Death Makes Life Possible

Tami Simon: You’re listening to Insights at the Edge. Today, my guests are Deepak Chopra and Marilyn Schlitz.

Deepak Chopra is the founder of the Chopra Foundation and the Chopra Center for Well-Being. He’s a world-renowned pioneer in mind-body medicine and personal transformation. He’s authored more than 80 books published in more than 43 languages, including 22 New York Times bestsellers.

Marilyn Schlitz is a social anthropologist, award-winning author, and charismatic speaker who’s been a leader in the field of consciousness studies for more than three decades. With Sounds True, Marilyn Schlitz has written a new book called Death Makes Life Possible: Revolutionary Insights on Living, Dying, and the Continuation of Consciousness—a book for which Deepak Chopra has written the foreword.

Deepak and Marilyn have also collaborated on the creation of a new film called Death Makes Life Possible, in which the two bring together a wealth of teachings and practical guidance on how to turn the topic of death into a source of peace, hope, connection, and compassion.

In this episode of Insights at the Edge, Deepak and Marilyn and I spoke about the continuation of consciousness—what survives death. Is there any type of individuality that survives death? We also talks about the importance of pluralism and what Marilyn Schlitz calls “worldview literacy.” We also talked about the underlying reasons that death is a taboo topic in Western culture—and also how that’s changing right now as we embark on what could be called a “death awareness movement.” Here’s my conversation with both Deepak Chopra and Marilyn Schlitz:

To begin with, I’d love to know for each of you what your inspiration was for becoming involved in the project—both the book and the film, Death Makes Life Possible. What was your inspiration?

Deepak Chopra: My inspiration was my continued fascination with the phenomenon of death. It began when I was about six years of age when my grandfather died suddenly. Subconsciously, it motivated me to go to medical school so I could look at a dead body. When I started medical school, that’s the first lesson—anatomy. Then, of course, as a physician, I encountered death many times every day.

So, I was fascinated by the phenomenon. I concluded that death did make life possible, and that was the seed idea behind this movie when Marilyn first showed me some cuts in the beginning.

Marilyn Schlitz: Then for me, it was similar personal life experiences—as an 18-month-old toddler exploring the world and discovering a can of lighter fluid, which ended up putting me in and out of intensive care for about 3 months. While I don’t remember that, I think that—as Deepak mentioned—the idea of the unconscious. There was something planted there for me, both in terms of my reverence for health and healing practitioners and my deep appreciation for that work—but also for this kind of semi-permeable membrane between living and dying, and what might come next.

In terms of the years that followed and my interest from a career point of view, I’ve always been interested in consciousness and the furthest reaches of our human potential—and, clearly, the idea that our consciousness may be something more than just the byproduct of our brain and that it may actually help us to connect beyond our physical realm in ways that may look like the survival of consciousness after bodily death.

I was also really interested in transformations in worldview and transformations in consciousness. How is it that people make these kind of fundamental shifts in their models of reality?

So, for about 20 years, I was collecting stories, and conducting interviews and surveys and research, on consciousness transformation. Obviously, the big transformation is death and what happens after. So, I had started video-recording interviews with scientists, health practitioners, people who had had mystical openings that gave them insights into something beyond the physical.

I had the opportunity to be co-teaching with Deepak. He had the inspiration after seeing some of this video footage that we should make a film. Who wouldn’t want to make a film with Deepak Chopra? [Laughs.]

So, it seemed like a really good idea. As the film was progressing, I began to really see more strands, more depth. That led to the book and led, ultimately, to this project and this phone call.

TS: Now, the subtitle of the book is Revolutionary Insights on Living, Dying, and the Continuation of Consciousness. It’s that last idea—the continuation of consciousness—that I want to talk about right here at the beginning of our conversation. How do you both see that? I guess more importantly, not just see it—but what do you both know about the continuation of consciousness after death?

