Does it seem absurd to say that, in order to study life, a man must die?
For that is what this method amounts to in the last analysis.
Now, I beg of you not to be unnecessarily alarmed. I have said nothing
about burial. If death were only another name for annihilation, then
death and burial would be inseparably associated, no doubt. But suppose
it should be true that it is an error to associate the thought of
annihilation with any man, is it not clear that whoever permits that
error to have any place in his mind is sure to give a meaning to the
word death which does not belong to it? Is it not evident that the
thought of death in that case must borrow blackness and mystery of a
kind that does not pertain to it? Most surely. But let it be said again,
that death is a reality; it is not a fiction, nor a mere seeming. A man
cannot possess bodily life and at the same time be dead. The two
conditions are incompatible. Otherwise there would be no advantage to be
gained toward the study of life by experiencing its opposite.
Shall I try to tell you, from the standpoint of experience, what death
is? Perhaps it will be best to tell you first what it is not. It is not
a snuffing-out like a candle, unless we could suppose one where the
spark should remain quietly alive until the candle was relighted.
It is not a going to sleep, unless we assume it possible for the
dream-life to be woven on to the daytime consciousness at both ends
without a break, so that the dreamer, however strange may have been his
dreams, and whatever the testimony of others may be, is able to say,
with conscious truthfulness, I have not slept at all.
Death includes, without question, an entire suspension of bodily
sensations and activities. The consciousness of _being_, however,
remains, and with it, as a necessary consequence, the consciousness of
being alive, however shut in by the enclosing walls of a senseless
frame.
What is to follow does not occur to the mind. A peace that is absolute
belongs to a death that is clean. Appetite of every kind is dead with
the body. Desire is not; resignation takes its place. What is this
resignation like? It includes a consciousness of a more potent yet
kindly will, and contentment with the result of the action of that will.
The Giver has resumed His gift, the gift of life, for the benefit of him
who has parted with it. The resulting peace is permeated with
gratitude, not different in kind, although different in manifestation,
from that which the little child expresses in every motion of his happy
little body, when he seems to say continuously, I am glad to be alive.
The man is glad to be dead.
Do you think it impossible that such an experience could come to any one
who should afterwards recover life to describe it? Very likely. But stop
for a moment and consider. When a man dies, the result may be said to
manifest in a twofold way. First: To the man himself, who is, to say the
the least, cut off from his customary outward activities. Second: To the
world at large, where the word is passed around, Such a one is dead; and
one acquaintance after another, as he hears the news, turns to a certain
part of his mental organism and marks it down in black where it is not
likely to be forgotten. Henceforth he will send out toward that friend,
now become a name or memory, a different kind of mental current.
But wait: the word comes, Not dead after all--a false report.
Immediately the operation is reversed. The black marks are rubbed out,
the little switch is re-turned, and the friends all agree, to save
troublesome thought, that the man who was supposed to be dead was not
really so, and the old question asked by Job, If a man die, shall he
live again? is prevented once more from obtruding itself.