The Art of Living & Dying Well: How to Extract the Nectar from Both Faces

By Peter Roche de Coppens

To live well one must be able to die well and vice versa. Life and death are two faces of the same coin but with a fundamental transformation when one moves from the spiritual dimension to the physical and back to the spiritual. Actually, there is but one thing: Life without beginning and without ending but with two expressions, one on the spiritual plane and the other on the material plane. Today, in the West we find a great paradox: we have made enormous progress at the material, technological level but not at the human and psychological level. One aspect of this paradox is that we do not die well! We are afraid of death, we deny it and seek to postpone it for as long as possible at an enormous human and economic cost. The spiritual tradition always had very substantial cognitive and practical contributions to make to our understanding of life, death, and life after death. The basic objective of this book is to present these contributions and help us die with more dignity and less fear. In fact, this work was written to help you live and die without fear, anxiety, guilt, blame or frustration with an appreciation and gratitude for all our human experiences which include birth, life and death.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Mar 15, 2012
• ISBN: 9781469175782

Peter Roche de Coppens

Peter Roche de Coppens has dedicated more than 50 years of his life and all of his inner and outer resources to the study of spirituality and the awakening of spiritual consciousness. This he applied to sociology, psychology, psychotherapy, education and finally healthcare and medicine. It was Prayer, which he learned from Saints and Sages as well as his own research that helped him heal from a severe motorcycle accident in his early twenties. This led him to study different medical approaches and paradigms to finally systematically introduce the spiritual dimension and consciousness to bring about a new and more integral healthcare paradigm. With degrees in sociology, anthropology and psychotherapy, Dr. Roche de Coppens has taught for more than 35 years at East Stroudsburg University of Pennsylvania where he is still active as a Professor Emeritus. He also taught at other universities, including the Sorbonne (Paris), McGill (Montreal) and the University of Bari (Bari, Italy). He was a spiritual consultant for the United Nations and now is still active as a spiritual consultant for Guna, Italy. He has authored more than 80 books and numerous articles in English, French and Italian.

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Copyright © 2012 by Peter Roche de Coppens, Ph.D.

Library of Congress Control Number:       2012903767

ISBN:         Hardcover                               978-1-4691-7577-5

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Table of Contents

Introduction

Chapter I:  Metanoia

Chapter II:  Trials and Tribulation of Life

Chapter III:  Life, Death, and Life After Death

Chapter IV  Harmony or the Right Measure:

Chapter V  The Art of Living and Dying Well

Conclusion

Bibliography

Introduction

IN MOST OF my lectures, workshops, books and articles (in particular in the collection, The Flowers of Life), I have directed your attention and we have reflected upon and studied Life, how to live well, extract the best from all human experiences, both good and bad, pleasant and unpleasant, so as to use it as an opportunity for growth, to learn precious lessons, and to actualize our faculties and opportunities. Recently, I was asked to write a book for the collection, Medicina e Spiritualita’, for which I am responsible at Guna, Italy, and to present a workshop on the other face of the same medal; how to die well. For what we call life and death are very closely connected with each other and are truly the two faces of the same coin! All the authentic spiritual traditions and the Eastern Orthodox Church in particular have correctly argued that there is only Life but with a very wide continuum both at the quantitative and at the qualitative level. On this continuum every birth implies a death and every death implies a birth, but on different dimensions. Thus when a baby is born in this world and the soul drinks the waters of Lethe, of forgetfulness, it temporarily dies in the inner worlds. Conversely, whenever a person dies on the physical plane and his/her body dissolves at the material level, a soul is born in the inner worlds.

Thus, we could argue that life in the material world, with all of its learning experiences, is, analogically and in the microcosm, like our daily activities in the world; whereas life in the inner worlds is like our sleep at night while we are in a physical body. Daily activities would thus have a masculine polarity and our sleep and rest at night a feminine polarity. Actually, this is a poor and misleading metaphor and homology in that the true, full, and everlasting life (the end) is what takes place in the inner spiritual worlds, while our temporary and difficult life (the means) is what takes place in the physical world. But the association with the polarities is right on target as action and struggle, efforts and pain, have prevalently a male polarity while harmony, serenity, being and joy, have a female polarity. Now in the West in general, and for the last 500 years in particular, we have strongly emphasized and privileged the male polarity so that it makes perfect sense that we would have directed our attention, meditations and study, to life and not death or the process of dying to which life is profoundly related as it is located on the same continuum!

