The Experience of Death and Dying: Psychological, Philosophical and Spiritual Aspects

• Main Author: Stanislav Grof
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Society for Spirituality Studies 2015-12-01
• Series: Spirituality Studies
• Subjects: Transpersonal psychology; consciousness; consciousness research; death
• Online Access: http://www.spirituality-studies.org/dp-volume1-issue2-fall2015/#2

The article discusses some psychological, philosophical, and spiritual aspects of the research on death and dying. The author challenges materialistic understanding of death, based on metaphysical assumption inherited from the Cartesian-Newtonian paradigm that had became one of the leading myths of the Western science, according to which consciousness is an epiphenomenon of matter, a product of the physiological processes in the brain, and thus critically dependent on the body. By reviewing the existing data and observations from various fields of research he points out to the fact that there is no proof for such a reductive claim. The research of the psychological, philosophical, and spiritual aspects of death and dying discussed in this paper offers considerable theoretical and practical implications, enabling the refusal of materialistic interpretation of death as the final end of human existence and conscious activity of any kind.