, I could arrange with him so that when he dies, he would try to let me know if there is something behind the coffin or not. And I have received this answer more than once.

Once I 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 from the fact that 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 bunk opposite me. I was delighted, began to talk to her, and suddenly I remembered - she died!

I thought I was dreaming all this, turned away and tried to sleep to wake up. Some time passed, I raised my head. The light was on again, I looked around in horror - she was still sitting on the bunk and looking at me. I want to say something, I can't - horror. I realized that there was a dead person in front of me. And suddenly she, with a sad smile, said: "But this is not a dream."

Why am I giving examples like this? Because the vagueness of what awaits us forces us to return to the old principle: "Do no harm."

That is, "do not 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 the brightest life at this moment?

Quality of life and permission to die

It is not the number of days that we have lived that matters, but the quality. And what does the quality of life give? The quality of life makes it possible to be without pain, the ability to control your mind, the ability to be surrounded by relatives and family.

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

The blessing of the family is very important, the parental blessing of the dying to the children, it can even save them later, protect them from something. Again, returning to the cultural heritage of 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 do not want to go, or are afraid, only the younger, a fool, goes to the grave, and at the end of the third day, the father reveals to him some secret.

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 will pay the bills for the whole family." And so, having set a goal, no matter whether it be rational or affective, a person receives a meaningful departure from life.

A hospice is a home that offers a 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, air does not just come out of him, like from a rubber ball, he needs to make a leap, he needs strength in order to step into the unknown. A person must allow himself this step.

And the first permission he receives 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 before suffering and prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane, Christ asked His disciples: "Stay with Me, do not sleep." Three times the disciples promised Him to stay awake, but fell asleep without support. So, in a spiritual sense, a hospice is a place where a person can ask, "Stay with me."

And if such a great person - the Incarnate God - needed the help of a person, if He said: “I no longer call you slaves. I called you friends ", addressing people, then follow this example and saturate with spiritual content the last days sick is very important.

If you care about life and death issues,

Having opened the Great Soviet Encyclopedia, we read: “Death is the cessation of the vital activity of an organism and, as a result, the death of an individual as a separate living system. In a broader sense - an irreversible cessation of metabolism in a living substance, accompanied by the decomposition of protein bodies. " It would seem, what else?

Between life and death

No one can pinpoint the line between where life ends and death begins. After all, death is a process, and a slow one. Once death was considered cardiac arrest, today, as you know, a person is definitely considered dead in case of brain death. And the brain can die long before the moment the body stops breathing. But what then must die in the brain? Trunk. It is he who is the most ancient part“The second Universe”, which is also called “the reptile's brain”, the one that millions of years ago constituted the entire brain of our ancestors - it is the core of our brain.

Over the course of evolution, the trunk found itself inside more complex structures, but it is still the basis of life. It controls the basic functions of our body: heartbeat, breathing, blood pressure, body temperature ... Therefore, when the brain stem dies, doctors can be sure: the patient has at least clinical death.

Statistics show that most often people die from old age and from diseases associated with it, such as cancer and stroke. However, the number one killer is heart disease, the worst of which is heart attack. They kill about a quarter of the population of the Western world.

You will be completely dead

Doctors say that there is a state when a person is "mostly dead", and sometimes - when he is "completely dead." Today, science knows that during cardiac arrest, organs and tissues can remain in the so-called pseudo-dead state for at least several hours. And since death, as befits an old woman, walks slowly, the moment of its onset, with skillful and, most importantly, prompt medical assistance, can often be suspended and a person revived.

One of the most effective means revival, oddly enough, is hypothermia - freezing. True, temporary. Doctors are still puzzling over why hypothermia is so powerful. Perhaps the answer lies in the fact that at very low temperatures, cells stop dividing (the cell division limit is 50 times), and vital activity in them is greatly inhibited. They need less supply of nutrients and oxygen, and the removal of harmful metabolic products.

German scientist Klaus Sames decided to freeze his body after death. According to an agreement signed between the 75-year-old scientist and the Cryonics Institute, the scientist's body will be kept in the institute's storage facilities until people learn to revive frozen cells.

For Whom the Bell Tolls

Two hundred years ago, people asked in a will before their funeral ... to cut off their head. Sometimes the fear of being buried alive took on the character of mass hysteria.

She became the reason for the appearance of the so-called dead waiting, houses of the dead. When people doubted that their loved one was really dead, they left his body in such a corpse and waited until the corpse began to decompose. The decomposition process was the only reliable method to determine if a person was dead. A rope was tied to the finger of such a "dubious" deceased, the end of which went into another room, where a bell hung and a man was sitting. Sometimes the bell rang. But it was a false alarm caused by the displacement of bones in a decaying body. For all the years of the existence of the dead, not a single person has come to life.

"Premature Burial". Antoine Wirtz, 1854

It is believed that, deprived of the flow of oxygen in the blood, neurons die within minutes. During such supercritical moments, the brain can remain active only in those areas that are absolutely critical for survival.

Alive or dead: how to determine?

