Why death is inevitable. Recent requests for help. We are left to live less and less
"If you don't have an idea in your head, you won't see the facts." Ivan Pavlov
The world misjudges the prospects of practical gerontology, namely, the possibility of canceling aging in general.For the last 20 years, I have been doing gerontology, studying aging - one might say, for purely selfish reasons. Old age has approached me. My point of view is that aging was invented by biological evolution itself. This car wears out and ends up in the trash heap. And we differ from him in that aging is not mechanical wear. Aging is the way speed up evolution. For the first time this idea was expressed by the German biologist August Weismann at the end of the 19th century. He was accused of anti-Darwinism. This idea flared up several times in the 20th century. And every time it was trampled by people who too superficially understood the essence of evolution. The more often individuals die, the more often generations change. Some worms live for 15 days. After 15 days, they die, and there is a new generation. The new generation has new properties. The selection of useful properties requires frequent changes. Once in this situation, the body tries to help its species find new signs and therefore changes more often. To kill oneself in order to accelerate mutability is the invention of evolution.
But why does the body kill itself so slowly?If evolution needs an organism to change, why can't it be done faster? And not as humiliating as ours. Aging is slow killing organized by the organism itself. Death is inevitable, but there is no obligatory connection between it and aging. So, in principle, there should be ageless organisms, and they have already been found. In some species, a program works that kills them quickly, at a certain moment. The albatross lives to be 60 years old, but it only gets stronger. Albatrosses nest on islands in the Indian Ocean. From there they fly towards Antarctica, where there are more fish. Scientists set up an experiment by installing sensors on albatrosses. It turned out that only the oldest reach Antarctica, because they are the strongest. One day the albatross dies. No one knows, why he died. But definitely not because it has worn out. Nature has programmed that. This is a rare case, but striking.
There are many more cases when the self-killing program is spread over many years.The essence of this does not change - it is a well-organized departure from life. But the way of execution is changing. Aging is a death, but not immediately, but from the fact that a variety of vital functions are performed worse and worse. There is such a senile disease - sarcopenia. This is a gradual decrease in the number of muscle cells. Because of this, any organisms run slower. Set up a thought experiment: two birds with one stone are running, playful and lethargic. Who will run away from the fox? Frisky. He will not become a dinner for the fox, but will continue to breed with rabbits. While the hares are young, there are no lethargic among them. But with age, aging begins and, therefore, sarcopenia. Moreover, these troubles begin before the reproduction ends. This means that a fairly large company of hares appears, which still breed, but already run slower. And of them those who, for example, are smarter will dodge the fox. And who is more stupid - will be caught. My brother a physicist calculated that if there are enough foxes in the forest, all stupid hares will disappear in 5 generations. So aging, which began even with the continuing ability to reproduce, additionally improves the rabbit breed by helping culling to identify and maintain small improvements.
We inherited the same from the animal ancestor.We still have this program, which was supposed to help the wolf to improve us further. But which wolf? We live in comfortable houses. We have guns, dogs. Aging is a natural process, but in our conditions it has become completely unnatural. it forgotten in us , which has become an unnecessary program. In fact there are others types of "subversive activities" of the body. Against the background of aging, they are not so noticeable, because we all age. But death from septic shock, for example, is very common in the world. It is hard to deal with, although it would seem there are excellent antibiotics that kill any bacteria. But it ends with the death of the organism, because he arranged it for himself. And in a huge number of diseases, we ourselves are the main factor in its development. With strokes, we ourselves start the neuron death program. They die not because they cannot survive in these conditions, but because we ourselves launched the program. The evolution is so long. 3 billion years. Over the years, the body has had the opportunity to come up with the most different and beautiful devices to kill itself.
