Much of What We Fear About Death Is Losing an Illusion

Personal Perspective: Our sense of "self" is an illusion.

• Dualistic thinking creates a self that does not exist in reality.

• Our brains are stimulus response organs, but we can seldom grasp that because our minds fight that.

• The illusory mind fights to survive even though it is a phantom.

• Although death is real, anxiety about death is a useless projection that only humans have.

Much of my clinical practice was with individuals who had brain tumors and terminal neurological diseases. While I initially feared what it would be like to work with my patients during this phase of life, I was continually surprised that I found their company to be calming, if not inspirational, as they approached their deaths. At times, I found it to be exhilarating to be around them because there was no fluff or illusions; every moment seemed to count for them.

Most of our minds (mine included) operate through dualism. In other words, we develop a sense of self that we believe is different from the cause-and-effect processing that truly is the way our brains work. I have learned this through studying non-secular Buddhism, which I like to call the science of the mind, as well as from my terminal patients. We think that our "self" is our body, perceptions, feelings, thoughts, or consciousness. In fact, we are none of these things. Our organs can survive in another person, our vision and hearing are only a projection of light or sound waves interacting with neuroreceptors, our personality will change if we lose part of our brains, and, most importantly, the process of thinking creates a model of the world that is culturally bound, influenced by a constant stream of environmental stimuli, and is literally not reality.

Ancient monks would exhort us to “kill our minds” because they knew that the dualistic sense of self is not a real thing. Yet the mind comes to believe that it is real and that it must survive. It resists any effort that we make to live in the present. As an example, meditation trains the mind to function in the present moment, yet the mind sabotages the meditation process in any way it can. When we try to meditate, the mind says we are crappy at doing it or tries to derail us with boredom, anxiety, frustration, or countless other forms of distraction.

We think that we have an "inner CEO" who can willfully produce our next thought, but that is part of the illusion. Thoughts have themselves. At any given moment, there are groups of neurons competing to have our next thought and that what arises is the result of some form of cooperation between committee-like structures; emotions, often hidden, frequently determine what thought comes next.

I am often asked whether realizing that our minds are simply illusions is a dark way to look at the world. Why even try if our brains are simply a stimulus-response organ? My answer is that there is something truly liberating in giving up an illusion of control in order to have a deeper sense of it. Ninety-five percent of our brain processing is unconscious, and we make up our minds before having a thought. Fearing death is one of the ultimate examples of this, because once we realize that our minds are ruminating on an illusion of the future that is not real, we can simply observe the process rather than fight it.

If our illusory minds fight giving up control through even meditation geared towards being in the present, imagine how our minds fight the concept of death. Anxiety about death is simply a concept. Animals do not sit around ruminating about death because they do not have a cerebral cortex that can anticipate the future (a process that often makes us humans miserable). Anxiety is a future-oriented concept that is simply not reality. There is certainly a great deal of sadness that comes with death, in terms of the loss of relationships and attachments. However, much of the anxiety that characterizes our ruminations is about something that is not real. Our minds do not want to give up control of the illusion they live in.

With typical aging, most humans find themselves slowly giving up things that they cherish, including vitality, relationships, hobbies, and many of the things that make us happy. We have a gradual process during which we let go of things that we cherish. Many of my terminally ill patients do not fear death because they have already let go of many of the things that are dear to them.

People who “have it all” in terms of family, wealth, possessions, and health often have stronger illusory egos because they have more to lose. Because they have more to lose, they ironically fear death more. If you find yourself fearing death, take heart in knowing that much of what you are afraid of does not exist in reality.

David R. Patterson, Ph.D., ABPP,

References

Patterson, DR and Mendoza, ME. Clinical Hypnosis for Pain Control (2nd edition). American Psychological Association. November release, 2024

Wright, R. Why Buddhism is True. Simon and Schuster, 2018

THE GREAT DISCOURSE ON NOT-SELF

(ANATTALAKKHAṆA SUTTA)

Venerable MAHASI SAYADAW

Translated from Burmese into English by U Ko Lay (Zeyā Maung)