But there were faster ways to find out if a person is dead. Some of them, oddly enough, are still relevant today. Sometimes they are used by many doctors. These methods cannot be called tricky: disturb the cough centers in the lungs; to conduct a test for the "symptom of doll eyes", which consists in the fact that a person is injected into the ear with cold water: if a person is alive, his eyeballs will react reflexively; well, and quite antediluvian - to stick a pin under the nail (or just press on it), place an insect in the ear, scream loudly, cut the foot of the foot with a razor blade ...

Anything to get at least some kind of reaction. If it is not there, then even a beating heart says that the person is dead. From a legal point of view, it is a so-called corpse with a beating heart (in this case, the heart can beat itself, or be supported by the apparatus). "Living corpses" often serve as organ donors for the truly living.

The cells of our body die throughout our life. They begin to die even when we are in the womb. Cells are programmed to die at the moment of birth. Death allows new cells to be born and live.

Neither alive nor dead

But those people whose brain is still alive, but they themselves are in a stable state of coma, are also considered dead. This issue is controversial, and legislative controversy continues to this day. On the one hand, loved ones have the right to decide whether to disconnect such a person from the apparatus that support the life of the body, and on the other, people in a long coma rarely, but still open their eyes ...

That is why the new definition of death includes not only the death of the brain, but also its behavior, even if the brain is still alive. After all, a personality is nothing more than a kind of "set" of feelings, memories, experiences, peculiar only to this particular person. And when he loses this "set", and there is no way to return it, the person is considered dead. It doesn't matter if his heart is beating, whether his organs are working - it is important if he has at least something left in his head.

Dying is not scary

One of the largest and most widely accepted studies of posthumous experiences was also conducted in the 1960s. It was led by the American psychologist Karlis Osis. The study was based on the observations of physicians and nurses caring for the dying. His conclusions are based on the experience of 35,540 observations of the process of dying.

The authors of the study stated that the majority of dying people did not experience fear. Feelings of discomfort, pain, or indifference were more often observed. About one in 20 people showed signs of elation.

Some studies show that older people experience less anxiety at the thought of death than relatively younger people. A survey of a large group of elderly people showed that the question "Are you afraid of dying?" only 10% of them answered “yes”. It is noted that old people think about death often, but with amazing calmness.

What will we see before we die?

Osis and his colleagues paid particular attention to the visions and hallucinations of the dying. At the same time, it was emphasized that these are "special" hallucinations. All of them are in the nature of visions experienced by people who are conscious and clearly understand what is happening. At the same time, the work of the brain was not distorted either by sedatives or by high body temperature. However, immediately before death, most people already lost consciousness, although an hour before death, about 10% of the dying were still clearly aware of the world around them.

The main conclusions of the researchers were that the visions of the dying often corresponded to traditional religious concepts - people saw paradise, heaven, angels. Other visions were devoid of such a connotation, but were also associated with beautiful images: beautiful landscapes, rare bright birds, etc. But most often in their posthumous visions people saw their previously deceased relatives, who often offered to help the dying person pass into another world.

The most interesting thing is something else: the study showed that the nature of all these visions relatively weakly depends on the physiological, cultural and personal characteristics, the type of disease, the level of education and religiosity of the person. The authors of other works, who observed people who experienced clinical death, came to similar conclusions. They also noted that descriptions of the visions of people who have returned to life are not culturally related and often do not agree with the accepted ideas about death in the given society.

However, such a circumstance would probably be easily explained by the followers of the Swiss psychiatrist Carl Gustav Jung. It was this researcher who always paid special attention to the "collective unconscious" of humanity. The essence of his teaching can be very roughly reduced to the fact that all of us at a deep level are the keepers of the universal human experience, which is the same for everyone, which cannot be changed or realized. He can "break through" into our "I" only through dreams, neurotic symptoms and hallucinations. Therefore, it is possible that deep in our psyche the phylogenetic experience of experiencing the end is really "hidden", and these experiences are the same for everyone.

Interestingly, psychology textbooks (for example, famous work Arthur Rean's "The Psychology of Man from Birth to Death") often refer to the fact that the events experienced by the dying coincide strikingly with what is described in ancient esoteric sources. At the same time, it is emphasized that the sources themselves were completely unknown to most people who described the posthumous experience. One can cautiously assume that this actually proves Jung's conclusions.

Stages of dying

The most famous periodization of the stages of this sad process was described by the American psychologist Elisabeth Kübler-Ross back in 1969. Nevertheless, it is still the most used today. There she is.

1. Denial. The person refuses to accept the fact of imminent death. Having learned about the terrible diagnosis, he assures himself of the doctors' mistake.

2. Anger. A person feels resentment, envy and hatred towards others, asking himself the question: "Why me?"

3. Bargaining. A person is looking for ways to extend his life and promises anything in exchange for it (doctors - to quit drinking and smoking, to God - to become righteous, etc.).

4. Depression. The dying person loses interest in life, feels complete hopelessness, grieves about separation from family and friends.

5. Acceptance. This is the last stage at which a person resigns himself to his fate. Despite the fact that the dying person does not become cheerful, peace and a calm expectation of the end reign in his soul.

Despite its wide popularity, this concept is not recognized by all specialists, since a person does not always go through all these stages, and their order may be different. However, in the vast majority of cases, the Kubler-Ross periodization accurately describes what is happening.

The moment of death

Other specialists, however, added to the picture of dying. Thus, the American psychologist and physician Raymond Moody, having studied 150 cases of posthumous experiences, built a "complete model of death." It can be briefly described as follows.