Until recently, it was believed that aging cannot be fought... It is impossible, because this is a violation of biological laws. Just like it is impossible to invent a perpetual motion machine. It is impossible, because it is unattainable from the point of view of physical laws. From a geriatric perspective, aging is an inevitable outcome of life. Nothing can be done, you can only make the person suffer less, live longer, and then carry him out with dignity to the cemetery. The largest English geriatrician [doctor, specialist in diseases of old age] Rotan stated that attempts to treat aging are not only ignorance, but also illiteracy. But we are indeed already seeing “disruptive technologies” that can flip everything in the pharmaceutical market. Now it is developing consistently, slowly and sadly. Genomic sequencing, targeted drug delivery are all small improvements. But we believe there are approaches that could completely disrupt the pharmaceutical market. Until now, pharmacists have assumed that we are the crown of creation, made perfectly, and when we are sick, it means that something has gone bad and needs to be fixed. However, if the organism itself launches the killing program, then the better it is treated, the faster the tissue kills itself: the program has already started working and is faced with the fact that they wanted to prevent it.
We believe we can prevent the aging program from starting at all.People should die not from old age, but from other reasons. Our proposal is a prohibitive effect on the program that is recorded in our genes and makes us grow old. it flight control center - there is a center that controls our aging. If it exists, then it works according to a certain program. Aging does not start immediately, but when you click on the "start". All programs in biology are genetic. It was believed that the aging gene was recorded in us. Now it is clear that he is not. This is a group of genes. Serious things in biology are done by an orchestra of different systems. But this orchestra has a conductor - a genetic aging program. But if the program is genetic, this does not mean at all that it is necessary to fight against it using methods of genetic engineering. The order to start aging can be canceled , ban it with handpicked medicines. Moreover, such an example already exists. In the second half of the 20th century, cellular suicide was discovered - the phenomenon of apoptosis [apoptosis is the death of a cell, programmed in itself]. The cage is a terrible melancholic. If she is not given the order to “move on,” she starts a self-destruction program. The path by which the cell eliminates itself is traced. And this does not happen at the level of genes or the flight control center. At the level of order execution of one of the proteins. Kill him with medication and the apoptosis stops. Moreover, for living beings consisting of one cell - yeast, bacteria - apoptosis is the death of the organism.
This is not an elixir of immortality... Thousands of scientists have been engaged in immortality in the history of mankind. They all have one thing in common - they all died. You don't need to think that if a beam fell on a person and smashed his head, then our medicine will help him get back on his feet. There are injuries incompatible with life. We will not cancel them. But there will be a time when this type of injury will be the main cause of death. They will rarely happen. We will live much longer. We'll look young if we stop the program on time. Some systems in our body begin to age from the age of 14. If you stop the aging program in advance, then its external signs will not appear. That is, people will look 25-30 years old when external signs are not yet visible. But everyone will live to see their fatal injury or commit suicide with a pistol. Today before the age of 60 people die from causes that do not depend on age ... This is not suicide with the aging program. And then the aging program begins. We have proved that there is such a program. The task of pharmaceuticals is to find the substance that will stop it.
We have chosen the most understandable direction for hitting the aging program at the moment.... We assumed that the suicide of the cell and of the organism was done in approximately the same way. Moreover, suicide is slow, we are talking about the slow extinction of organs. How does it proceed? Perhaps like slow cell suicide ... We assumed that the poison with which we destroy ourselves is an active form of oxygen. When harmless oxygen begins to chemically reduce to become harmless water, then at first it attaches only one electron. And this leads to the formation of a toxic semi-finished product - superoxide. We decided to make an antioxidant - a pharmacological agent that intercepts poisonous forms of oxygen and neutralizes them. The difficulty is that the body has long learned to use poisonous forms of oxygen for its own needs. If we simply remove poisons from the body, we will die without them. Therefore, we are talking about how to eliminate the excess of poisons. And this must be done in a certain place - in mitochondria [mitochondria is an intracellular organelle, has its own DNA and is independent of cell division, but the cell is completely dependent on the presence of mitochondria as its main energy sources], to keep them young ... But how? The discovery of mitochondrial electricity, made back in the 60s of the twentieth century, came to the rescue. In order to target the antioxidant, you need to charge it so that the cation itself finds the mitochondria and penetrates into it. The entry into the organelle 1 μm in size is ensured. And you don't need to aim.
