Sheldon Solomon on Why We Fear Death

In this clip from footage shot for Transcendental Media's "Flight From Death: The Quest for Immortality," Sheldon Solomon, professor of psychology at Skidmore College, discusses why we fear death.

For more information, visit www.flightfromdeath.com.

Category:

Film & Animation

Tags:

• death
• psychology
• terror management theory
• flight from death
• dying
• mortality
• fear
• sheldon solomon

[2004dale]

he's gnarly. i dig how he talks and how he words his statements.

[ProstheticHymns]

@squamish4244 Thank you. I'll check him out.

[squamish4244]

@ProstheticHymns Adyashanti is one teacher who has numerous videos on here and expresses these concepts very well.

[squamish4244]

@ProstheticHymns I would argue, and Buddhist and mystical traditions of many cultures worldwide concur, that this awareness, not identified with any 'thing' but infinite and all-encompassing, is indeed the primordial condition of all humans, always present, and merely obscured by the web of grasping that makes us fear death. For people who have attained a highly aware or 'enlightened' state, death is meaningless, because they are no longer clinging to this identity, this form.

[squamish4244]

@ProstheticHymns How did I do this, and bring the anxiety down to a level where I can foresee a future without it, however distant that may be? In addition to the help of several highly skilled healers, I applied the ancient Buddhist practice of mindfulness to use the power of awareness - of observation - to the anxiety and terror and other emotions that arose, and the emotions diminished in strength under that power.

[squamish4244]

@ProstheticHymns Speaking from experience, when I was directly confronted with the insubstantiality of my own identity, the result was a terror of death and annihilation. Since then, years ago now, I have endured many panic attacks and an overall level of very high anxiety that I have only brought under control through releasing my grasp on the identity that I had taken to be myself (the inclination to form this identity is probably unconscious or instinctual 90% of the time).

[ProstheticHymns]

@squamish4244 Thanks, that's interesting. So, are you saying that the transcendental consciousness is (in some sense) more instinctual or primordial than "the fear of death that appears instinctual?" I'd ask whether inclinations to construct & clutch the identity you mention are instinctual, but I'm not sure what that would establish for now. I did wonder whether "releasing one's grasp" presents the same fears as death, since both sound like they annihilate the self. Thoughts?

[squamish4244]

@ProstheticHymns So the fear of death that appears instinctual can, upon examination, be deconstructed into what I have explained. It also means we have a method for overcoming that fear, for Buddhism (and other traditions) says that by releasing our grasping onto the various components of this mental construct, our true nature, of an infinite transcendent consciousness, is revealed to us.

[squamish4244]

@ProstheticHymns Hello, no I did not write that review, but perhaps that person had a background in Buddhism, as I do. According to Buddhism, we construct an identity for ourselves out of concepts - mental conditioning, habits, memories, thoughts of the future, physical appearance, etc. and take that identity to be 'me'. Death threatens to destroy that identity and therefore we become terrified.

[ProstheticHymns]

@squamish4244 Hi. Someone (perhaps even you) said this in an iTunes review of Flight from Death. I wanted to ask if that is really at odds with what they're saying (& how so). Please clarify.