Reflections on Existence and Death: Ground between Science and Religion

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  • B. Day Stacey
    Founding Professor & Director, World Health Organization Collaborating Centre for Community Based and Multiprofessional Education for Health Personnel, Nashville, TN (USA) ; Lately Professor, Post Graduate Division, Cornell University Medical College, N. Y. ; Lately Fulbright and Visiting Professor, Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic.
  • Sugita Mineyasu
    Professor Emeritus at Fukuoka Prefectural University/Honorary President of Japan Transactional Analysis Association

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Abstract

<p>Time of visible life on earth began before “thought” and perception of “Belief Systems”. When Erwin Schrödinger asked “What is life?” he was facing out into life. He did not ask “What is death?” as might have done a philosopher facing into life―inwards towards death. With the increasing power of man, over time, to provide himself with all that he wanted ; with increased knowledge ; and with material progress ; ratio and science in general, took to concentrating on the mathematically expressible properties of the universe―size, shape, motion, material, change―the “real world”. Questions considering the purpose of life ; what makes life of value or worth living, of beauty, love, identity, the human nexus (bonding), of “Being” were left to men of religion or to philosophers.</p><p>Further, the acceleration of technology (applied knowledge), the world of Dirac’s quantum and mental models, proliferation of nuclear resources, and arguments that human beings are imperiling their own survival, urges reflection on the “middle ground” between Science and Religion―the “No-Man’s Land” ―that is the interest of this paper. Jung’s axiom that “Death is not the end” at least offers us continuity with Schrödinger’s problem, advanced now into reflections on Mind ; What is Mind? Is Consciousness eternal or instrumental in Mind? Is Intuition real? Wherein lies Faith? Have we already witnessed the “Power of the Negative” in the Stress Burden that contemporary life exacts, and How shall man go from Jung’s “valley” (Ego) ―war, tragedy, loss of life, agony to the “mountain top” (Self) where men―we ourselves―may face our collective unconsciousness?</p><p>Anyone who believes that we can fully explain how the immaterial human mind is related to the material body is not fully informed.</p>

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