DC: OK. The way I see it is the following: Every moment I’m having an experience. In every moment. Right now, I’m having the experience of doing this interview. When the interview will be over, I may have the experience of having a cup of coffee. Last night, I had the experience of giving a lecture in Vancouver.

“I am . . .” is the beginning of every experience. You cannot describe any personal experience without choosing, “I am having this experience.” I am in love. I am watching a movie. Et cetera, et cetera.

The experience is time. All experience is intermittent—even the experience of sensations in the body is intermittent. The experience of thought is intermittent. The experience of emotion is intermittent. Images in the mind are intermittent. All perception is intermittent.

But, “I am” is not. “I am” is present before the experience, during the experience, after the experience, between experiences. So, “I am” is not in time. “I am” is continuous. “I am Deepak Chopra,” is just a qualia program. It’s just a concept. It’s an assumed identity.

Even the brain is a concept. The body is a concept and the universe is a concept, because they are nothing but descriptions in consciousness of events in consciousness—modulations of consciousness.

When a baby is there, in the beginning—you see a baby being born—the baby has no concepts of a tree or a rock or a cloud or its own body. All it experiences is the “I am”—its consciousness—without knowing those words. Then it experiences sensations, images, feelings, or thoughts—which themselves are modulation of consciousness, arise in consciousness, are expressed in consciousness, and then subside in consciousness.

So, you can see just from this very simple, analytical, contemplative, almost meditation—I actually do this meditation with people—that you can’t get rid of “I am.” That is the awareness which is always there no matter what the experience or non-experience is. In deep sleep, “I am” is there. If you scream at somebody who is in deep sleep, then they wake up.

Or, if a mother is lying next to her baby and she is in deep sleep—dreamless sleep—she may sense the hunger in her baby. In fact, sometimes if she is very strongly bonded with her baby, her breasts may leak when the baby cries with hunger.

So, deep sleep is a subsiding of experience. So is death. [It’s] a subsiding of the qualia program for a particular lifetime.

TS: Deepak, when say “the qualia program,” what do you mean by that? What do you mean by that?

DC: “Qualia” is a word that has been around since the 1920s [and] was made very popular by the philosopher David Chalmers. So, qualia is the quality—very fundamental quality—of consciousness. Just like “quantum” is a unit of measurement, qualia is a unit of experience. So, you could say it’s a thought, or a sensation, an image, a sense perception, an emotion. These are the contents of consciousness, which are modulations of consciousness.

So, there are only three ways of looking at the world. One is the dualistic way. There is mind, there is consciousness, and then there is the world of matter. That dualistic view is not tenable in science. If there is mind and then there is matter, how do the two [have] agency of interaction? It also violates the basic, fundamental laws of thermodynamics.

So, the dualistic worldview is no longer tenable scientifically. The other two views [are] it’s all matter. But what is matter? If you look at matter, matter is made up of particles and a particle is a wave. Particles have units of mass and energy. Waves are waves of possibility.

So, every subatomic particle also has a wavelike aspect. That wavelike aspect is its mind. It dwells in the realm of possibilities, which is the one spirit—the one consciousness, if you want to call spirit “consciousness.”

So, matter is not made of matter. That was something that Hans-Peter Dürr—who is a friend of mine, who was director of the Max Planck Institute—used to say. Max Planck was quoted as saying, “Mind is the matrix of all matter.”

So, the monistic, materialistic view seems not tenable. Therefore, the only thing that’s left is there is only consciousness, period. But, death is not the opposite of life. Death is the opposite of birth. Birth and death, as a continuum, are life.

That birth and death is happening at every level. Subatomic particles are born and, before you can even see them, they die. Stomach cells are born every five days and they die every five days. Skin cells are born every month; they die every month. Your skeleton is born every three months and dies every three months at the atomic level.

So, birth and death are present at every level of creation. Subatomic, molecular, at the level of organs, at the level of material things—rocks and other particles. At the level of physical bodies, that is the way the universe remains dynamic as a field of consciousness. If there was no death, we would all be doomed to eternal senility. This would be a fossilized universe and this would be a museum.

