Our Three Deaths

12/3/2009

When is it that we are dead and gone?

Neuroscientist, Dr. David Eagleman, in
his Sum: Forty Tales from the Afterlives,
suggests that our deaths will occur not just
once, but in this series of three stages:


". . . the first is when the body ceases to function






and the second is when the body is put in the grave.





The third is that moment sometime in the future
when your name is spoken for the last time."



                                                  graphics by Edward Gorey


For more on Dr. Eagleman's work, check out
his website, and these PonderAbout posts 1, 2


Comments

Taken from Mexican Tradition: Los Dias de Los Muertos is a time for remembering friends, family and ancestors. A lovely tradition that resonates with the center of the belief was retold on the website Latino.com by Victor Landa, from San Antonio, TX. Landa quotes the legend, "In our tradition, people die three deaths. The first death is when our bodies cease to function; when our hearts no longer beat of their own accord, when our gaze no longer has depth or weight, when the space we occupy slowly loses its meaning. The second death comes when the body is lowered into the ground, returned to mother earth, out of sight. The third death, the most definitive death, is when there is no one left alive to remember us." http://www.mexconnect.com/articles/1427-los-dias-de-los-muertos-the-days-of-the-dead
Posted by Bonifacio on 12/6/2009 9:40:12 PM
Some time in future last time your name spoken(remembered) very heavy
Posted by setarcos on 1/5/2010 2:37:23 PM
Of course, for some, the third death never occurs (Da Vinci, Michaelangelo, etc)... and *that* is how you become immortal.
Posted by Ed on 1/11/2010 2:54:36 PM
I disagree that you ever become immortal. Aurelius wrote in Meditations that even the most famous of people eventually will be lost to the sands of time. You'd think that, you know, a Roman Emperor would be remembered indefinitely, but hardly anyone even recalls his name. And, as he points out: who is it that will be doing the remembering? For the likes of Aurelius, chambered academics. For the like of Michaelangelo, very rapidly it is becoming the same.
Posted by Trevor on 1/21/2010 1:42:03 PM

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