Andrei Gnezdilov: date of death is not accidental, as the day of birth Bashny.Net

What good will it die? How to explain the mystery of death? Why the dead come to the living? Is it possible to give and receive permission to die? We publish fragments of the speech at the seminar, which was held in Moscow Andrei Gnezdilov, psychotherapist, doctor of medical Sciences, honorary doctor of the University of Essex (UK), the founder of Russia's first hospice, the inventor of new methods of art therapy and the author of numerous books.


  Death as part of life In everyday life, when we are talking with someone he knew, and he said, "You know, that's so-and-so died", the usual response to this question: how did you die? It is very important how a person dies. Death is important for self-perception. It has not only negative.

If a philosophical look at life, we know that there is no life without death, the notion of life can be assessed only from the perspective of death.

I somehow had to communicate with artists and sculptors, and I asked them: "You portray the different sides of human life, can portray love, friendship, beauty, and how do you represent death?" And no one has given clear answer.

One sculptor who has immortalized the siege of Leningrad, promised to think. And shortly before his death, he replied: "I would have depicted the death in the image of Christ." I said "Christ crucified?" "No, the ascension of Christ".

One of the German sculptor has depicted an angel, the shadow of the wings of which was death. When man fell in the shadow, he fell to the power of death. Another sculptor portrayed death in the form of two boys: one boy is sitting on a rock with his head resting on his knees, he all directed downwards.

In the hands of the second boy, the pipe, his head thrown back, he's all follow the motive. The explanation for this sculpture was: it is impossible to portray death without concomitant life, and life without death.





Death is a natural process. Many writers tried to depict the life immortal, but it was a terrible, terrible immortality. What is the infinite life of endless repetition of earthly experience, stop the endless development or aging? It is difficult to imagine is a painful condition of man, which is immortal.

Death is a reward, a respite, she's crazy only when occur suddenly when the person is still on the rise, full of energy. And older people want the death. Some old woman asked: "Here, he is healing, it is time to die." And samples of death that we read about in the literature, when death befalls peasants, were of a normative character.

When a villager felt that he could no longer function as before, that it becomes a burden for the family, he went to the bath, put on clean clothes, went under the image, saying goodbye to neighbors and family and died peacefully. His death was caused without the expressed suffering that occurs when a person is struggling with death.

Farmers know that life is not a flower-the dandelion, which grew, blossomed and vanished under the breath of the wind. Life has a deep meaning.

This example is the death of farmers who die, giving yourself the permission to die is not a feature of those people, such examples we can find today. Once we have received a cancer patient. A former military man, he was a good sport and joked: "I went through three wars, pulled death for a moustache, and now came the time for her to pull me."

Of course, we supported him, but suddenly one day he couldn't get out of bed, and took it quite clearly: "I die, I can't get up." We told him: "don't worry, it was a metastasis, people with metastasis in the spine are long-lived, we will take care of you, you'll get used to it". "No, no, this is death, I know."

And imagine, after a few days he dies, not having this no physiological assumptions. He's dying because he decided to die. So this good will to death or some kind of projection of death takes place in reality.

You need to provide life natural death, after death programmed at the time of conception. A kind of death experience may be acquired at birth, at the moment of birth. When dealing with this problem, you can see how intelligently constructed life. As man is born, he dies, is born easy – easy die hard is born – dies hard.

And the day of death of the person is also not random, as the day of birth. Extras first raised this issue, opening the frequent coincidence people have dates of death and dates of birth. Or, when we commemorate any significant anniversary of the death of our loved ones, suddenly it turns out that my grandmother died, the grandson was born. Here is the program in a generation and the randomness of the day of death and day of birth – is striking.





Clinical death or another life? No wise man still did not understand what death is, what happens during death. Left practically without attention such as clinical death. Man falls into a coma, he stops breathing, the heart, but suddenly and for others it comes back to life and tells amazing stories.

Recently died Natalya Petrovna Bekhtereva. At the time we argued, I told the cases of clinical death, which was in my practice, and she said it was all nonsense, that just in the brain changes occur and so on. And one day I gave her an example that she then she began to use and tell.

