Richard Lloyd Jones: Welcome to our continuing Healing Through Consciousness podcast series. Just when you thought it was over. That's fitting we'll be addressing death then, today, in episode 13. I'm Richard Lloyd Jones. Death. Such a downer, isn't it? The final curtain. The choir invisible. Kicking the bucket. Except it's much more complex than that, don't you think? My sister tells a story of going into the mountains for a solo picnic shortly after our dear mother died. and a huge crow stole her bag lunch,
flew off a few meters, and then landed on the ground and turned to stare at her. She thought it was Mom sending her a signal. A student of mine tells of being followed for blocks walking down the street by a beautiful butterfly the day after his beloved grandfather died. These are mysteries of cold coincidence for materialistic scientists, but resonate at another level of the being for the rest of us. But for many it's an unapproachable subject.
As inevitable as death is, the thought of it still freaks us out. Is there anything to say about death that can be healing and comforting? I think yes. Dr. Claudia Bernhard Pacheco and I received an email from a listener some years ago broaching the shock, sadness, and disbelief she was experiencing with the impending death of her dear and still young sister. What could be said to help her? For that, I turn to Dr. Claudia Bernhard Pacheco.
Cláudia Bernhardt Pacheco: I think, Richard, that this question she brought is a master question for all human beings. The only thing we are sure after we are born is that one day we are going to die And we are going to lose our beloved ones. So death is the only certainty in this life. And this is not addressed properly. It's a huge denial in this area of severe illness, death, etc. Because the moment a close beloved one is sick and is dying,
this situation brings a huge consciousness to us. Very basic, fundamental, essential questions come to us, things that we never reflect about and society is not organized in a way to address it in depth. So we think, what is this life? What am I doing here? Why do we die? Why do you need to separate from our beloved ones? Is there a life after death? What am I doing here? So all this absolutely fundamental reflections, we don't bring them to our everyday life.
Richard: No, we almost never think about those things, Claudia. It's almost totally foreign. What you're suggesting is that this is an opportunity for us to consider those deep questions that we should be considering more in our society, right?
Cláudia: Because this is the only thing we are sure is going to happen. And it's the first one we want to deny. So this opportunity that she's having with her sister is a major conscientization in her life. The religious people, the priests, the rabbis, the pastors, they address death only in a religious way.
If you go to a doctor, he will address it in a very concrete, materialistic, very crude and cruel sometimes.
Richard: He won't enter at all into this aspect.
Cláudia: Absolutely. This is not integrated in our day to day life. So people think one day, one day we don't know when we will have to face it, but let it be for the future. I won't stop to think about it now. So she will probably want to know how to address this with her sister.
So how to confront illness? Something that I would like to mention here is, do we really die in the same way that we live? I mean, some people, they live harmonic, beautiful, peaceful, day-to-day life, doing good for other people, for themselves. and they die softly like birds when they get to the end of their strength and energy they just leave this life and they go to just another step so very softly
Richard: in their sleep or very quietly
right yes he died quietly in his sleep you'll see that sometimes in the obituaries in the paper And
Cláudia: some people die like violent kind of deaths with huge suffering or accidents. So is there anything to do with our psychological life, our attitudes, mostly our unconscious attitudes and the way we die? Many people even know the day and the hour they are going to die. in a research in the hospital of the University of Sao Paulo, a research that Dr. Kepi was taking part.
And some people that had a cancer or some problem, they were hypnotized. And a few of them were able to say exactly the day and time of their deaths.
Richard: That's extraordinary. Yes. I've heard of some native Indians, Claudia, who have dreams about the place they will die. They don't know like the date, but they see the place and they have the experience of their death is very clear and a dream that comes to them, sometimes a recurring dream for their whole lives.
Cláudia: So this shows that our
Richard: psychological life is transcendental, is
Cláudia: outside time and space. So people question, do we determine the way we are going to live and die in the day and hour? Or we just grasp it from eternity, from outside of time and space? Because a person who is very self-destructive, the tendency will be to die in a very self-destructive manner. A person who is less destructive will probably have a softer way to die.
Richard: I was just going to say, this doesn't excuse the fact of some very good people who've died very violent deaths, of course, like
Cláudia: Kennedy or Martin Luther King of Sass, yeah, exactly.
But you know something, Jones, when these people are killed or assassinated or have a violent kind of death, it's violent for the others, not for themselves, in terms that they seem to be much more ready to accept this passage or this condition to lose the physical body. there are some heroes they know all the time they are under pressure they are conscious that they can be assassinated at
Richard: any time
Cláudia: right at any time so they are prepared to die and this death
will be better accepted in eternity meaning we see many people spiritualists or religious people saying that if a person dies under circumstances that they are violent and they are not prepared to die some researchers that they do like people who die and then they come back right
Richard: they're they're dead for a few seconds or even
Cláudia: minutes and then they're the near-death experience they call this right so when they they they are there they seem to be like in front of a huge consciousness
that they are not ready to go because they did not do what they were meant to do here So like a voice, sometimes they associate with the voice of Jesus Christ, sometimes they associate with the voice of God. It's like a huge white light, very soft and involving and comforting. This light tells them, no, it's not time for you to come yet. So you have to go back and do what you were meant to do and you still did not do.
Richard: I have such a feeling as you're telling me this, Claudia, of our woman who's written to us about her sister, that there is much to be done in our lives. And when we are facing the death of a close one, it's like a time for us to evaluate, well, that person too, of course. We can help that person to see what they need to see in their lives. But for us who are trying to be strong
to accommodate this passing, this situation, we have much to see in our lives. What am I doing in my life? Have I fulfilled my life's purpose? Have I been doing what I need to do? And this may be what people are anxious about.
Cláudia: You know something, Cappy says, that strikes me all the time. People should live this life in relation to the transcendental life. We are here to be prepared to live the transcendental life, which is the life that we were always created to live,
that we were meant to live, this life that will be eternal. So people, when we are born in this social structure, the philosophy of life that we live, the activities, the attitudes, the values, do not prepare the human beings to our purpose. This life determines the life we are going to have for eternity. So what we decide here, what we choose here, what we do here, will determine the life I'll have eternally. And I'm saying eternally, with non-stop.
Richard: Right. No end, no.
Cláudia: No end, outside time and space. So we should live our lives here as a preparation for the other life. This is just a passage. This is not a true life. This is a true life too, but it's like an introductory kind of phase in our lives. So here, we will make the most important decisions that we will take forever.
Richard: Beautiful and serious. When my father died, I remember going through all his stuff.
He was a bit of a pack rat, so there were books and records and newspaper clippings cut out from the daily newspaper in my hometown from decades ago. I even found old blueprints from the panabote house he'd bought and assembled back when I was two and my brother Tom was newly born. And I said at his funeral, in light of what Dr. Claudio just finished saying, that none of that stuff did my father take with him.
But what he did take was his virtue and work ethic and decency. I think that's what Claudio was referring to. But I think there's more to say about the passing from this life to the next. We're going to look at that in our next episode. This is Healing Through Consciousness, a special series on thinking with somebody else's head. On the Stop Radio Network, I'm Richard Lloyd Jones. Talk to you next time.