At the moment of death, a person begins to hear an unpleasant noise, loud ringing, buzzing. At the same time, he senses that he is moving very quickly through a long, dark tunnel. After that, the person notices that he is outside his own body. He just sees it from the side. Then the spirits of previously deceased relatives, friends and loved ones appear, who want to meet and help him.

Scientists still cannot explain the phenomenon characteristic of most posthumous experiences, nor the vision of a bright tunnel. It is assumed, however, that neurons in the brain are responsible for the tunnel effect. When they die, they begin to be chaotically excited, which creates a sensation of bright light, and the impairment of peripheral vision caused by a lack of oxygen creates a "tunnel effect". Feelings of euphoria can occur as the brain releases endorphins, "internal opiates" that reduce feelings of depression and pain. This causes hallucinations in the parts of the brain that are responsible for memory and emotions. People feel happiness and bliss.

True, the reverse process is just as possible - physiology begins to turn on in response to the stimuli created by psychological phenomena. It is just as impossible to understand what acts first, as it is to answer the question about the notorious egg and chicken.

Nothing boded trouble

As Bulgakov's Woland said, “Yes, man is mortal, but that would be half the trouble. The bad news is that sometimes he is suddenly mortal. " In this case, scientists also have a lot of research. One of the most famous is the work of the Norwegian psychologist Randy Noyes, who identified the stages for sudden death.

The stage of resistance. The person realizes the danger, experiences fear and tries to fight. As soon as he realizes the futility of such resistance, the fear disappears and the person begins to feel serenity and calmness.

Review of life. It takes place in the form of a panorama of memories, replacing each other in rapid succession and covering the entire past of a person. Most often this is accompanied by positive emotions, less often - negative ones.

The stage of transcendence. The logical conclusion of the review of life. People begin to perceive their past with increasing distance. Ultimately, they are able to achieve a state in which all life is seen as a whole. At the same time, they distinguish every detail in an amazing way. After that, even this level is overcome, and the dying person, as it were, goes beyond himself. It is then that he experiences a transcendental state, which is sometimes also called "cosmic consciousness."

Fear of death and incompleteness of life

Despite everything, many perfectly healthy and young people often fear death. Moreover, they do it much more intrusively than everyone else. What is the reason for this? With this question, we turned to specialists.

The fear of death is a very important "brick" in the foundation of cultures, religions, the development of mankind, civilizations, large and small social groups, that is necessary element a kind of “collective unconscious,” says Lyubov Zayeva, a psychoanalyst and specialist of the European Confederation of Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy. - But this is also something without which there is no development, functioning of each individual personality, separate psyche. Freud believed that the fear of death is generated by the fear of castration: it is a deep fear of losing a part of oneself, the fear of destruction of one's bodily "I".

It is necessary to distinguish between the normal presence of this theme in life and the pathological one. Normal should be understood as those situations when the fear of death, for example, helps to include the necessary defenses to regulate behavior and life. This is what protects and saves us. If we are aware that we could perish if we do not follow the rules road traffic then it helps us stay safe and avoid dangerous situations.

In a global sense, the fear of death helped entire nations survive, stimulating migration, discoveries, and the development of science and culture. In order not to die, not to perish, to prolong life, to improve it, it is necessary to learn something elementary, to do something, to change something, to know something and remember something. That is, the fear of death is able to push us towards self-improvement and a new life.

Fear of death can include powerful compensatory mechanisms, and then a person, defending himself against it at an unconscious level, begins, for example, to strenuously monitor his health, adhere to a healthy lifestyle. He can become a creator, bearing fruit, "giving birth" in spite of death - then creativity in all its forms, as it were, drowns out the fear of death. The very thought that something will remain after us (children, objects of art and everyday life, the gardens and forests we have planted, ideas, business), as if moving death away from us, adds a "drop of eternity" to life.

The pathological presence of the theme of death in the life of a particular person reveals itself, for example, in states of frozenness and numbness, depression, increased anxiety, phobias. These extremely unpleasant states often hide trauma at a very early age from facing the topic of death, when there was not even a real death of the object (no one actually died), but something was lost in the inner world (a beloved object, a sense of security or trust in the world). At the same time, it is as if a hole is formed in the soul and in the psyche, which every now and then makes itself felt by various disturbing experiences.

The fastest, easiest and "broken" way to deal with the fear of death - various kinds of addiction, dependence. An alcoholic and a drug addict are always at the mercy of the fear of death, but at the same time they do everything to destroy their existence.

A strong fear of death always arises there and when the meaning of life is lost, there is no idea, a goal, calling forward fantasy, that is, when a person is existentially disoriented. Then the music of life does not seem to sound in his soul, and he hears the signals of the end, emptiness ... In this sense, most religions offer their short answer to the fear of death, talking about the eternity of the life of the soul, other incarnations in other lives. What is the point of being afraid if there is no death as such?

In fact, religious concepts remind of the frailty of one and the immortality of the other in us, the most important. A person who is pathologically tuned in to the “radio station of the voice of death” is always afraid to say goodbye to something that has become obsolete in his soul, life, and does not see, does not appreciate his real future path. We sometimes go to cemeteries, but we must always leave on time. Remembering death, we must remember much more about the value of life.

