So, the mortality rate might be one death every 11 seconds or even 1.717 deaths every second.
But maybe we are looking at the wrong side of the question.
Gurdjieff in ISOTM said:
Moreover, it happens fairly often that essence dies in a man while his personality and his body are still alive. A considerable percentage of the people we meet in the streets of a great town are people who are empty inside, that is, they are actually already dead.
If this is the case, what does the death of the physical body actually mean? Maybe death is the disappearance of the last remaining part of the person, after their essence has died. And where does
life actually reside? In the body? In the mind? The soul? Should we not be seeking the sources of life within ourselves? In my experience, when I walk around my local town, everyone I see appears to have a kind of grey aura to varying degrees. Perhaps they have 'sold their souls to the devil': the Matrix Control System. I sometimes wonder if I appear the same to them. I can't pretend to be particularly conscious, probably just a tiny little bit more than Joe Average, but that little bit is enough to make me want to run screaming with horror from this world on occasion.
Gurdjieff continues:
It is fortunate for us that we do not see and do not know it.If we knew what a number of people are actually dead and what a number of these dead people govern our lives, we should go mad with horror. And indeed often people do go mad because they find out something of this nature without the proper preparation, that is, they see something they are not supposed to see. In order to see without danger one must be on the way. If a man who can do nothing sees the truth he will certainly go mad. Only this rarely happens. Usually everything is so arranged that a man can see nothing prematurely. Personality sees only what it likes to see and what does not interfere with its life. It never sees what it does not like. This is both good and bad at the same time. It is good if a man wants to sleep, bad if he wants to awaken.
'[...]often people do go mad because they find out something of this nature without the proper preparation[...]' Isn't this exactly what we are trying to do? To prepare ourselves to look into these kind of truths without going mad, and to see the world as it is?
Danny said:
Earlier this year, during or shortly after the New Year a report came out about population on a local news channel. Statisics show-so they claimed-that on this whole planet a person dies every 11 seconds and a person is born every 8 seconds.I'm not sure how I feel about that because I certainly don't like seeing someone or hearing about someone dying. BUT on the other hand isn't that a little distressing if that statistic is true?
For me, this is a reminder of my own mortality. I am going to die, and I have no idea whether reports of life after death have any truth in them whatsoever. Perhaps they are all just channelled New Age disinformation. When my wife died in 1992 I did have an experience an hour or so after her death; I felt that she was hovering about six feet above the body, saying goodbye to me. But since then, I have not experienced anything like that. Our daughter, who is now 18, says she sometimes feels her mother around, but whether that is wishful thinking or not I have no idea.
It has been one of the oldest esoteric paths to remain conscious of one's own death, and in my experience, one of the most difficult. I certainly find it very difficult to really allow myself to know - balls to bone - that I am going to die. I think Don Juan talks about letting death sit on your shoulder. Buddha would send new initiates to meditate at the burning ground for six months. Looking at nature, it seems to me that everything leads to death. The very soil that provides food for us and for all living things is only there because other livings have died and their bodies have decomposed. Yet Fulcanelli states that all generative processes happen in darkness.
Ark said:
What is distressing you? Number 11? Which number would you accept (if any) as non-distressing?
Is it really a question of numbers that is distressing? Or is it more a question of your own mortality? Do these statistics remind you of your own impending death? Our bodies are going to die, and who knows what will happen to our consciousness.
Gurdjieff in ISOTM said:
Your principal mistake consists in thinking that you always have consciousness, and in general, either that consciousness is always present or that it is never present. In reality consciousness is a property which is continually changing. Now it is present, now it is not present.
The question is, will our consciousness be present at the moment of death? Can we hope for anything more than this? As I am writing this post, I keep remembering that I have not remembered myself. I do not know what will happen if I am not remembering myself at the moment of my death. Likewise, I do not know what will happen at the moment of my death if I am remembering myself.
Gurdjieff continues:
And there are different degrees and different levels of consciousness. Both consciousness and the different degrees of consciousness must be understood in oneself by sensation, by taste. No definitions can help you in this case and no definitions are possible so long as you do not understand what you have to define. And science and philosophy cannot define consciousness because they want to define it where it does not exist. It is necessary to distinguish consciousness from the possibility of consciousness. We have only the possibility of consciousness and rare flashes of it. Therefore we cannot define what consciousness is.
I think Gurdjieff has defined for us the lifelong art of preparing for death: 'It is necessary to distinguish consciousness from the possibility of consciousness.'
Perhaps we can consider these words of Jesus in the light of what Gurdjieff says about the death of essence.
They saw a Samaritan carrying a lamb and going to Judea.
He said to his disciples, 'Why is he carrying the lamb around?'
They said to him, 'So that he may kill it and eat it.'
He said to them, 'He will not eat it while it is alive, but only after it has been killed and has become a carcass.'
They said, 'It cannot happen any other way.'
He said to them, 'So also with you: seek a place of rest for yourselves, that you may not become a carcass and be eaten.'
from The Gospel of Thomas
If we allow our essence to die, we become food for whatever is hungry...the consumer society, the lizzies, predators of all sorts...