THE EXPERIENCE OF DEATH AND DYING PSYCHOLOGICAL, PHILOSOPHICAL AND SPIRITUAL ASPECTS Stanislav Grof Received September 14 2015 - Revised September 30 2015 - Accepted October 1 2015 ABSTRACT 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. You grieve for those that should not be grieved for. The wise grieve neither for the living nor the dead. Never at any time was I not. Nor thou, nor these princes of men. Nor will we ever cease to be hereafter. For the unreal has no being and the real never ceases to be. Bhagavad Gita Spirituality Studies 1 (2) Fall 2015 3 (1)
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