Superseding Death

We must be very tactful when we speak of death. All of us know a why and how in finding and answering meanings concerning death. Perhaps our main problem is in the way we speak of death, and in the way we present death. By the way of an anecdote, I'll attempt to make a point.

In a town notorious for its simple folk, there lived a young, fair maiden, Sarah, who was the gem and pride of the town. In the very same town there lived a rather wealthy young man, a jeweler who married our Sarah. The people were all very glad and proud. However, tragedy soon struck. Two weeks after the marriage, the young husband was traveling away from home on some business and was killed by a highwayman. The one contacted was the clergyman whose duty was to inform Sarah that her husband was no more. Our good clergyman called for his sexton and told him to tell Sarah, but he should do it in a very kind and considerate manner. Most of all, he was to use tact.. so, off went our good messenger to do his clergyman's command. Arriving very late at the house of Sarah, he cautiously banged at the window shutter once, twice and yelled at the top of his lungs, "Is this the home of Sarah, the widow? Is Sarah the widow home?" After a half hour of gentle banging he became infuriated, took his walking stick and gave the door one good smash. Soon our Sarah comes running, flings open the door and says very angrily, "This is the house of Sarah, but not the home of Sarah the widow!" The messenger looks at her and says, "You want to bet!!!"

Here we have a classic situation of dealing with tact, but not the kind we would use.

In The Republic I, Plato observes that a physician, at the time that he errs in treating a patient, is not worthy of his title. When the physician's knowledge fails him, he ceases to be a practitioner of the healing arts. The great Spanish 12th and 13th century rabbi and doctor, Moses Maimonides (1135 - 1204), draws a parallel between food and medication. G‑d created medicine and treatment; he endowed man with the intelligence to discover and apply different medicine for the medically ill. We must use medicine.

Here we can see an obvious difference. In The Republic, it is stated that if you fail or err, than you are not worthy of your title, but, accordingly, Maimonides really is not worrying about failing and erring. He is more worried about the doctor as a true healer. He is concerned about the physician's trying and applying his very best in healing. He is talking about dispensing and application. The tradition is to try your utmost, but never is a physician on trial; he keeps his title with dignity regardless of the consequences from treatment. There is no distinction between a doctor treating a healthy recovering patient or a terminally one at all.

Nature is life and is divided into four worlds - we have minerals, vegetables, animals and man. The lower world supports and feeds the higher world. Our attitude to the four worlds on a metaphysical plane is the following: wasting is wrong, both morally and humanistically; we are not to misuse what we have.

When man eats he is elevating his share in nature. It would be correct to assume that minerals are really being elevated as in the case when clay becomes vegetable. The minerals are not being used or killed, but are rather being transferred from level to a higher one. It is an exercise in transcendence, the seemingly dead mineral becomes vibrant; it starts to move. It grows; it becomes a vegetable; the ascendancy is real. More obvious is when the vegetable is eaten by the next higher world - animal. The greatest thing for inanimate is to be able to move away from its roots and be free to move about.

When man eats food, he is elevating the three worlds of nature. The minerals, vegetables and animals which constitute food are now transformed into man. His flesh and blood become the very energy and spirit, having been derived through an act of transcendence, an act of ascendancy. Man, when using his intellect to get the best of life, learns how to use and regulate his relations with the three lower worlds - animal, vegetable and inorganic mineral - and lives well. Then, however, comes a time when man has reached his peak of transcendence. We may call it a stage of wholesomeness. His being begins to realize that the body has performed all acts of ascendance (or per chance descendent) and, therefore, the body which served Hashem as the vessel for transcendence is now hindering the act of ascendance. For man cannot go higher while still in a body.

All this rational mysticism has its own ethics, strange as it might sound. It is now quite the time for man to die. Whether a person will die slowly or quickly is sometimes left to the physician to decide. When is the doctor to speed things up or use heroic means to keep a person alive is, indeed, a profound question. In Mivchar Hapeninim, a book of proverbs attributed to Shlomo ben Gabirol, a Spanish 11th century poet and philosopher (1021-1056) we find an excellent proverb that may very well do judgment to our plight. The proverb reads as follows, "The question put by a wise man is half the answer."

Who is the arbiter, man or G‑d? An adult donor suffering from brain damage, entering a comatose condition, a real chronic deteriorating vegetative state, can he be considered as a living being but not as a real human being; therefore, can we take his heart to give life to a person with irreversible heart damage? Yes, redefinition of life is a question. We really do not have an anodyne for conscience! But it's possible to relate and have a different perspective towards life and death.

Maybe our problem is not with dying with dignity, but with living with dignity. Death with dignity is something to feel, understand and appreciate while healthy. Is there any indignity for a baby to struggle for life? Is there any indignity for a man to experience a high temperature and delirium? In our Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary the word "death" is defined as a permanent cessation of all vital functions. What is vital? What do they mean when they say all vital? My Webster's New Collegiate Thesaurus states that death is "the end, or the ending of life." Ah, what does the ending of life mean? The beginning of the ending, the middle of the ending or the end of the ending! Dignity is defined as status. Now, what does the status and dignity have to do with vital functions - ending of life: What's in a definition?

I must, again, relate a story in the Talmud. The rabbis taught: for two and a half years the school of Shammai and the school of Hillel differed: The former said, "It would have been better for man not to have been born at all than to have been born." The latter said, "It would have been better for man to have been born than not have been born." Their votes were finally taken and it was decided: It would have been better for man not to have been born at all than to have been born. But since he has been born, let him investigate what he is doing (Talmud, Erubin 13B).

If we do follow the concept of transcendence in living, when the inanimate, the vegetables, move to the height of animal, then to intellect, we are really not bothered with questions of death at all. This is the natural manner. When a three stage rocket boosts a vehicle into orbit, do we consider the boosters that get the rocket higher and higher and then drop and fall into the sea a waste? When a baby starts to crawl and can really visibly interact with her mother, is all the time of nursing considered as wasted time? Can a young adult say being  a teenager was a waste of time? Time is something that does not stop. We can not master time, nor change time; time masters us. We can, however, learn to utilize time! And then, as in the school of logotherapy, if there is meaning, then we can live with it. Live knowing that we shall die. Death is another passage of life, a unique one, for during transcendence, we cannot always relate.

Is hospice correct? Should we all become strong students of thanantology? Well, if life has meaning, then death has meaning. The physician's dilemma should and must stop before it starts. The "one way trip patient" is no different from another. If he lives, fine; if he dies, fine. The doctor does his best in helping with transcendence. Regression to a child's mind for an old man stricken with senility is nothing to be ashamed about. It has nothing to do with dignity. It's a fact - a law of nature. If this body, vessel, must live its life this way, then it will. Some place and some time we are all going to die. We must not let our own emotions become involved. Better yet, we do not have the right to even debate over emotions. This I believe can be done if we don't follow Plato's rule that Asklepios, the medical sorcerer, did not want medicine to sustain those who could only be kept in a state of weakness, that medical knowledge was to be used for either quick cures and/or to generate complete health. This has given the healer the stigma that he must be able to heal or else - a flaw on the doctor. We must follow the Bible concept as stated, "And he shall surely heal!"

A doctor, practitioner of the healing arts, must feel transcendence, live in ascendance, care for and be with the ill. But, at the same time, one should recognize the abilities, probabilities and limitations in life. The meaning of death has many dimensions, being quite complex and multifaceted. The highest concept is to ascend, supersede death completely, and that can be done with the feeling of transcendence.