The fear of death is different

What are the causes of the fear of death? We can assume several possible answers, - says Elena Sidorenko, psychoanalytically-oriented psychologist, chairman and board member of the regional branch of the European Confederation of Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy RO EKPP-Russia-Samara. - First of all, it is the fear of death as such, the fear that it will come. Own or loved one, a stranger on the street, etc.

In this case, most likely, we are talking about the existence of a fantasy that overwhelms inner world subject, splashing out and interfering with reality. According to the psychoanalytic interpretation, in this case it is appropriate to talk about the presence of a certain desire that feeds and develops a person's unconscious fantasy. This mental content can have roots in the depths of the distant past and carry the sound of the presence of a murderous drive (i.e., an unconscious desire to kill, destroy), denied by a person due to social disapproval (this is impossible, not accepted, can be punished).

In another case, fear may take place as an indefinite anxiety. Without delving into Freud's theory of fear, it can be noted that the German word angst does not have an unambiguous meaning. This word can often have a contrasting meaning. Unlike fear, as the fear of something that has a certain object, the feeling of anxiety is characterized by the absence of such an object. This refers to a kind of "anticipation", the anticipation of the experience as such.

And, finally, it makes sense to touch upon the fear of death as a special state, a stable reaction of the subject in a traumatic situation with a stream of internal and external excitations that the subject is unable to control. This is an automatic reaction. Freud wrote about this in his work "Inhibition, symptom, fear". In this case, we are talking about evidence of a person's mental helplessness. This is an automatically arising fear of death. It represents the body's spontaneous response to a traumatic situation or to its repetition. The prototype of this experience is the experience of the infant as a consequence of his biological helplessness.

Death is the purpose of life

From psychoanalytic practice, we know that the fear of death is not a basic fear, - says the famous St. Petersburg psychoanalyst Dmitry Olshansky. - Losing a life is not something that all people, without exception, are afraid of. For someone, life is not of particular value, for someone it is so disgusting that parting with it looks like a happy outcome, someone dreams of heavenly life, so earthly existence seems to be a heavy burden and vanity. A person is afraid to lose not life, but something significant with which this life is filled.

Therefore, for example, it makes no sense to apply death penalty regarding religious terrorists: they already dream of going to heaven as soon as possible and meeting their god. And for many criminals, death would be a deliverance from the pangs of conscience. Therefore, the exploitation of the fear of death for social regulation is not always justified: some people are not afraid of death, but strive for it. Freud even tells us about the death drive, which is associated with lowering all tensions of the body to zero. Death is a point of absolute peace and absolute bliss.

In this sense, from the point of view of the unconscious, death is an absolute pleasure, a complete discharge of all drives. It is not surprising, therefore, that death is the goal of all drives. Death, however, can frighten a person, since it is associated with the loss of personality or one's own "I" - a privileged object created by the look. Therefore, many neurotics ask the question: what awaits me after death? What will be left of me in this world? Which part of me is mortal and which part is immortal? Succumbing to fear, they create for themselves a myth about the soul and about paradise, where their personality is supposedly preserved after death.

Therefore, it is not surprising that people who do not have this own "I", who do not have a personality, are not afraid of death, as, for example, some psychotics. Or Japanese samurai, who are not independent reflective personalities, but only an extension of the will of their master. They are not afraid of losing their lives on the battlefield, they do not hold on to their identity, because initially they do not have it.

Thus, we can conclude that the fear of death is imaginary in nature and is rooted only in the person's personality. Whereas in all other registers of the psyche there is no such fear. Moreover, the drives tend to death. And we can even say that we die precisely because the drives have reached their goal and completed the earthly path.