We managed to synthesize this strange substance, which does not exist in nature in 2005.... We began to try it as a geroprotector [geroprotectors are substances that have a common property - to prolong the life of animals]. First on mice, then on Drosophila, then on crustaceans, on mushrooms, on plants. In all cases, there is a significant increase in life. From their youngest fingernails, they fed mice and rats with this substance, watched what would happen to them. All the mice and rats that we fed with this substance the period of youth lasted ... Substances of this type have not yet appeared in the global pharmaceutical industry, therefore, it is difficult to judge about contraindications and other accompanying circumstances. Literally nothing is known yet.
What stage is the development at? A drug that cancels the human aging program is being developed on the basis of the Iona Skulachev biomedical project. At the same time, scientific evidence of the existence of an aging program is summarized in an article, which at the time of preparation of this material was planned for publication in the April 2017 issue of the authoritative scientific journal Physiologicaly Reviews, USA. A publication in a publication of this level, according to the authors, is a weighty argument in favor of the recognition of the concept of the project by the international scientific community, followed by regulators and pharmaceutical manufacturers. According to Vladimir and Maxim Skulachevs, the production of the drug is not expensive, and taking into account its scaling, it will be possible to sell it at the average price of antibiotics. In such cases, the development of an official drug, its phased testing and certification takes at least 10-12 years.
Feb 17, 2017 content_manager
Several years ago, the Cambridge Meditation Center invited Tara Tulku Rinpoche to speak. Before the performance, he touched the rosary and said some words three times. I decided that this was some kind of special mantra. In the end, I asked what he was saying, and he explained that he only repeated the phrase three times: "I will die anyway." This helps him to overcome excessive self-conceit and not consider himself a brilliant preacher. After all, in the end, all our knowledge and abilities turn to dust.
And I made it a rule to surround myself with various objects reminiscent of death - the skull of a deceased lama, a rosary made of his bones. The bones were left after the so-called heavenly burial, when the body of the deceased is given to the vultures for food out of compassion. The rosary that Tara Tulku Rinpoche handled was also made of human bones. A rosary made of human or animal bones serves as a reminder of the inevitable end.
I am often asked: why constantly remind yourself of this sad fact? Anusaya in Pali it means our secret feelings. One of them is the fear of death. He lives in our subconscious and manifests itself in the form of other, less significant fears. He poisons our lives. This is a form of chronic anxiety.
Anusaya is constantly fed by daily impressions: one of our loved ones dies, we see a dead animal on the street, we suddenly find out that our friend is seriously ill, or after a long separation we find that he is very old. The task of spiritual practice is to drive away these fears: figuratively speaking, open doors and windows and let in fresh air, stop talking about them in a whisper, suppress and silence them. It's very hard to live like that - suppressing fear requires a lot of energy, which, in essence, is wasted.
If we try to delve deeper into this issue, we will understand that in fact we are not afraid of death, but the idea of \u200b\u200bdeath. At first glance, the difference is small, but very important.
The moment of death is no different from any other. This is another life experience that needs to be met while awake. Our body and our consciousness are changing at this time. But if we try to look ahead, then our ideas, most likely, will have nothing to do with reality.
This happens often in life - the real event turns out to be completely different from what we imagined it to be. Thinking about death, we try to go beyond thinking, because it is thinking that creates all kinds of problems. Nobody knows what awaits us after death. Death is the great unknown, and thought, which is an expression of the known, cannot know what is unknown. It is a fact. We call death unknown because we don't know anything about it.