I am now speaking to you. That is only possible because sound waves are being born and they’re dying at the same time. My vocal cords are going on and they’re going off at the same time.

So, once again, life is the continuum of birth and death. In biology, there’s a phenomenon called “apoptosis”—programmed cellular death. When that doesn’t happen, that’s cancer. Cancer is the loss of the memory of death.

It’s also the loss of the memory of wholeness, because your body’s cells have that memory. That’s why they function as a whole. The cells of the body do not function individually. They are part of the wholeness. Every organ is part of the wholeness. Every organism is part of the wholeness. We are part of the wholeness of the universe, which is a conscious being.

TS: So, Deepak, just one more question and then I’d like to turn it over to Marilyn. When you talk about this “I am-ness,” I think most people can relate to that in terms of feeling some sense of the “I am” that has been present throughout their entire life, from their earliest memories [until] now.

But, if you said, “What’s your sense of ‘I am-ness’ before you were born? What will that ‘I am-ness’ be like after death?” That’s where I think many people go blank.

I don’t know. I don’t know what the “I am-ness” before I was born. How would I know?

DC: What is the “I am-ness” being before you go to sleep or in sleep? When you say, “I had a wonderful sleep. I had a deeply restful sleep,” what are you referring to? That “I am-ness” can only be experienced in deep samadhi—in deep meditation. It is the subsiding of every qualia program.

Now, by the way, this is also a very interesting question to us, because “I am-ness,” “being,” “existence,” [and] “awareness” are all the same thing. So, being has no dimensionality. Ask yourself, “Where is my being?” It has no location, even in space or time.

And yet, without that being, there would be no experience. Being has no agenda. Being has no religion. Being has no race. And being has no dimensions, even in space and time. In wisdom traditions in the East, that is what is called “the Akashic Field.”

One of the big problems in neuroscience right now, as you know, is what is known as “the Hard Problem.” Where does experience occur? I frequently ask some of my students, “So, you’re seeing me now. Where is the experience of seeing me happening?”

They frequently point to their eyes, and then I point out to them that their eyes are 2.5 centimeters by 2.5 centimeters. They’re nine centimeters apart. By the time photons get into the retinas, they invert. The retina itself is curved, so they should be seeing two of me, upside down, curved, 9 centimeters apart and about 2.5 centimeters in size.

So, whatever is happening in the eyes, the experience of seeing me is not happening in the eyes. Then they’ll point to their brain. I’ll ask them, “How do I fit in [your] brain?” How does the universe fit in the brain? How does the mountain I’m seeing fit in the brain?

Whatever is happening in the brain actually—whatever is happening in the brain—the experience is not happening in the brain. If I ask you to imagine a sunset on the ocean, you can see a picture. There is no picture in the brain. There are no colors in the brain. There are no sounds in the brain. Tastes, smells, textures—what I’m calling qualia. Nobody’s ever seen a thought in the brain.

So, what we see are what are called “neural correlates.” But, even that is a concept. The whole thing is being and its modulations. Being has no dimensions.

So, where is the experience happening? Where are memories? If I ask you, “What did you have for dinner last night?” as soon as you remember that experience, something happens in your brain. But, if you say, “I had my dinner at such-and-such restaurant in Phoenix, Arizona,” suddenly the image is evoked and the taste is evoked and the memory is evoked.

None of that is in the brain. So, where is memory before I ask you the question? It’s just like [this]: where is the particle before the measurement is made?

So, every experience is actually happening in a dimensionless domain. That dimensionless domain—which is not in space-time—is “I am,” is existence, is being, is awareness. There is nothing other than awareness and its modulations.

Now, of course, when people listen to this, they have two reactions. One is, “That’s all nonsense. That’s pure conjecture.” The other is: you can have the experience of non-dimensionality. I have it every day with my practice of meditation—and even at the end of my yoga session, when I’m lying in savasana and I can go to that deep, deep, deep domain of awareness where there are no waters, there are no dimensions, there is no space, and there is no time.

