Although the death scenes in these two well-produced tubes were selected for their cinematic qualities, they can still set the mood for a more serious contemplation of your own mortality. Check’m out.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Tqh2drbzZs&feature=related[/youtube] [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fvtm06DYhBo&feature=related[/youtube]
I don’t need to tell you how large the idea of death looms in our collective consciousness, in our daily lives. After all, people are dying left and right all around us all the time. The chart below represents an “average” frequency of death on our world, excluding unusual spikes for wars, bombings, natural disasters, etc., which actually happen all the time.
1.78 per second 107 per minute 6390 per hour 153 thousand per day 56.0 million per year 3.9 billion per average lifetime (70 years)
Not everyone is interested in what actually happens at death; they may go through their entire life without giving their own death a moment’s thought before the door is opened right in front of them. But having witnessed more than a few death scenes in real life, (as a crime scene technician) I can tell you I’m not one of them. And my interest in death wasn’t really slaked until I discovered the Urantia Papers and it’s revelations about what happens at death.
When life is put in the perspective of its unknowable end— and I mean not just when, but what— the stage is set for real consideration of just why our living conditions are so, well, temporary. And such a consideration quickly opens the doors of many other important considerations relating to just who, and what, we fundamentally are: evolutionary organisms; sentient (minded) creatures; air breathers; conscious beings; a self; intellects; personalities; souls; spirits; and on and on.
Most “Urantians” — people born and living on this world— usually only think about death in the physical sense. But they are overlooking intellectual (mind) death, and spiritual (soul) death. One of the more immediately intriguing papers in The Urantia Book is Paper 112, Personality Survival.
There’s quite a bit of new information in the Urantia Papers about (big “d”) Death, the apparent end of human existence on earth and the repersonalization of it on another world. No, it doesn’t take all the mystery out of death, but it does provide an expansive, even unprecedented context for a real and spiritually valuable understanding of death, for anyone ready to confront the inevitability of the potential end of their own mortal existence.
It really is just a matter of time before it becomes the most important thing on your plate.
