Healing and Hypnotherapy Volume 3, Issue - 1, ( 1 July 2018) | Page 17

Demystifying Death
‘Thanatophobia’-fear of death and/or fear of one’s own mortality is
one of the primary fear that nearly every human has faced or experienced
in varied degrees during his/her lifetime. Fear for life in a crucial life-
threatening moment is what many of us might have experienced in one way
or the other during our life, but such moments come and go and so does
the intensity of the fear of death. Still that shadow of uncertainty about
death looms over everyone who is alive, because the life in itself is the path
to death. This fear mostly lies dormant within our sub- conscious and we
are so absorbed in the world around us that we hardly even think about
death or our own mortality, until confronted by some fatal/life-threatening
incidence or situation involving self or someone known to us. But imagine
the fate of someone plagued by the constant fear of death, someone who is
always afraid that the looming death may snatch away everything in blink of
an eye, will he ever be able to enjoy or relish anything that life has to offer
him/her in ‘THIS’ moment!!!
All religious tradition across the globe have in one way or the other
talked about death and what follows! Recently while going through ‘The
Tibetan Book of Living & Dying’ by acclaimed Tibetan Master Sogyal
Rimpoche, I was reminded of the famous ‘Tibetan Book of the Dead’, booth
books talk extensively about death, the process of dying and the events
beyond. Sogyal Rimpoche’s observation about the human perception of
death holds key to understand all the confusion and mystery that surrounds
the notion of death. If we closely observe we will see, as Master says that