If there is one principle of quantum physics that everybody can agree on—only one principle; as you know, there are about 12 to 15 interpretations of quantum mechanics, which is basically one equation, Schrödinger’s Equation. But, if there’s one principle that everyone will agree on—because I’ve tried it with various quantum physicists—it is that there are no dimensions and there are no boundaries. Every boundary is notional, period.

In the real reality—in the most fundamental reality—there are no boundaries. When you get that, that is the nature of being.

TS: Now, Marilyn here—for both the film and the book, Death Makes Life Possible, you talked to so many different people from different perspectives about this question of the continuation of consciousness. Tell me: what were the most important insights that you gained from these interviews?

MS: Well, I just have to say that this topic of death and our potentials is so rich. We just heard such an eloquent description of the essence of the “I am” and a way of knowing.

Going back to your initial question about what I know—I think I know different things from different vantage points. I think that the subjective, qualitative component—that first-person, direct experience—what I’ll call “the noetic experience”—is very rich and very powerful in terms of structuring people’s experience of what they know. As they’ve had a direct understanding—as Deepak describes through his own meditation practice or some kind of near-death or out-of-body experience—a reincarnation. All of these experiences that people report give them a direct, first-person kind of knowing.

Then there’s also obviously the essence of what we understand as modern science, which is that objective knowing—that kind of rational, discursive way of engaging. So, when we think about what happens after death, there’s also the opportunity to look at what science is wanting to tell us about that and the ways in which science is now having a kind of rapprochement with these spiritual, religious, qualitative kind of dimensions.

Something new is being born in that interface. We now have many, many people who have reported these experiences—who have felt direct revelation around their own “I am-ness.” At the same time, there are really interesting bodies of data that are beginning to support—from a left-brain, Western, scientific kind of perspective—that there is something about these experiences that may be ontologically true. [They] may have a kind of reality based in the Western model.

So, we can look at things like the research on near-death experiences and the kind of qualities that are shared among people who have had these openings or out-of-body experiences. Again, this very clear understanding that we are something more than our physical being—hearing these descriptions over and over again from people of various traditions, walks of life, and ways of being.

Then, I think [on] the data on reincarnation that’s being collected at the University of Virginia. Jim Tucker describes it in the film and the book. These case studies—for years—people have been collecting in a very methodical, rigorous way these reports of people who have memories of a previous life.

So, the “I am” in this case having a kind of attachment to personality and people remembering themselves in a kind of identification with a previous life. These stories have been investigated, documented, and provide a very interesting dataset for understanding the question, “What is it that survives, if anything, after bodily death?”

So, my experience of talking to people of different cultures and world traditions has given me a really interesting appreciation for the diverse perspectives. I included somebody like Michael Shermer, who represents the materialist, physical model. He’s an atheist. He’s a skeptic—of all of these kinds of conjectures.

At the same time, he has had experiences that lead him to question his own assumptions. Is there something more beyond physical death?

[This goes] all the way through [us talking] to people who represented a Muslim imam, a Buddhist practitioner, Hindus, Native Americans, Jewish, Christian, agnostic. All these perspectives offer us an opportunity to appreciate the complexities of our relationship to death and the great cycle of life.

TS: Now, one of the things that I’d love to hear you both talk more about is: in this continuity after death, what continues that’s individual to each one of us, if you will? Because it’s not just this sense of open awareness or being in general. When you talk about things like reincarnation or when people are contacting deceased relatives—which is also something that is covered in both the film and the book—they’re contacting, you could say, an individual soul? Help me understand that.

DC: A little while ago, I asked the question, “What did you have for dinner last night?” OK, and a memory came back. Where was that memory? [At least] according to my own experiences, memories are not in the brain. Memories are in being. In fact, when said people ask me, “Where do I go when I die?” I say, “Well, that pizza that you had last night is a memory.”

