DAY DEATH NOT case, as BIRTHDAY Bashny.Net

What good will to the death? How to explain the riddle of clinical death? Why come to the living dead? Can you give and receive permission to die?



We publish fragments of speech at a seminar held in Moscow, Andrei Gnezdilov, psychotherapist, MD, Honorary Doctor of the University of Essex (UK), the founder of Russia's first hospice, the inventor of the new methods of art therapy and author of numerous books.

Death as part of life
In everyday life, when we talk to someone of your friends, and he says: "You know, that's so and so died", a common reaction to this question: how he died? It is very important how a person dies. Death important for human self-awareness. It has not only negative.


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

Somehow I had to communicate with artists and sculptors, and I asked them: "You depict various aspects of human life, can represent love, friendship, beauty, and how would you have represented death?" And no one has a clear answer right away.

A sculptor who immortalized the siege of Leningrad, promised to think. And shortly before his death, he replied: "I would have painted the image of Christ's death." I asked: "Christ crucified?" - "No, the ascension of Christ».

A German sculptor has depicted a flying angel, the shadow of the wings of which was death. When a person falls into this shade, he falls into the power of death. Another sculptor portrayed death in the form of two boys, one boy sitting on a rock, his head resting on his knees, he directed all down.

In the hands of the second boy, flute, his head thrown back, he directed the whole motive behind. And the explanation of this sculpture was: impossible to depict death without concomitant life and life without death.

Death - a natural process. Many writers have tried to portray the life immortal, but it was a terrible, terrible immortality. What is infinite life - an endless repetition of earthly experience, or stop the development of an infinite aging? It's hard to imagine the painful condition of the person who is immortal.

Death - it is a reward, a respite, it is abnormal only when it suddenly when the person is still on the rise, full of energy. And older people want to die. Some of the old woman asked: "That's zazhilas, it is time to die." And patterns of death, about which we read in the literature, when death comes upon the peasants, were regulatory in nature.

When the villager felt he could no longer work as before, that it becomes a burden to the family, he went to the bath, put on clean clothes, went under way, said goodbye to the neighbors and family and died peacefully. His death occurred without the expression of suffering that arise when a person struggling with death.

Farmers know that life - it's not a flower, dandelion, which has grown and blossomed cleared under the breath of the wind. Life has a deeper meaning.

This example is the death of the peasants, dying, giving yourself permission to death - is not a feature of the people, such examples we can find today. Once we received a cancer patient. A former soldier, he kept a stiff upper lip and joked: "I went through three wars, death tugging at his mustache, and now her time has come to pull me».

Of course, we supported him, but suddenly one day he could not get out of bed, and took it quite clearly: "All I'm dying, I can not stand." We said to him: "Do not worry, it's metastasis, men with metastases in the spine live a long time, we will take care of you, you get used to." - "No, no, it's death, I know».

And, imagine, a few days later he dies, not having this any physiological prerequisites. He's dying because he has decided to die. So, this goodwill to death or some projection death occurs in reality.

It is necessary to give life natural death, because death is still programmed at conception of man. The peculiar experience of death is learned in childbirth, at birth. When dealing with this issue, you can see how wisely built a life. As a person is born, so he dies, is born easily - easily die hard born - die hard.

And the day of death of the person is also not accidental, as the day of birth. Statisticians first raised this issue, open a portion of the coincidence in the date of death of people and date of birth. Or, when we remember some important anniversary of the death of our relatives, suddenly it turns out that my grandmother had died - born grandson. Here is the generation and transfer to the randomness of the death and birthday - is striking.

Clinical death or other life?
No wise man still did not understand what death is, what happens at death. Left with little or no attention to this stage as clinical death. Man falls into a coma, he stops breathing, the heart, but to his own surprise, and for others it comes to life and tells amazing stories.

Recently he died Natalya Petrovna spondylitis. At the time, we often argue, I told cases of clinical death, which had been in my practice, and she said it was all nonsense, that just changes occur in the brain, and so on. And once I gave her an example, she then became very used to tell.

I worked 10 years in the Cancer Institute as a psychotherapist, and once I was called to the young woman. During the operation, her heart stopped, his long time to make, and when she woke up, I was asked to see if it did not change the mind of the long oxygen starvation of the brain.

I came to the emergency room, she just came to life. I asked: "Can you talk to me?" - "Yes, but I would like to apologize to you, I caused you so much trouble," - "What trouble?" - "Well, how. I have the same heart stopped, I experienced such stress, and I saw that it was for the doctors too great stress ».

I wondered: "How could you see it, if you were in a deep narcotic sleep, and then you went into cardiac arrest?" - "Doctor, I would have told you a lot more if you promise not to send me to a psychiatric hospital."

And she told the following: when it plunged into the narcotic sleep, then suddenly felt as a mild shock to the foot made something inside her turn as the screw is turned out. 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 a familiar face at this woman! And then suddenly I remembered that it was she. Suddenly there was a voice, "Immediately stop the operation, the heart has stopped, it is necessary to start».

She thought she had died, and remembered with horror that does not say good-bye to any mother or a 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 his apartment.

She saw a pretty peaceful scene - girl played with dolls, a grandmother, her mother, something sewed. There was a knock on the door and entered a neighbor, Lydia Stepanovna. In her hands was a small polka-dot dress. "Masha, - said a neighbor - you're always trying to be like my mother, that I had made for you the same dress as her mother».

Girl happily ran to a neighbor on the road touched the cloth fell antique cup and teaspoon came under the carpet. The noise, the girl was crying, grandmother exclaims: "Masha, you awkward," Lydia Stepanovna says that the dishes beating fortunately - a common situation.