I worked 10 years in the Cancer Institute as a psychotherapist, and once I was called to a young woman. During the operation her heart stopped, it could not have, and when she woke up, I was asked to look for any changes in her psyche due to the long oxygen starvation of the brain.

I came into intensive care, she was just awake. I said, "You can talk to me?", "Yes, but I would like to apologize to you, I caused you so much trouble", – "What trouble?", "Well, of course. I have the same heart stopped, I've been through a lot, and I saw that for doctors it was too stressful".

I wondered: "How could you do this to see if you were in a state of deep narcotic sleep, and then you have a heart?", "Doctor, I would have told you much more if you promise not to send me to a psychiatric hospital."

And she told the following story: when she sank into a narcotic sleep, it suddenly felt like a mild shock in the forefoot made something inside her turn as the screw is turned. She had a feeling that the soul twisted out, and went into some nebulous space.

Looking closer, she saw a group of doctors, bending over the body. She thought, what a familiar face that woman! And then suddenly remembered that she. Suddenly came a voice: "Immediately stop the operation, your heart stopped, you need to have it."

She thought she died and remembered with horror that I didn't say goodbye nor his mother, nor with a five year old daughter. Concern for them, literally pushed her in the back, she flew out of the operating room and in an instant he found himself in his apartment.

She saw quite a peaceful scene – the girl was playing with dolls, grandma, her mother, sewed something. There was a knock at the door, and in walked a neighbor, Lydia Stepanovna. In her hands was a small polka-dot dress. "Masha, – said the neighbor – you always tried to be like my mother, so I made you a dress just like mom."

The girl happily ran to the neighbor, the road touched the cloth, dropped the old Cup and teaspoon were under the carpet. The noise, the girl was crying, the grandmother exclaims: "Masha, how are you awkward" Lydia Stepanovna says that the ware fights fortunately – a common situation.

And the girl's mother, forgetting herself, went to her daughter, patted her on the head and said, "Masha, this is not the worst sorrow in life." Masha looked at the mother, but, not seeing her, turned away. And suddenly, this woman realized that when she touched the head of a girl, she has felt this touch. Then she rushed to the mirror and in the mirror saw myself.

In horror she remembered that she needs to be in the hospital, her heart stopped. She ran away from home and ended up in the operating room. And then he heard the voice: "the Heart wound do the surgery, but rather, because it can be re-arrested".

After hearing this woman, I said, "don't you want to come to your home and told the family that everything is in order, they can see you?" She gladly agreed.

I went on this my address, the door was opened by grandma, I passed, on the surgery, and then asked: "Tell me, and at half ten didn't come to you neighbor Lydia Stepanovna?", – "Come, and you know her?", – "Not if she brought the dress in polka dots?", – "Are you a magician, doctor?"

I keep asking, and it all came together, except one – the spoon is not found. Then I said, "did you look under the carpet?" They lift the carpet and there is a spoon.

This story had a great impact on spondylitis. And then she experienced a similar case. One day, she lost her stepson, and her husband, they both committed suicide. For her it was stress. And then one day, on entering the room, she saw her husband, and he turned to her with some words.

She, a beautiful psychiatrist, decided that it was hallucinations, returned to the other room and asked my cousin to see what in that room. She approached, looked, and recoiled: "Oh, there's your husband!" Then she did what I asked her husband, making sure that such cases are not fiction.

She told me: "Nobody knows better than me brain (Bekhterev was Director of the Institute of human brain in St. Petersburg). And I have a feeling that I'm standing in front of some enormous wall, behind which you hear voices and know that there is a wonderful and huge world, but I can't tell others what I see and hear. Because in order for it to be science-based, everyone needs to repeat my experience."

Once I was sitting by a dying patient. I put a music box that played the touching melody, and then asked: "Disable stopping you?", "No, let him play". Suddenly she stopped breathing, relatives rushed: "Do something, she's not breathing".

I hastily gave her a shot of adrenaline, and she again came to herself, turned to me: "Andrey, what was that?" "You know, it was a clinical death". She smiled and said, "No, life!"

What is the state that enters the brain during clinical death? After all, death is death. We record the death when we see that he has stopped breathing, heart stopped, brain is not working, he can't perceive and, especially, to send it out.