So, what recycles are memories—a matrix of memories. Memories are not memories until they’re experienced. Of course, once they’re experienced, they lead to desire and all kinds of other heart processes.

The potential memory in Vedanta is referred to as samskara. So, before I ask the question, “What did you have for dinner last night?” it was there as a potential, but it wasn’t there as a memory. All your memories—and in fact, your entire vocabulary—is in the realm of quantum entanglement right this moment. You kind of measure out a particular memory as experience. That then creates context, imagination, desire, and experience—or what we call karma.

So, karma, memory, and desire is—in a sense—the software of what people call “the soul.” At the deepest level, your soul is all the things “I am” has attached itself to. So, at the deepest level, what I refer to as “me”—Deepak—is an assumed identity. That assumed identity is all that “I am” has attached itself to. “I am the son of so-and-so. I’m a physician. I am a father. I am a husband. I’m a doctor. I’m a teacher. I’m a writer.”

So, this creates the context of the assumed identity, which is really the basis of ego personality. But, ego personality is the actualization of those memories and those tendencies.

Beyond the ego personality are two components of the soul. Again, this is both from experience and from the knowledge that comes from Vedanta and Kashmir Shaivism. The soul has two components. One is called jiva, which is the individual soul—which is the “I am this” and “I am that” and “I am not this” and “I am not that.”

Then atman, which is the unconditioned soul. The unconditioned soul is also called Brahman, because it is the ground of being that is at the heart of the whole universe. So, the ground of the self of the individual is also the self of the universe.

Now, you can experience both and you can have your individual identity for as long as you want it. But, in the deeper realm—in the deepest of realms—the individual is part of the matrix of all memories—of all experiences, of all desire.

In a sense, the individuality is a projection of the deeper being, which is the big “I am”—the I AM. When I read even the Gospel of John—when Jesus says, “I am the way and the life and the truth,” he is referring to the “I am.” When he says, “before Abraham was, I am,” he’s again referring to the “I am” which is not in time.

So, when people have experiences of somebody they’re talking [to] or through a medium they’re contacting somebody who’s dead, they’re either tapping into the conditioned part of the matrix from their conditioned being, or they’re tapping into a collective domain—a matrix. There is no way of telling whether you are experiencing a previous lifetime or if you’re actually tapping into part of that matrix of being, which has all possibilities—all memories, all the attachments that consciousness has made through sentience.

TS: Marilyn—anything to add from that about mediumship, if you will, and what that tells us about this question of the continuity of consciousness?

MS: Well, I’m a big advocate of embracing the mystery and acknowledging and appreciating that there are many more questions than are answers in this territory. I think that it may be—as Rupert Sheldrake says in our film—that it may be conditioned based on what you believe will happen.

One of the great principles of my work and my own personal philosophy is this idea of pluralism—not only acknowledging the demographics of all the differences that we have about how we answer those questions, but also a deep appreciation for the fact that there are different answers and that, in fact, the answers that we come up with may in fact influence what happens next. Maybe there is a way in which we’re tapping into some conditioned part of the matrix that is informed by whatever those life experiences are that take us beyond that.

The traditions talk about the soul or they talk about different personalities that can come through—or even composites of personalities that form over lifetimes. All of these things are real and true for the people that hold them.

It’s one of the really interesting things about life in the twenty-first century—is that we have Hindus, Muslims, Buddhists, atheists all sharing the same grocery stores, the same hospitals, the same schools. And yet, in a certain sense, [they are] walking around in different ontological bubbles.

So, at one fear of our experience, we’re interacting, we’re having conversations, we’re exchanging resources. At the other end of our experience, we’re living in different belief systems or different constructs of reality. I think, oftentimes, there is an intolerance to alternative perspectives. I think the great work that we have before us is fundamentally coming to appreciate that there are core aspects that traditions have in common. And then there are different ways in which our life experiences take different forms, different beliefs, different worldviews.