I do not mind feeling fear at the thought of death, because this feeling is close to us. But the confused thoughts that arise spontaneously during fears are of little use. When we think about death, we are not trying to go beyond what we know. We're just trying to appreciate what's next to us. Death is now with us.
Death is a topic that many philosophical discussions lead to. The basic principles of Buddhism are associated with the changes and impermanence of our existence. Aging and illness is one expression of impermanence. These are natural processes. Death is also a natural process. Sooner or later, our body wears out and stops functioning.
But, despite the inevitability of death, a person does not always want to reflect on this topic. There are difficult moments in life, periods of depression, when such reflections are not very appropriate. (Be careful with your friends and loved ones - if they are seriously ill or dying, you should not recommend this activity to them, especially if they have little experience of spiritual practice.)
If you already have this experience and especially if you have reached a certain degree samadhi, it makes things easier. In addition, I know from myself that even people who have not reached samadhi, are able to concentrate on a simple thought like "I must die" because this topic is interesting enough. Concentration will not work if the thought instills in us a fear that we cannot overcome. It is not at all necessary to be sophisticated in meditation.
For someone who considers themselves prepared, the practice of thinking about death can be invaluable. In this way, we banish fears to get to know them better. This invariably reveals the impermanent nature of fear. No matter how unpleasant it may seem at first glance, its existence is short-lived: fear arises and after a while it leaves. The energy of fear is present, but it is not ours - it is not our "I".
Realizing this, you can draw a lot of energy out of fear. Now fears will not hide in our subconscious. They lived through their time. They may return, but we are already confident that we will cope with them. We have seen that fear can be observed, which means that you can work with it.
Thus, fear teaches us to value life. It allows us to see life in all its glory - after all, we understand that sooner or later it will end. We voluntarily entered the dwelling of death. And we realized that we were living in deception and ignorance. We pretended that life would last forever. This means that we did not realize its completeness and magnificence.
Intellectually, we understand that we will die. But you need to know it with your heart. It needs to get to the marrow of my bones. Then we will understand how to live.
To do this, one must constantly think about death. All our Dharma practice is preparation for such deep understanding. The first step is to develop an ethical attitude. The second step is to develop proper breathing. This can take quite a long time - you need to come to a calm, concentrated state. It is also necessary to work with feelings, with smaller and larger fears, develop a conscious approach to the events of everyday life. These steps will strengthen our consciousness so that we can face the fear of death. Sometimes, before observing fear, it is required to assess our resistance to it. We realize how much we hate this fear.
Without this preliminary work, a person will not be able to calmly face death. There may be some exceptional individuals who are capable of doing this. They come to earth as unusually mature spiritually or have gone through trials that have made them mature. It is necessary to develop a certain calmness in relation to events in order to be able to analyze them and receive information from them. Communication with fear provides insight that has the power of liberation.
Typically, our awareness is spontaneous. We see a message on TV about some tragedy and experience pain or even a heart attack, and then we switch the channel and everything goes away. These are the laws of modern life - a person's attention is quickly scattered.
Spiritual practice is of a different nature. Samadhi, which we reach is not an absolute concentration that excludes everything else. Consciousness reached samadhi, is strong and flexible, very lively. This state resembles tenderness. The heart seems to melt. You see the true sadness of life and its true beauty. You cannot see one without the other. Practice gives us the opportunity to see them together.
Our heart becomes tender and sensitive, and any event touches us so much that we awaken: we look deeply into the nature of things. Everything takes on great significance - both people and events around us. A person has a desire to make meditation more intense.
Under practice I do not mean leaving work or family to meditate in a cave. I interpret this concept in a broader sense: whatever we do, we are in a state of spiritual wakefulness. Practice becomes an integral part of our life. As we learn to work with ordinary events, we gradually move on to exceptional ones, such as death.
I learned a lot from Zen master Suzuki Shosan, who not only meditated but was a samurai and lived as a hermit for a while. He mastered the martial arts and taught to apply a conscious approach to death, or, as he called it, "death energy", in order to improve spiritual practice. In difficult cases, he used the energy of death to change his attitude towards the situation, and this helped him a lot.