So, the brain is only the transmitter, but there is something in man deeper, stronger? And here we are confronted with the concept of the soul. Because this concept is almost superseded by the concept of the psyche. The psyche is, and there is no soul.





How would you like to die? We asked and healthy, and the sick: "How would you like to die?". And people with certain character qualities in his own way is building a model death.

People with schizoid type of character, like don Quixote, rather oddly described their desire: "We would like to die so that nobody saw my body."

Epileptoid – thought were impossible for myself to lie quietly and wait for death comes, they had to be able to somehow participate in this process.

Cycloid – people like Sancho Panza, I would like to die surrounded by loved ones. Psihastenii – people anxious-hypochondriac, worried about how they will look when I die. Isteroidy wanted to die at sunrise or at sunset, on the beach, in the mountains.

I compared these desires, but I remembered the words of one monk who said: "I don't care I will surround what will be the situation around me. It is important that I died in the time of prayer, thanking God for what He sent me life, and I saw the power and beauty of His creation."

Heraclitus said, "a Man in the death night light lights himself; and he is dead, put out his eyes, but alive; but he is in contact with the dead – Napping, awake – is in contact with the slumbering", is a phrase over which you can wrestle with almost all my life.

Being in contact with the patient, I could agree with him, that when he dies, he tried to let me know if there's anything beyond the grave or not. And I received this reply, not once.

Somehow I agreed with one woman, she died, and I soon forgot about our agreement. And once, when I was at the cottage, I suddenly awoke to the fact that the room is light. I thought I forgot to turn off the light but saw that the bed opposite me sits the woman. I was delighted, and began to talk to her, and suddenly I remembered – she's dead!

I thought that I was dreaming, and turned and tried to sleep, to Wake up. It took some time, I raised my head. The light again was burning, I with horror looked – it's still sitting on the bed looking at me. I want to say something, I can't – the horror. I realized that before me a dead man. And suddenly she sadly smiled and said, "But it's not a dream."

Why do I cite such examples? Because of the uncertainty of what awaits us, makes us go back to the old principle of "do No harm". That is, "slow death" is a powerful argument against euthanasia. As far as we have the right to intervene in a state that the patient is experiencing? How can we speed up his death, when he might be undergoing the brightest life?





Quality of life and resolution to the death it is not the number of days that we have lived, and the quality. What gives life quality? Quality of life to be without pain, the ability to control your consciousness, the opportunity to be surrounded by relatives, family.

Why is it important to communicate with your relatives? Because children often repeat the story of the lives of their parents or relatives. Sometimes in detail, it is amazing. And this repetition of life and is often a repetition of death.

It is very important the blessing family, blessing dying children, it even then can save them, to protect them from something. Again, going back to the cultural heritage of fairy tales.

Remember the plot: a dying old father, has three sons. He asks: "After my death three days go to my grave". Older brothers or don't want to go, or fear, only the youngest, the fool, goes to the grave, and at the end of the third day, the father reveals to him a secret.

When a person dies, he sometimes thinks: "Well, let me die, let me got sick, but my family may be healthy, may the sickness would break on me, I'll pay the bills for the whole family." And now, setting a goal, whether rational or affective, one gets a meaningful death.

Hospice is a home which offers a high quality life. Not an easy death, and quality of life. It is a place where people can complete their lives meaningfully and deeply, accompanied by relatives.

When a person leaves, it doesn't just air escaping, as from a rubber balloon, he needs to make the leap, he needs power in order to step into the unknown. People need to allow yourself this step. First he gets permission from relatives and then from medical staff, from volunteers, from the priest and from himself. And it is a resolution to death from himself – the most difficult.

You know that Christ before his sufferings and prayer in the garden of Gethsemane asked his disciples, "Stay with me, don't sleep". Three times the students promised Him to stay awake, but fell asleep without support. So the hospice in the spiritual sense is a place where people may ask: "Stay with me".

And if this Supreme person – God Incarnate – needed human help, if He said "I no longer call you servants. I have called you friends", referring to the people, to follow suit and saturate the spiritual content of the last days of the patient is very important.

Prepared text; photo: Maria Stroganova published

P. S. And remember, just changing your mind — together we change the world! ©

Source: www.pravmir.ru/den-smerti-cheloveka-ne-sluchaen-kak-i-den-rozhdeniya1/