So, I like to think about the idea of “worldview literacy.” How is it that we can become literate about the fact that we see the world through a lens of perception that is our worldview [and] that worldview is informed by many things—our families, our schooling, our own personal development—and that other people have different worldviews? And that there are qualities, skills, capacities that we can build and grow to help us to engage each other in this kind of inter-subjective field of possibility?

So, I think that the great insights that I’ve had by digging deep into both—it’s a bad metaphor I guess, “digging.” But, the film and the book [are] these conversations that have been so dynamic and so rich across different traditions and different cultures.

DC: By the way, Marilyn, my book Life After Death was based in exactly what you said. Just know that consciousness can take any form. It conceives or constructs in its imagination, then projects it as its reality.

So, your belief is basically a qualia that takes form. So, right now I’m looking out the window and looking at a street in Santa Monica in California. That’s a projection of my consciousness. I, of course, realize that it is in this particular state of consciousness I have projected and we have collectively projected these diverse realities while we are living in our particular ontological bubble.

But, I definitely—having looked at all the various traditions, from the bardos of the Tibetans to the Heavens and Hells and Purgatories of the Judeo-Christian traditions to the infinite universes in Brahman’s consciousness. I believe that all these domains exist as much as Santa Monica exists—that they’re all equally real in the sense that they’re experiences. They’re all equally unreal in the sense that they’re projections of consciousness—because there is only consciousness.

So, you can take both points of view.

MS: Yes. And going back to your thinking about the quantum realms and the different interpretations, but we can certainly think about all of these ideas as existing in potential.

DC: Absolutely.

MS: And that there are ways in which we kind of collapse those state vectors.

DC: Absolutely. But they’re all equally valid, in other words.

MS: Yes. Yes. So, it makes for a very interesting opportunity for us to take our attention and intention and begin to live with mindfulness around what it is that we aspire to—for what we’re aiming for.

DC: “Awarefulness.”

MS: Say that again? The last thing?

DC: [Laughs.] I don’t like that word—”mindfulness.” It’s “awarefulness.”

MS: “Awarefulness” is better. That’s good.

DC: But anyway . . .

MS: But you’re right. It’s a term—well, we don’t have to go there.

DC: You’re right. I don’t have to go there.

TS: It seems to me that part of the impact that you’re both hoping will come from the book and the film, Death Makes Life Possible, is to bring a conversation about death into our Western culture in a different type of way. I’m wondering a couple things.

One: why [do] you think historically it’s been so taboo for people just to talk openly about death and their different viewpoints? Why is that a taboo? And—

DC: It’s not taboo at all in many cultures. When my father died, there were three-year-olds and four-year-olds and five-year-olds and all relatives everywhere. They were coming and kissing his body, and saying goodbye to his body. All of that. It was absolutely normal, natural. He died in meditation.

So, you know, we have made it taboo over here in this culture, in this place and time, because materialism dominates. Matter is all that is. That’s also why we are always trying to accumulate matter.

But, in every spiritual tradition, it’s never been a taboo. It’s a celebration.

TS: That’s my curiosity. If you were able to envision how death might be celebrated, treated, and investigated as a curiosity here in the West, what changes would have to take place both in our healthcare system and how we relate to dead bodies in our rituals? What would have to be different?

DC: I think it would just be more loving, more compassionate, more tolerant, more forgiving—therefore more healing.

MS: I think also this idea that we have a fixation on the material—as Deepak was saying. The emphasis on this sense of physicality as the only truth and as the only reality, [which] defines the Western worldview, becomes very questionable.

I think as we find a way to broaden our understanding—which I think is happening as people are reconciling our spiritual traditions with these kinds of observations coming out of something like quantum physics. We’re beginning to see that we are potentials rather than simply the physical.