And the girl's mother, forgetting about himself, went to her daughter, stroked her head and said, "Masha, it is not the worst thing in the life of the mountain." Masha looked at my mother, but without seeing it, turned away. And suddenly, this woman realized that when she touched the head of a girl, she did not feel the touch. Then she rushed to the mirror and in the mirror she saw herself.

Horrified, she remembered that she should be in the hospital, she had a cardiac arrest. She ran away from home and ended up in the operating room. And then he heard a voice: "The heart wound up doing an operation, but rather, because it can be re-cardiac arrest».

After listening to this woman, I said, "Do not you want me to come to your house and told his relatives that everything is in order, they can see you?" She gladly accepted.

I went on this my address, my grandmother opened the door, I passed, how was the operation, and then asked: "Tell me, at half past ten did not come to a neighbor Lydia Stepanovna you?" - "Come, and you are that, on the You know her? "-" And if she did not bring polka-dot dress? "-" Are you a magician, Doctor? »

I keep asking, and every detail has come together, except for one - have not found a spoon. Then I say: "And you looked under the carpet?" They lift the carpet and there is a spoon.

This story really had an effect on spondylitis. And then she experienced a similar case. One day she lost and stepson, and her husband, both committed suicide. For her it was a terrible stress. Then one day, he entered the room, she saw her husband, and he turned to her with some words.

She is a wonderful psychiatrist thought it hallucinations, returned to the other room and asked my cousin to see that in that room. That came, looked and recoiled: "Yes, there's your husband!" Then she did what her husband asked, making sure that these cases are not an invention.

She told me: "No one knows better than I marrow (spondylitis has been director of the Institute of Human Brain in St. Petersburg). And I have a feeling that I'm standing in front of some huge wall behind which I hear the voices, and I know that there is a huge and wonderful world, but I can not tell others what I see and hear. Because for it to be scientifically, one should repeat my experience ».

Once I was sitting next to a dying patient. I put the music box that played a touching melody, then asked: "Turn off, stopping you?" - "No, let him play." Suddenly she stopped breathing, relatives rushed: "Do something, she does not breathe».

I hastily made her a shot of adrenaline, and again she came to, turned to me: "Andrei, what was that?" - "You know, it was clinically dead." She smiled and said: "No, life!»

What is the condition in which the brain goes with the near-death experiences? After all, death is death. We fix the death when we see that stopped breathing, cardiac arrest, the brain does not work, he can not receive the information and, especially, to send it out.

So, the brain transmitter only, and there is something in man deeper, stronger? And here we are confronted with the concept of the soul. After all, this concept is almost supplanted the notion 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 characterological qualities in their own way to build models of death.

People with schizoid character type, such as Don Quixote, rather strange characterized his wish: "We would like to die so that none of the others did not see my body».

Epileptoida - considered unthinkable for themselves lie quietly and wait until death comes, they were able to somehow participate in this process.

Cycloid - people like Sancho Panza, like to die surrounded by family. Psychasthenic - people anxious and suspicious, worried about how they will look when they die. Isteroidy wanted to die at sunrise or sunset on the beach, in the mountains.

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

Heraclitus said: "The man in the death night light ignites himself; and is not dead, he put out his eyes, but alive; but it comes in contact with the dead - napping, watching - contact with dormant "- a phrase over which you can wrestle with almost all his life.

Being in contact with the patient, I could agree with him, that when he died, he tried to let me know if there is something after death or not. And I received an answer, not once.

Once I agreed so with a woman, she died, and I soon forgot about our contract. And once, when I was at the cottage, I suddenly woke up, the room was light came. I thought that I had forgotten to turn off the light, but then saw that the bed in front of 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 all this, turned away and tried to sleep, to wake up. It took a while, I looked up. Light burned again, I looked with horror - it's still sitting on the bed and looks at me. I want to say something, I can not - the horror. I realized that for me the dead person. And then she smiled sadly and said: "But it's not a dream».

Why do I bring these examples? Because the uncertainty of what awaits us, makes us go back to the old principle: "Do no harm." That is "not rush death" - is a powerful argument against euthanasia. As far as we have the right to intervene in the state, which is experiencing a patient? How can we accelerate his death, when he might have at this moment is going through the brightest life?

Quality of life and permission to death
It is important is not the number of days that we have lived, and quality. And what gives you the quality of life? The quality of life makes it possible 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 relatives? Because children often repeat the story of life of their parents or relatives. Sometimes in detail, it is amazing. This is a repetition of life is often the repetition of death.

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

Remember the story: an old dying father, his three sons. He asks: "After my death, three days go to my grave." Older brothers or do not want to go, or are afraid, only the youngest, a fool, going to the tomb, 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 ill, but my family let it be healthy, let the illness will break me, I'll pay the bills for the whole family." So, you set a goal, whether rational or affective, the person receives a meaningful departure from life.

Hospice - a house, which offers high-quality life. Not an easy death, but the quality of life. It is a place where people can complete their life meaningful and deep, accompanied by relatives.

When a person goes away from it not only leaves the air like a rubber ball, he needs to make the leap, he needed strength to step into the unknown. Man must allow yourself to take this step. And the first thing he gets permission from relatives, and then - from the medical staff of volunteers from the priest and from himself. And it permission to death by itself - the most difficult.

You know that before Christ suffering and prayer in Gethsemane asked his disciples: "Stay with me, do not sleep." Three times the disciples had promised him awake, but asleep, did not support. So that's Hospice in the spiritual sense, it is a place where people can ask: "Stay with me».

And if this is the greatest personality - God incarnate - needed help a man if he said: "I no longer call you slaves. I have called you friends, "referring to the people, then follow suit, and satiate the spiritual content of the last days of the patient - is very important.

Maria Stroganoff