death - About the time of death; about its inevitability. Timeless, merciless, close, fleeting, faithful, sudden, formidable, coming (obsolete poet. Dictionary of epithets of the Russian language
death - n., number of synonyms ... Dictionary of synonyms of the Russian language
death - DEATH, and, pl. and, her, w. 1. Termination of the body. Clinical p. (a short period after the cessation of respiration and cardiac activity, in which the viability of tissues is still preserved). Biological ... Ozhegov's Explanatory Dictionary
death - DEATH - IMMORTALITY Mortal - immortal (see) We have a harsh freedom: Dooming a mother to tears, The immortality of our people by His death to buy. K. Simonov. Glory. Young men listen to the stanzas about death, but with their hearts they hear: immortality. Mayakovsky. Dictionary of antonyms of the Russian language
death - and, genus. pl. -y, w. 1. biol. Termination of life of the organism and its death. Physiological death. Cell death. Death of the plant. 2. Termination of the existence of man, animal. Sudden death. Early death. Small academic dictionary
death - DEATH (die), smirtushka, mosk. tamb. twirlwind, twirlwind, twirlwind, twirlwind, novg. olon. arch. the end of earthly life, death, separation of the soul from the body, dying, the state of the obsolete. Dahl's Explanatory Dictionary
DEATH - DEATH - the cessation of life, the natural end of a single living creature or the violent killing of not only individuals, but also entire species of animals and plants due to environmental disasters and the predatory attitude of man to nature. New Philosophical Encyclopedia
death - Cessation of life of the organism, which is irreversible. In unicellular organisms (for example, protozoa), death manifests itself in the form of division, leading to the termination of the existence of a given individual and the appearance of two new ones instead. Biology. Modern encyclopedia
death - J., b. n. -i, ukr. death, blr. tornado, Old Russian smrt, Art. - Slav. smrt θάνατος (Ostrom., Klotz., Sup.), bulg. smrt, Serbo-Horv. smȑt, genus. n. smȑti, slovenian. smr̀t, genus. n. smȓti, Czech. smrt, slvts. smrt᾽, Polish. śmierć, V.-puddles smjerć, n.-puddle. Etymological Dictionary Max Vasmer
death - death I w. 1. Termination of life, death and decay of the organism. 2. transfer. Complete cessation of any activity; the end. II adverb vernacular. Very strongly, to the highest degree (about something unpleasant, bad for someone). III predic. vernacular. Efremova's Explanatory Dictionary
death - ***** Ryleev. "There will never be two deaths, but one cannot be avoided." (last) "In the world and death is red." (last). | transfer Death, cessation, destruction (· book). Socialism brings death to the capitalist world. 2. in meaning. adv., singular only Ushakov's Explanatory Dictionary
DEATH - DEATH - in science - natural and irreversible cessation of life biological system... In philosophy, human mortality is viewed not so much as natural, but as a social phenomenon that requires rational perception and comprehension. The latest philosophical dictionary
death - One of the central concepts of forensic medicine; is a stepwise process extending from life to biological s. (irreversible cessation of the body's vital activity). nowadays medicine recognizes ... Big Law Dictionary
DEATH - Myths about the origin of S. are found in almost all peoples. These myths are very diverse, but almost everywhere they are subject to the general laws of mythological thinking. Mythological encyclopedia
death - Termination of life of the organism, its death as a separate integral system. In multicellular organisms, S. of an individual is accompanied by the formation of a dead body (in animals, a corpse). Biological encyclopedic Dictionary
DEATH - DEATH - cessation of vital activity of the organism, its death. In unicellular organisms (for example, protozoa), the death of an individual manifests itself in the form of division, leading to the termination of the existence of a given individual and the emergence of two new ones instead. Big encyclopedic dictionary
DEATH - DEATH - eng. death; German Tod. The irreversible cessation of the body's vital activity, the inevitable final stage of its existence. Sociological Dictionary
death - orph. death, -and, pl. -and, -y Spelling dictionary Lopatin
Death - The cessation of the body's vital activity and, as a result, the death of the individual as a separate living system, accompanied by the decomposition of proteins (See Proteins) and other biopolymers (See Biopolymers), which are the main material substrate of life (See. Big Soviet encyclopedia
death - Eyeless (Golen.-Kutuzov, Sologub). Merciless (Danilin). Blissfully terrible (Bryusov). White (Balmont, Oliger). Greedy (Golen.-Kutuzov). Evil (Burenin). Bony (Krachkovsky). Lyutaya (Polezhaev). Slowly deceiving (Balmont). Dictionary of literary epithets
DEATH - DEATH, cessation of life. According to tradition in medicine, death is considered to occur when the heartbeat stops. However, modern methods of resuscitation and maintenance of life sometimes make it possible to bring even people back to life ... Scientific and technical dictionary
death - DEATH - and; pl. genus. -ty, dates. -tyam; f. 1. Biol. Termination of life of the organism and its death. To state with. Physiological p. C. cells. C. plants. Biological ... Explanatory dictionary Kuznetsov
death - Formed by the prefix s from death - "death". Since the meaning of the prefix c is "good", the literal meaning of the word death is "natural, one's own death." Krylov's etymological dictionary
death - Death, death, death, death, death, death, death, death, death, death, death, death Grammar dictionary of Zaliznyak

The question "What is death?" worries more than one generation, which is absolutely understandable - a person is born, lives and ... leaves. Where to? What for? Why? Believers of various confessions are not unambiguous about this issue, but the fact that after the end of earthly life a new life begins is a fact that modern scientists do not completely reject.

What is death interests everyone, because sooner or later we will all die, which means it is pointless to be afraid of this, because as long as we are alive, we live, and when this "lady with a scythe" gets close to us, we will already be dead.

Why do people fear death

Death, an unexplored phenomenon, bears the imprint of mysticism and mystery. Inevitability, unpredictability and unexpectedness, and sometimes insignificant reasons that take a person's life, take the concept of death far beyond the boundaries of human perception, turning this physiological process into divine punishment for our sins, or they are a gift of God, as a reward for a worthy life, and portend eternal life.

What is death and why are people afraid of this phenomenon?

The Orthodox person accepts death as a natural phenomenon. As long as he has the opportunity to be saved, the Lord will grant him this opportunity. We are born only by the will of God and die when we most do not expect it. That is why the Orthodox do not think about what death is. It is important to be ready for this event and live your new day as if it were your last - only then does life acquire meaning;
Science believes that death is the cessation or cessation of vital processes in the body. A person lives - all organs and systems are functioning, a person has grown old, cells, organs, etc. have worn out - the time has come to find out what physiological death is ... Death due to illness is also explainable. Nevertheless, despite such an explanation, it is scientists who distinguish several types of death: clinical, when a return to life is still possible, the death of individual organs, the brain ...
Philosophy views death as the completion of life. Birth is opposed to death. Here everything is much simpler, death is explained as a natural process of transition from one state to another - from inanimate to living.

