Part 5--Experiencing Death While Alive

Though Death is a taboo, it is not absolutely untouchable.

Recent media reports both from abroad and home have shown that an increasing number of people are pondering, studying and even “experiencing” it.

“Simulated Funeral” in Korea has come into vogue and many young student showed great interests in it. The study shows that death experience effectively boost the experiencers’ reflection on life and have obvious positive influence on decreasing suicide rate, and their attitude to life grows more proactive and optimistic.

Two megacities of China Shanghai and Shenyang (northeast of China), are also conducting similar experience, though there is some differences if terms of format and procedures between the domestic and abroad. The experience in foreign countries allows the participants to experience in a form of game, or focus on the farewell ceremony for the dying person; while in China, these activities attach more importance to the plans for self-improvement after death experience, to assistance given by the mentors through follow-up days, to implementation of the psychic gains into the life reality.

The following is a good summary for these trials (From Baidu):

“Death Experience (DE) provides you a new approach to view the world, yourself, things and life from outside of the world. It serves a fresh and efficient way or road leading to your own inner world to search and explore self and recognize life. If we take the daily pondering on life as a gradual course, then DE must be the sudden-enlightenment course, enabling you to have a bigger recognition of life within a very short period of time.“

After all, Death Experience is a totally newborn thing, while bringing a fresh and weird experience to the bold testers, it also developing a special social organizational form/platform to try to unveil the mysterious mask of death, to help society to re-examine the issue from a common person’s daily life point of view, and further to inspire some people to perceive it from the religious and philosophical angle.

The final purpose of these experiments, in my view, is to provide us a brand new method to face it, to think about it, to help us pursue a better life in a more optimistic way. These courageous explorations reflex that some insightful people are working for this aim, can the normal social educational system also play some role in it? In Part 6, I’d like to discuss about it.