The Denial of Death

Creation . . . a nightmare spectacular taking place on a planet that has been soaked for hundreds of millions of years in the blood of all its creatures. (Becker, 1973, p. 283)

Becker approaches the issue primarily through psychology, although also drawing upon the work of theologians and others. It is his contention that it is this finitude, although in repressed fashion, that drives much of our behavior. Like Rollo May, Becker associates anxiety with repression, denial, or hiding of the truth, rather than with the disturbing truth of finitude itself.

At the same time, finitude is itself the source of dread or anxiety even with non-repressed. Becker noted that both the existential philosophers and psychologists focused on this fact, and asserted that in the work of Kierkegaard it is possible to see that at its core, the analysis of psychology and the analysis of religion regarding the human condition are inextricable. (This is not, perhaps, as evident in regard to either contemporary psychology or contemporary theology, which seem to have gone in quite different directions. Nonetheless, it remains an important strand in both.)

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d state. For example, in Islam, the individual Muslim who follows the straight path provided in the Quran is guaranteed to enter into Paradise and enjoy the bliss of the presence of Allah, along with other more worldly pleasures. The Buddhist, or Hindu, who follows the path toward enlightenment and liberation is guaranteed eventual release from the cycle of birth and death, including its suffering and terror, into the essential infinitude of the Void, or Brahman. In the former, of course, the individual is allowed to maintain a sense of selfness in the afterlife, while in the latter that selfness is dissolved into the ocean of being-itself. On the other hand, in Sufism, which is the mystical branch of Islam, the Sufi seeker is also dissolved into the ocean of being, into the Real itself. Both of these approach have in common the demand that the individual learn how to give away the self, or get past the self, or die to the self, in this world in order to move into right relationship with transcendence. In other words, as Becker noted, the character armor of identity, or selfness, must be destroyed: The self must be destroyed, brought down to nothing, in order for self-transcendence to begin. Then the self can begin to relate
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Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 1527
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page)

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