Is it that simple?

Of course, there is nothing in the world that happens just like that - meaningless, by itself. Any blade of grass grows from a grain, a house of bricks, a person from a cell, etc. What is death really? Is it a normal physiological process? If everything on Earth were so simple and understandable, such questions would not worry us. Many scientists, theologians, philosophers and simply wise people know that death is the moment at which a person ceases to exist. That is why, even in relation to the living, one can hear bitter words: "This man died for me."

Death is a transition to new life, life unknown and unknown. If you follow the logic that we always get what we deserve, and life really sets its accents and accents in its own way. In search of an answer to the question: "What is death?" it is important to think about how we live now, what we think about, whether we care about our future, which definitely awaits all of us ... And most importantly: not to die for those around us, being alive.

"Wrote that ...

... the course of natural science was suspended before the study of death. For centuries, this phenomenon was so complex and incomprehensible that it seemed to be beyond human knowledge. And only gradually accumulating timid and at first rather elementary attempts to revive a person and accidental successes at the same time destroyed this unknowable wall that makes death "a thing in itself."

The end of the 19th and especially the 20th century brought radical changes to the problem of death. Death ceased to bear the imprint of mysticism, but its secret remained. Death, being the natural end of life, has become the same object of scientific research as life itself.

One of the founders of experimental pathology, who stood at the origins of thanatology, the famous Frenchman Claude Bernard, wrote in Lectures on Experimental Pathology: "... To know how the organisms of an animal, a person, live, it is necessary to see how many of them die, for the mechanisms of life can be revealed and discovered only by knowledge of the mechanisms of death."

The change in the scientific attitude to death, the reduction of death to a natural physiological process, requiring qualified physiological analysis and study, was perhaps especially vividly manifested in the statement of I.P. Pavlov: “... What a vast and fruitful field would open up for physiological research if immediately after the caused illness or in view of imminent death, the experimenter sought full knowledge deeds a way to defeat both "(I.P. Pavlov, collected works, vol. 1, p. 364).

Among modern philosophers, death is dealt with, for example, by Shelley Cagan, who devoted a course to it at Yale University.

The concept of death in science

Jurisprudence

Law Russian Federation dated December 22, 1992 No. 4180-1 "On transplantation of human organs and (or) tissues" in article 9 "Determination of the moment of death" says: in accordance with the procedure approved by the federal executive body in charge of developing public policy and legal regulation in the field of health care and social development"(See the Instruction on ascertaining the death of a person based on the diagnosis of brain death, approved by order of the Ministry of Health of the Russian Federation of December 20, 2001, No. 460).

Sociology

Human mortality has had a huge impact on human society, becoming one of the most important reasons for the emergence and development of religions. The inevitability of death and belief in an afterlife have led to the emergence of the problem of disposing of the bodies of the dead or storing these bodies. Different religions in different eras have dealt with this issue in different ways. Such ideas led to the emergence of special territories intended for burial - cemeteries. In many religions, the body does not have such an important meaning, and other methods of disposal are allowed, for example, burning - cremation. Belief in the afterlife gave rise to all kinds of collective rituals designed to accompany the deceased on the last path in this world, such as solemn funerals, mourning and many others.

Biology and medicine

Types of death. Terminal states

There are two stages of death: the terminal stage, the stage of biological death. Brain death falls into a subcategory.

The onset of death is always preceded by terminal states - the preagonal state, agony, and clinical death - which together can last for different times, from several minutes to hours or even days. Regardless of the rate of death, it is always preceded by a state of clinical death. If resuscitation measures were not carried out or were unsuccessful, biological death occurs, which is an irreversible cessation of physiological processes in the cells and tissues of the nervous system, since they are the most critical to the requirements of respiration. As a result of decomposition processes, further destruction of the body occurs, which gradually destroys the structure of nerve connections, making it fundamentally impossible to restore the personality. This stage is called information death (or "information-theoretical death", that is, death from the point of view of information theory). Before informational death, a person can theoretically be kept in a state of suspended animation, for example, using cryonics, which will protect him from further destruction, and later can potentially be restored.

Preagonal state

This reflex defense reaction of the body is a function of "pain relief" before death, and is usually caused by severe or very painful damage to the biological body, and is almost always associated with the corresponding psychological state. It is accompanied by complete or partial loss of consciousness, indifference to what is happening and loss of sensitivity to pain.

In the preagonal state, there is a violation of the functions of the central nervous system (stupor or coma), a decrease in blood pressure, and the centralization of blood circulation. Breathing becomes impaired, shallow, irregular, but possibly frequent. Lack of ventilation of the lungs leads to a lack of oxygen in the tissues (tissue acidosis), but the main type of metabolism remains oxidative. The duration of the preagonal state can be different: it can be completely absent (for example, with severe mechanical damage to the heart), or it can persist long time if the body is able to somehow compensate for the inhibition of vital functions (for example, with blood loss).

Without treatment, the process of dying often progresses, and the preagonal state is replaced terminal pause... It is characterized by the fact that after rapid breathing, it suddenly stops completely. There are also transient periods of asystole lasting from 1-2 to 10-15 seconds.