"A person who dies with joy becomes a buddha," he said. "To be a buddha means dying with a light heart." And then he frankly continued: "Since I am human and do not want to die, I practice in order to learn to die easily - easily and without hesitation to expose my neck to the executioner."
The executioner in this case is a symbol of death. The Master means that the time will come and he will accept death with dignity. "I have trained myself in various ways," he said, "and I know how awful it is not to be able to die easily. My method is Buddhism for cowards." In this sense, we are all cowards and we all need some training.
The knowledge of death is not abstract knowledge - we acquire it in a natural way, for example, when one of our loved ones dies. But only those who think deeply about what happened can learn a lesson from it. If you are open to experience, then anyone who has passed away can become your teacher.
The last gift I received from my father was that he made me think about death. I remembered that I am no exception to the general rule. Once I had no idea that my father could die - he was always bigger and stronger than me, he was an example for me. But he died and will not return. Ashes will not become wood again. And I, too, will someday turn to ash.
FORMAL PRACTICE
From thinking about the father, let's move on to the formal spiritual practice associated with death. For example, I use the nine-part meditation that I discovered in the sermons of Atisha (980-1055), the great Indian Buddhist sage. I corrected this meditation using the advice of my teachers, Tara Tulku Rinpoche and Ajaan Suwata. All this formed the basis of the meditation on death, which I teach my students.
My meditation is divided into three main parts: thoughts about the inevitability of death, thoughts about the unforeseen death of death and the thought that at the moment of death only Dharma can help us. Each part has three statements.
I usually start by breathing. I do this until the brain calms down. When I am calm, I begin to ponder one of the statements - for example, "We are all going to die."
Obviously, a certain concentration of consciousness is required to think about it. After all, death is what we most would like to avoid. Naturally, we have a great aversion to death. If we do not concentrate enough, we will not be able to fully grasp the significance of this statement. In a calm state, our thinking becomes sharp and flexible. We can accurately focus our attention and keep it in a continuous state. We are strongly supported samadhi, which supports our emotional and mental interest in the object of contemplation.
Considering this or that statement from different points of view, we will understand the wealth of meaning contained in it. By being attentive to our experience, we will understand the truth of this statement. We will feel it not only with our mind, but also with our whole being. Atisha's Nine Reflections are an exercise in yonisomanasikara - wise attention or careful concentration. Any uncomplicated statements, if you approach them thoroughly, contain much more meaning than it seems at first glance. A deep insight into their essence will help us to understand the operation of the natural law of Dharma within our body and mind.
When practicing meditation, you should first focus on one of the nine parts, then briefly go through all the others so as not to forget them. You can do one part a day, or you can do all three. If the meditation on this section proves to be fruitful, you should continue doing it for several days. All reflections are designed to grasp the same simple truth, and therefore, when practicing them, do not adhere to too strict rules - rely on your common sense.
For clarity, here are some examples.
THE INEVITABILITY OF DEATH
EACH OF US WILL DIE
The first and most categorical of these statements is that all living things are subject to death. Nobody is an exception to the universal law. Death is a natural consequence of our birth, and our whole life from the moment of birth is the path to death. There are no exceptions. Wealth, education, physical health, fame, moral character, and even spiritual maturity are irrelevant. If you don't want to die, you better not be born.
The "Visuddhimagga" of Buddhaghosha turns out to be very useful in this case. She offers to compare herself with other famous historical figures. Buddha died. Jesus Christ and Socrates died. Famous athletes died - strong and healthy men and women who accomplished athletic feats.
In such a situation, I often think of Krishnamurti. It's good when you know a person personally. Krishnamurti possessed incredible inner strength, clarity of consciousness and great love of life, which never betrayed him. He taught until the last days of his life, and died at the age of 90. And yet he died.