This however creates a problem that is just now beginning to truly surface in our collective consciousness, creating a great deal of needless anxiety and suffering in a very large number of people. For as the Dalai Lama correctly pointed out many times and really underscored: To live well you must be able to die well and to die well you have to live well, as they both form the same continuum and are the two faces of the same reality. For the last 500 years an incredible amount of time and energy have been spent in the West to improve our lives in the physical world and make them last longer; to make them more predictable, less violent, and more comfortable so that we would have the time and energy to express ourselves and to enjoy life more fully. A huge multitude of books articles, courses and studies have been undertaken to gain closure and improve our lives! On the other hand very little has been done to reflect upon and improve the way we die. Essentially, in the West, death has been denied or through technology and medication, we have attempted to delay it as long as possible at the cost of great anxiety, suffering and expense.

Thus, it makes perfect sense that in the collection, The Flowers of Life, which seeks to extract the best from all human experience and whose logo is a bee drawing pollen from a flower without harming either the flower or itself, we would dedicate a volume and direct our attention and reflections upon the process of dying and learning how to die well. This is all the more relevant and important given the fact that we cannot truly live well unless we can die well without too much anxiety and suffering. So the time has come to direct our attention and to study this fundamental experience which is truly universal and inexorable for all human beings. It is interesting to note that in traditional societies, which had a vertical connection, and which kept the spiritual dimension alive through religion, there was and is, in fact, a great deal less fear and anxiety, pain and suffering, connected with the process of dying.

To put it simply, in these cultures and societies, people died better than we do! Here religion and spirituality have meaningful, substantial and very relevant contributions to make… provided that we reach a certain level of consciousness and being, that we nourish our faith, blind or conscious; and that we have the proper explanatory keys to decipher, interpret and apply the fundamental symbols, images, and parables of religion and the sacred traditions and that we are able to establish the proper correspondences and analogies that exist between the macrocosm and the microcosm… which are the lost keys of religion and spirituality in the West.

To put this phenomenon into its proper perspective and to exorcise its demons of fear, anxiety and suffering, let us turn, once again, to the spiritual tradition and its essential teachings. Here we are confronted with a real paradox, namely: that it is we who live in a physical body in the material world, who are really dead and those who live in the inner, spiritual worlds who are truly alive; that is, who are more conscious and better able to be and express themselves and in a state of much greater harmony, joy and bliss than we are. Not only, but from the same vantage point, it is quite clear that what is truly frightening and which requires a great deal of courage and motivation is not to die in our physical bodies but to leave the spiritual planes to incarnate in the material one. The universal myth of Paradise Lost is thus very real and applicable to every human being who comes into the physical world… because he/she just left paradise behind in the inner planes!

The NDE (Near Death Experience) literature which was created and began with Elizabeth Kubler Ross, Raymond Moody and Kenneth Ring is replete with testimonies to the effect that any one who accepts to come in the physical world is a true hero, and that once you know the other side, you never want to come back to this side! Thus those that returned to tell their stories either had no choice and were forced back, as they had not yet finished their duty here, or they came back for the sake of others that would have been left behind, sacrificing themselves!

The reason for this is quite simple, clear and logical. By coming into the physical world we become amnesiacs and forget our true identity, our origins, our destiny, and the very reason for which we incarnated in the physical dimension! Moreover, not knowing who we really are, where we come from and where we are going, we are compelled to confront ourselves with evil and its three faces: lies, violence and ugliness! To accept this type of adventure or experience you must truly be courageous and very motivated, attributes which you acquire on the other side of life and functioning in a higher state of consciousness and being if you are on this side!

This might also explain why it is a true benediction to lose our consciousness, identity and memory, when we incarnate in a physical body because otherwise the nostalgia of the other side and the desire to return to it as soon as possible would truly be overwhelming and defeat the purpose of incarnate life. Thus, once again, we see that our heavenly Father and divine Providence were very wise and knew exactly what they were doing when they deprived human beings of that awareness…which, however, we shall recuperate as we grow, mature and raise our level of consciousness.