Agony

Agony is an attempt by the body in conditions of oppression of the functions of vital organs to use the last remaining opportunities to preserve life. At the beginning of the agony, the pressure increases, the heart rate is restored, strong respiratory movements begin (but the lungs are practically not ventilated - at the same time the respiratory muscles responsible for both inhalation and exhalation contract). Consciousness may be restored for a short time.

Due to the lack of oxygen, under-oxidized metabolic products quickly accumulate in the tissues. Metabolism proceeds mainly according to the anaerobic scheme; during agony, the body loses 50-80 g of mass due to the burning of ATP in the tissues. The duration of the agony is usually short, no more than 5-6 minutes (in some cases, up to half an hour). Then blood pressure drops, heartbeats stop, breathing stops, and clinical death occurs.

Clinical death

Clinical death continues from the moment of cessation of cardiac activity, respiration and functioning of the central nervous system until the moment when irreversible pathological changes develop in the brain. In a state of clinical death, anaerobic metabolism in tissues continues due to the reserves accumulated in cells. As soon as these reserves in the nerve tissue run out, it dies. In the complete absence of oxygen in the tissues, necrosis of the cells of the cerebral cortex and cerebellum (the most sensitive to oxygen starvation of the brain regions) begins in 2-2.5 minutes. After the death of the cortex, the restoration of the vital functions of the organism becomes impossible, that is, clinical death becomes biological.

In the case of successful active resuscitation measures, the duration of clinical death is usually taken as the time elapsed from the moment of cardiac arrest to the start of resuscitation (since modern resuscitation methods, such as maintaining the minimum necessary blood pressure, blood purification, artificial ventilation of the lungs, exchange blood transfusion or donor artificial blood circulation, allow to support the life of the nervous tissue for a long time).

Under normal conditions, the duration of clinical death is no more than 5-6 minutes. The duration of clinical death is influenced by the cause of dying, conditions, duration, age of the dying person, the degree of his arousal, body temperature during dying and other factors. In some cases, clinical death can last up to half an hour, for example, when drowning in cold water, when, due to the lowered temperature, metabolic processes in the body, including in the brain, slow down significantly. With the help of preventive artificial hypothermia, the duration of clinical death can be increased to 2 hours. On the other hand, some circumstances can greatly reduce the duration of clinical death, for example, in the case of dying from severe blood loss, pathological changes in the nervous tissue, making it impossible to restore life, can develop even before cardiac arrest.

Clinical death is in principle reversible - modern technology resuscitation allows in a number of cases to restore the functioning of vital organs, after which the central nervous system "turns on", consciousness returns. However, in reality, the number of people who survived clinical death without serious consequences is small: after clinical death in a medical hospital, about 4-6% of patients survive and fully recover, another 3-4% survive, but receive severe violations of the highest nervous activity, the rest die. In some cases, with a late start of resuscitation measures or their ineffectiveness due to the severity of the patient's condition, the patient may switch to the so-called "vegetative life". In this case, it is necessary to distinguish between two states: the state of complete decortication and the state of brain death.

Diagnosing death

The fear of making a mistake in the diagnosis of death pushed doctors to develop methods for diagnosing death, to create special life tests, or to create special conditions for burial. So, in Munich for more than a hundred years there was a tomb in which the hand of the deceased was wrapped with a cord from the bell. The bell rang only once, and when the attendants came to help the patient awakened from lethargic sleep, it turned out that rigor mortis had been resolved. At the same time, from the literature and medical practice, there are cases of delivering live people to the morgue, whom doctors mistakenly diagnosed death.

Checking the safety of the respiratory function. Currently, there are no reliable signs of breathing safety. Depending on the environmental conditions, you can use a cold mirror, fluff, produce breath auscultation or Winslow's test, which consists in placing a vessel with water on the patient's chest and judging the presence of respiratory movements of the chest wall by the fluctuation of the water surface. A gust of wind or draft, high humidity and temperature in the room, or passing traffic can affect the results of these tests, and conclusions about the presence or absence of breathing will be incorrect.

More informative for the diagnosis of death are tests indicating persistence cardiovascular function... Auscultation of the heart, palpation of the pulse on the central and peripheral vessels, palpation of the cardiac impulse - these studies cannot be fully considered reliable. Even when examining the function of the cardiovascular system in a clinic, very weak heart contractions may not be noticed by the doctor, or contractions of one's own heart will be assessed as having such a function. Clinicians advise to conduct auscultation of the heart and palpation of the pulse in short intervals, lasting no more than one minute. The test of Magnus, which consists in a tight constriction of the finger, is very interesting and convincing even with minimal blood circulation. With the existing blood circulation at the constriction site, the skin turns pale, and the peripheral one acquires a cyanotic hue. After removing the constriction, the color is restored. Certain information can be provided by viewing the earlobe through the lumen, which, in the presence of blood circulation, has a reddish-pink color, and in a corpse it is gray-white. In the 19th century, very specific tests were proposed to diagnose the safety of the function of the cardiovascular system, for example: Verne's test - arteriotomy of the temporal artery, or Bushu's test - a steel needle inserted into the body, in a living person loses its shine in half an hour, the first Icarus test - intravenous administration a solution of fluorescein gives a quick staining of the skin in a living person in a yellowish color, and the sclera in a greenish color and some others. These tests are currently only of historical and not practical interest. It is hardly reasonable to carry out an arteriotomy in a person who is in a state of shock and at the scene of an accident, where it is impossible to comply with the conditions of asepsis and antiseptics, or to wait half an hour until the steel needle fades, and even more so to inject fluorescein, which causes hemolysis in a living person in the light.