But, things that are going to have to change are this kind of fixation on a healthcare system that sees aging and death as failures—when, in fact, they’re a natural part of the cycle of life. I think as people become more aware of the kind of organic aspects of death—that instead of pumping the body full of formaldehyde and having an experience of a dead body in a very alien form—people can—as in the tradition in India, where there is an engagement with the body. Or, historically even in the West, the sense that the deceased was physically present even if it wasn’t in the manifest form.

I think so today, as we get this kind of global community and we have the opportunity to encounter different traditions, it is inviting—particularly the Boomers, who are now coming to a revelation, really, about their own mortality. There will be an opportunity to define the question differently and to approach our own mortality in a fresher, more original form.

So, I think that we are in a very interesting moment, where there is something—people are calling it “the Silver Tsunami,” which is a kind of wave of aging that is covering the planet starting in Asia and going through Europe, entering America. We’re seeing that this kind of denial toward our mortality is no longer possible. As the population ages—as the challenges on our institutions increase—we are really forced to grapple with the inevitability of these issues.

We find a lot the Baby Boomers are reaching retirement age themselves, beginning to posit their own existential questions—but also dealing with the death of loved ones. Maybe, for some of them, [it’s] the first time really encountering that process of dying and death, and understanding what our parents or our relatives want or believe.

The fact that we are afraid to have these conversations is a great disservice to everyone because if we have a particular model—if we have a perspective, if we have a desire for how we want our end of life to be—and we don’t communicate that to anyone—because everyone’s afraid of hurting somebody’s feelings or pushing the boundaries in some way—then we haven’t had that most intimate, most authentic conversation.

So, it’s a really propitious moment for both the film and the book and what I see as a movement to redefine death. [It’s a time] for us to have that chance to think about, “Who am I and what do I really want and believe?” And then, “What are the resources and services that are going to be necessary in order to allow us to treat death as a natural part of the process rather than something so foreign and alienated from our everyday experience?”

TS: Now, Marilyn, when you talk about something like a movement, maybe we could call it “the death awareness movement,” if you will. Tell me a little bit more [about] what you mean by that. How would someone participate in something like “the death awareness movement”?

MS: I think the first step is really thinking about it—allowing ourselves the spaciousness to have a thought or reflection about our own mortality. Then, one of the things I think we’ve done through the book in particular is to shine some light on the different kinds of death awareness practices that there are in different traditions.

So, rather than seeing it as the focus of terror and fear and anxiety, we can begin to live into these different kinds of encounters with our own mortality. So, in the Sufi practice for example, this idea of encountering death awareness and having that be fundamental to our opportunity to then live becomes a doorway for people to engage in this death awareness without the fear and anxiety—beginning to really confront that, breathe into it, meditate on it, and ultimately to transform it.

So, I think that there are different traditions. We can see it in the Day of the Dead, for example—where people are celebrating this fine line between living and dying. So, people can participate in different cultural perspectives.

I think the first step is to reflect and have a kind of personal awareness about what’s important to me. I think that becoming a questioning person—a curious person—about what does it mean to have this sense of identity that is transformative and how do I come to terms with that? How do I anchor that or let go of my need to anchor it?

That can lead us into practices that can help to foster our death awareness—can help us to set the intention that we’re going to move from fear [and] shift our attention to something that sees death as an opportunity for celebration, as Deepak was saying. Then, really to build new habits so that when fear comes up, we can bring a kind of meditative quality. We can use our breath, use our exercise or our communication—our relationship-building—all as tools to help us, and really to build a different reaction.

So, I think that these are opportunities. So, I invite people to watch the film and read the book, and engage in educational programs that will help to open the conversation [and] give people a chance to—based in their own personal experiences [and] their own personal reflection—engage other people in these conversations.

One of the things that we’ve seen from the film is that it’s not only in America that people are having these issues. I have been in Taiwan and Sweden. [Right now,] the film is being translated into Japanese, Spanish, German. There is an impulse all over the world right now as people are engaging in this kind of aging process, to think about the conversation in a new way. That’s something that I think we’re doing right now in the conversation we’re having—inviting people to self-reflect, to question, to engage, and then to take some actions that can help to not only transform us as individuals but ultimately to help us transform as a planetary conversation and a planetary community that is engaged in these deep and powerful questions.