Today, we have reached the crucial transitional phase between our childhood and our adulthood, through the Sturm and Drang period of adolescence, wherein we must raise our level of consciousness and being. The categorical imperative of all life is indeed evolution which implies the actualization of all of our faculties and potentialities. This in turn means to marshal, coordinate, and utilize all of our resources, internal and external, physical, psychonoetic and spiritual. Here the spiritual tradition and world religions, science, philosophy and literature, as well as the arts, have major distinctive contributions to offer to help us through this difficult passage. The spiritual tradition in particular has very important explanatory keys and practical exercise to suggest that will help us lead a better, more conscious and responsible life, and to die in a more human and meaningful fashion. What I plan to do in this work is to bring all of these contributions together to help us develop the greatest and most important of all arts which is the art of living and dying well.

In our first chapter I will look at metanoia, the first fundamental stage and transformation that leads one to change the center of gravity and one’s primary focus from the world to one’s self, from external matter to internal consciousness. Metanoia is not an end in itself or the end of the road but, rather, the first essential step and passage that leads from our present collective level of consciousness and being to higher ones, to our final destination, theosis, through catharsis and fotisis. These are essential symbols drawn from the Eastern Orthodox Catholic Tradition which is the most spiritual of the three branches of Christianity and the one that is closest to the spiritual tradition.

For both the best and latest discoveries of science and for authentic spirituality, what we call reality and truth, are the products and synthesis of two opposite but complementary factors: the external object or situation, the objective component in the world which St. Thomas Aquinas called the res estensa, and the internal consciousness, the subjective component in our own nature that St. Thomas called the res cogitans. While you cannot have the one without the other, from a spiritual standpoint, the factor that is really crucial and the one that must now be rediscovered and emphasized is the internal, subjective factor—our way of perceiving, defining and reacting to whatever exists outside of us.

This, by the way, is also the area of freedom, or free will, where we can change our level of consciousness or way of looking at something whereas the external, objective factor remains the area of determinism being subject to unchangeable and inexorable cosmic laws. In all human situations we can always and at any time (but in different ways and extents, depending on our level of consciousness, culture, and previous experiences) reframe the situation from negative to positive. This is the true psychonoetic alchemy which is being rediscovered by various traditions and disciplines and which is becoming evermore important in our present historical juncture!

This process of metanoia, of moving from the external world to our internal consciousness, is even more important for the process of dying well and what will happen after we have crossed the threshold to the inner worlds and have left our physical body behind. As such it will constitute our first chapter in creating a modern and practical art of living and dying well. Our second chapter, The Trials and Tribulations of Life, looks at, reflects upon, and studies the various challenges, trials and tribulations, what we are now faced with; what their true nature, dynamic, and purpose might be and of how we can face them and overcome them in the most positive way possible. Essentially, here the key is to realize that all human experience, without exception, both good and bad, joyful or painful, are really a gift of God; they are an opportunity to learn certain lessons, actualize certain faculties and potentialities, and raise our level of consciousness and being so that our ability to cope with whatever life throws at us is enhanced.

Our third chapter, Life, Death, and Life after Death probably constitutes the very heart and core of this work and the most important contribution of the spiritual tradition. They do throw a great deal of light upon what has been seen as a major taboo in the West and which has been denied and repressed to a large extent. For many it will sound strange and unrelated to how most people think and how they perceive these things, but they are true and are becoming evermore important at the present time. Here proper discretion is required, also prudence not to do violence to oneself or any one else, and to remain true and faithful to one’s own being and level of consciousness. Thus, it might be prudent to take what will be presented in this chapter in homeopathic doses, slowly and in an organic fashion. Properly understood and assimilated, this chapter can shed a great deal of light and a deeper and more global understanding of the process dying, of death and what happens after the demise of the physical body.

Bearing in mind the fact that fear, insecurity, anxiety, guilt, and violence result when our consciousness is not functioning properly and our survival mode reverts to the biopsychic