Safety central nervous system functions is the most important indicator of life. At the scene of the accident, the ascertaining of the death of the brain is fundamentally impossible. The function of the nervous system is checked for the preservation or absence of consciousness, passive position of the body, relaxation of the muscles and the absence of its tone, lack of response to external stimuli - ammonia, weak painful effects (tingling with a needle, rubbing the earlobe, beating on the cheeks, and others). Valuable signs are the absence of the corneal reflex, the reaction of the pupils to light. In the 19th century, extremely unusual and sometimes very cruel methods were used to test the function of the nervous system. So, the Josa test was proposed, for which special forceps were invented and patented. When the skin folds were pinched in these forceps, the person experienced severe pain. Also, based on the pain reaction, the Degrange test is based - the introduction of boiling oil into the nipple, or the Rase test - blows on the heels, or cauterization of the heels and other parts of the body with a red-hot iron. The samples are very peculiar, cruel, showing what tricks the doctors went to in the complex problem of ascertaining the function of the central nervous system.

One of the earliest and most valuable signs of death is the “cat pupil phenomenon,” sometimes referred to as the Beloglazov sign. The shape of the pupil in a person is determined by two parameters, namely: the tone of the muscle that constricts the pupil, and intraocular pressure. Moreover, the main factor is muscle tone. In the absence of the function of the nervous system, the innervation of the muscle that constricts the pupil stops, and its tone is absent. When squeezed with fingers in the lateral or vertical directions, which must be carried out carefully so as not to damage the eyeball, the pupil acquires an oval shape. A contributing factor for changing the shape of the pupil is the drop in intraocular pressure, which determines the tone of the eyeball, and this, in turn, depends on blood pressure. Thus, the sign of Beloglazov, or "the phenomenon of the cat's pupil," indicates the absence of muscle innervation and, at the same time, a drop in intraocular pressure, which is associated with arterial pressure.

The instructions for determining the criteria and procedure for determining the moment of death of a person, termination of resuscitation measures, approved by the Ministry of Health of Russia in 2003, provides for the statement of death of a person or biological death based on the presence of cadaveric changes, or in case of brain death, which is established in the prescribed manner. Resuscitation measures can be stopped only if the death of a person is ascertained on the basis of brain death or if they are ineffective within 30 minutes. At the same time, resuscitation measures are not carried out in the presence of signs of biological death, as well as when a state of clinical death occurs against the background of the progression of reliably established incurable diseases or incurable consequences of acute trauma incompatible with life.

Classification of deaths

Despite the complexity of the problem of death, in medicine there has long been a clear, specific classification that allows the doctor in each case of death to establish the signs that determine the category, gender, type of death and its cause.

In medicine, there are two categories of death - violent death and non-violent death.

The second qualifying sign of death is gender. In both categories, it is customary to distinguish three kinds of death. The genera of nonviolent death include physiological death, pathological death and sudden death. Violent deaths are murder, suicide and accidental death.

The third qualifying feature is the type of death. Establishing the type of death is associated with the definition of a group of factors that caused death, and combined by their origin or impact on the human body. In particular, brain death is considered as a separate type of death that differs from classical death with primary circulatory arrest.

One of the most difficult stages in the classification of death is to establish the cause of its occurrence. Regardless of the category, kind and type of death, the reasons for its occurrence are divided into the main, intermediate and direct... Currently in medicine it is not allowed to use the term "death from old age" - it is always necessary to establish a more specific cause of death. The main cause of death is considered a nosological unit in accordance with the International Classification of Diseases: an injury or a disease that itself caused death or caused the development of a pathological process (complication) that led to death.

The concept of death in religion

All major religions have teachings that describe what happens to a person after death. Since most religions assert the existence of an intangible soul, they basically consider the death of a person to be only the death of the body and describe various options for the further existence of a person in the form of a spirit or subsequent rebirth in a new body, either eternal or ending with the achievement of nirvana (in Buddhism) or eternal life (in Christianity).

Death of saints

In Christianity and some other religions, there is a concept that the death of righteous, holy people can be associated with special circumstances. For example, according to the Bible, the death of Enoch and Elijah is delayed and will occur shortly before the Last Judgment, while they themselves are ascended to heaven alive. Another example: St. Lazarus, died twice (the first time - he was resurrected by Jesus Christ a few days after death). In addition, the remains of some saints - relics - may exhibit unusual properties (fragrance, myrrh, etc.).
- The Ascension of Bahá'u'lláh is celebrated on May 29 See Bahá'í Calendar
- The Ascension of Abdu'l-Bahá is celebrated on 28 November See Bahá'í Calendar

Death and resurrection

In many religions, cases of miraculous resurrection after death are described.

Template: * - The Resurrection of Eutychus by Paul. (Acts.)

Russian philosopher N.F. Fedorov preached that humanity itself must learn how to resurrect all people who have ever lived, thanks to further development scientific and technological progress [ ] .