TS: Marilyn, tell us all the different kinds of people you interviewed for the film and the companion book to the film, Death Makes Life Possible. What types of people did you interview?

MS: Well, Deepak likes to say, “This is a topic for anyone who’s going to die.” [Laughs.] So, we tried to sample a pretty wide selection of the population. From interviews with kids—I interviewed a group of seventh and eighth graders who have thought deeply on these topics and were filled with wisdom and insight—to practitioners from a variety of world traditions. Most of the major world religions. Some of the indigenous practices. Some of the emergent practices.

I talked to scientists representing different disciplines, whether it was psychiatry or physics or medicine—talking to them about what they understand about the death process and also what might be coming next based on the data and the evidence. I talked to health and healing practitioners about how it is that we need to heal our relationship to death.

But, we also need to heal the social institutions that define our worldview—define our ways of encountering death. So, seeing people who are really on the front lines of helping to redefine the conversation has been incredibly inspiring.

TS: Now, Marilyn, I just have one final question for you. Here you worked on this film project and book over several years. I’m curious how that work changed you.

MS: Yes, well, I don’t think you can spend as much time as I have on this topic—and had so many conversations with people—not to be impacted. Simply thinking about the topic more has allowed me to have more comfort in the conversation.

I’m incredibly excited and inspired by what I’m seeing happening that wasn’t really there three years ago, even. So, this is very timely. I think we are part of something that is birthing right now in the same way that we had the midwifery movement for babies and we moved the idea of childbirth from being pathological to being very natural. I think the same thing is happening in our relationship to death.

So, we see the death cafes and the death salons, the “dining with death,” the conversation project. All [are] part of something that is shifting within us and between us. I feel grateful that I have had this opportunity to have these deep conversations with people who have a multiplicity of points of view and perspective—and in that process, to deepen my own reverence for the mystery of life.

Just now, I’ve been out in my garden, getting my hands dirty in the soil and pulling the weeds that need to make space for what will be the garden this season. And then seeing the little shoots of the pumpkin plants that have somehow seeded themselves, and feeling the gratitude.

So, I think death awareness is a spiritual practice. I feel that it is one that has opened in me as a result of this work.

I want to thank you, Tami, because you have been somebody who has seen the potentials of this topic, has engaged in it in your own practices, and who—because of that—has really helped me personally through the publishing of this book—and, ultimately, this kind of conversation—to be able to contribute in a generative way to something that desperately needs to happen.

TS: And Deepak: any final words?

DC: Yes. I think also familiarity with the unmanifest and intimacy with the unmanifest actually is very important. To be familiar and intimate with the rich inner unmanifest—physically unmanifest—part of your being is very important.

The fact is that through the physicality of everything, we’re dying every day anyway. I’m dead as a teenager [and] as a child, physically. So, one thing about experience [is that]—even in meditation and a kind of meditation on experience—you realize that you cannot hold on to any experience and you can’t get rid of “I am” at the same time.

Cultivating the experience of being—in deep sleep, for example, through practices like Yoga Nidra, et cetera—gives people the assurance that death is as much a space-time event as is birth.

TS: I want to thank Deepak Chopra and Marilyn Schlitz. They have both worked together to create a new film called Death Makes Life Possible. Marilyn Schlitz has written a practical companion to the film—a book from Sounds True. The foreword is by Deepak Chopra, [and] the book is called Death Makes Life Possible: Revolutionary Insights on Living, Dying, and the Continuation of Consciousness. Deepak Chopra has also written a book called Life After Death: Burden of Proof.

Deepak and Marilyn, thank you so much for being with us. Thanks for your good work with Death Makes Life Possible.

MS: Thank you, Tami.

DC: Bye!

TS: SoundsTrue.com. Many voices, one journey. Thanks for listening.