And among ordinary people, there are cheerful and energetic natures - each of us has such acquaintances. They, like everyone else, will also die.
Sometimes new ideas for meditation come to mind by themselves. Several years ago, after giving a lecture on the conscious attitude towards death, I returned home. Naturally, my head was still full of the previous performance. I wanted to relax. I really love old films. That evening, a 1938 film with Clark Gable and Karol Lombard was shown on television. A passionate admirer of cinema, I knew everyone who participated in the making of the film - the screenwriter, director, producer. And suddenly I caught myself on the fact that all of them are no longer alive.
Once these people were full of life and charm, incredibly attractive, but now all of them - even those who played in the orchestra and sold popcorn in the halls - are dead. Even surprising. The film felt so alive and the people who made it were dead.
Buddha spoke of it this way:
Young and old
Foolish and wise
Rich and poor, everyone dies.
Like clay pots, big and small
Burnt and unburned - eventually they break
So life leads to death. *
* Mahaparinibbana Sutta, Digha Nikaya 16.
We are accustomed to the fact that death cannot be avoided.
Therefore, no one even thinks about the question of why this is so, and why animals and people could not live indefinitely. From a scientific point of view, the inevitability of death is somewhat of a mystery. The body of an animal and a person can be viewed as a machine that can repair itself. In our body, due to the combination of carbon of the body with oxygen in the air, a constant process of destruction or slow combustion occurs, but these destroyed particles are constantly renewed from food. Thus, there is a constant circulation of substances in the body. Some substances fall out, others come in. The question is why such a restoration can last only for a certain period, why it cannot last forever. Scientists gave different answers to this question, but the following should be considered the most plausible.
Single-celled animals, such as ciliates, are known to reproduce by division. The division consists in the fact that the mother is divided into two daughters, and nothing remains of the mother. Such animals were considered, in a sense, immortal, because they do not die due to old age. The ciliate does not have time to grow old, as it turns into two young daughters, who also reproduce by division before reaching old age. However, according to the observation of the French zoologist Mop, if such a division continues for a large number of generations - for example, 300-500 generations - then it leads to the degeneration of the offspring. This degeneration is revealed in the fact that some cilia do not grow in young ones, and the ciliates themselves stop growing. With each generation, they become smaller and smaller, finally shrinking to the point that they cannot further multiply by division. Complete degeneration sets in. These degenerate ciliates begin to stick together in pairs, and exchange nucleus particles. A particle of the nucleus of one ciliate passes and merges there with the nucleus of another, and, conversely, from this other ciliate, part of the nucleus passes into the first and merges there with the nucleus. Something like mutual fertilization takes place. At the end of this process, called conjugation, they diverge, and here a curious phenomenon is noticed. This mutual fertilization seems to renew the vitality of the ciliates. After it, all signs of degeneration disappear. Cilia grow in ciliates, they themselves grow up and again gain the ability to reproduce by division. But then, after a certain number of generations, they degenerate again, after which mutual fertilization occurs again, etc.
This observation of Mopa sheds some light on the question of why animals, whose body consists of many cells, are mortal. There are countless cells in our body, and these cells, like single-celled animals, multiply. The growth of an animal is determined not by the fact that its cells grow, but by the fact that the number of cells is added, and it is added as a result of the reproduction of the former. And in a grown animal, some cells die off, new ones are born in their place, so that the process of cell reproduction does not stop until death. Cells of animals and cells of our body, like ciliates, multiply by division - and only by division, and division, as Mopa observed in ciliates, if it lasts long enough, leads to cell degeneration. This degeneration is found in the fact that the organism becomes decrepit; finally, it reaches such limits when life becomes impossible and death occurs.
The question now arises, why ciliates and cells can multiply by division only a certain number of times, and why cannot this continue indefinitely? This question can be answered as follows. When multiplying by division, the cell divides in half, so that the daughter's cells are like each other, like the mother. The protoplasm of which the cell nucleus is composed consists of a large number of particles, each of which divides in half during division. However, this division is not performed with mathematical precision, that is, the cell divides in half, but not completely: from time to time, one of the many particles slips entirely into one daughter cell, and does not fall into another. It is in this other, as a consequence of this, that the first step towards degeneration is revealed. If now, with further division of the same cell, such a slip is repeated once more, the degeneration will take a second step, ”and so on, until, finally, the cell loses so many particles that its further multiplication becomes impossible; the cell degenerates into the end. In ciliates, this degeneration is corrected by mutual fertilization. With such fertilization, one ciliate supplies the other with such a particle that this other did not have, and vice versa. As a result, all the consequences of degeneration disappear. In our body, cells cannot do this, which is why their degeneration does not stop and leads to death.
I have good news for you.
Death is not inevitable. Potentially each of us is immortal, and not at all in a religious or "spiritual" sense.
In fact, death is not at all a natural phenomenon, no matter how paradoxical it may sound. The simplest multicellular creatures such as hydras, corals, etc. do not die "of old age." Many fish do not die "of old age", a good half of plants (they simply do not have a dying mechanism). Let's take a look at what "death" is, what are its physiological reasons.
"Natural death" from old age is no more than the failure of certain organs, not at all inevitable. Often, we do not see the reasons for the wear and tear of a particular organ - but with proper care, timely diagnosis and treatment, a person is quite capable of living up to 150 years.
Next, aging. The cause of many health problems. Aging is a genetically planned hormonal process combined with DNA destruction (accumulation of replication errors). Processes that can be reversed. Yes, we will most likely never be forever young 20 years old, but it is quite possible to hang at the level of eternal 40 years. By the way, some jellyfish are able to "grow back", like the same Benjamin Button. And something bothers us.
The last is cancer. You will be surprised, but death from cancer is death from immortality, such is the paradox. Cancer cells don't die. Basically. They do not have such a mechanism, they can only be killed. Their unrestrained growth and exceptional gluttony kill the body. But if the tumor is removed and placed in a nutrient solution, it will live forever. The cells of Henrietta Lars, who died in 1951, still reproduce and multiply (https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/HeLa). Thus, there are already cells in our body that do not die by themselves. By the way, if I'm not mistaken, there are neurons in the human nervous system that can persist throughout life, if not most of it.
In general, ensuring immortality or life so long that death can become a conscious and completely satisfying choice for every person is a matter of time. The main thing is that the "immortals" do not destroy humanity, as cancer cells do \u003d)
Of course, few of Question readers will live forever. Perhaps no one at all. But the probability of immortality is, it is not equal to 0. And this is hope.
If you all die like that, then all is not lost either.
There are much less scientific (if the above can be called such), but still not religious and, theoretically, realizable theories about life after death.
The Russian cosmist philosopher Nikolai Fedorov believed that the real goal of humanity is to resurrect every single one of its descendants and populate space with them. And he put all this into a slightly modified Orthodox system of values. Like, paradise is possible only from the Earth, and there is no hell and sinners in principle, because when all are resurrected, there will be no sin.
Do you think nonsense? Not really. Firstly, an important condition for the possibility of resurrection of the long-dead is the achievement of immortality by a person. And as it was already written above, it is most likely a matter of time. Of course, even after this, the probability of resurrection after death obviously tends to 0, but the time allotted to humanity to solve this problem will tend to infinity. So the fact that one day you will again begin to be aware of yourself and shake the hand of your great-great ... n * [great] ... great-grandfather, is still more likely than the booths of heaven and rebirth into a frog)
And personally, I use the trick of parting (died and left forever without a connection - there is no difference), when I need to survive the death of a friend, and the trick of nothingness (I was not there, and I didn’t care, I wouldn’t - I wouldn’t care) when I needed realize your own death.
