7 books that make it easier to overcome the fear of death

1. “A Year of Life” by Stephen Levin

We don’t have to die feeling like losers—disappointed, regretful, defeated by death. It is possible to “surrender” to death peacefully and almost without pain, remaining open and full of gratitude. How to learn it? To get started, decide to experiment.

The poet, philosopher, and meditation teacher Stephen Levin (1937–2016) developed an amazing program: he offered to set aside a whole year to spend it as the last. A year to reassess your priorities and deal with unresolved issues in the face of death. To learn to consciously accept mental and physical pain, from which we move away with fear.

And if this experiment itself inspires fear, we hasten to assure you: the exercises and meditations that the author recommends do not lead to rejection of life and depression. On the contrary, they awaken a keen interest in what is happening and help to perceive more sharply every moment of their earthly existence.

2. “The Courage to Be” by Paul Tillich

Without this philosopher and theologian, it is impossible to imagine existential psychotherapy. Before becoming a professor at Harvard University (USA), Paul Tillich managed to be a Lutheran pastor in the working-class districts of Berlin and an army chaplain on the fields of the First World War. He saw a painful and senseless death, and after that it became difficult for him to preach hope and believe in a good god.

And yet he did not fall into despair and did not renounce the faith, but wrote: “I have come to the paradox of faith without God.” He then taught theology and philosophy at major universities, but was fired when the Nazis came to power. Tillich moved to the USA, where he wrote his most important works. The Courage to Be (1952) is addressed to all who are trying to overcome their anxiety in the face of nothingness, to cope with the absence of meaning.

3. “We are all creations for a day” by Irvin Yalom

Irvin Yalom, 82, a wise, tactful writer and psychotherapist, is just the perfect conversationalist on this topic. The issues of old age and death are present in one way or another in many of his books, but here almost all the stories are connected with them. As the author shows with several vivid examples, attitudes towards death can have a decisive influence on our lives, sometimes from a young age.

“The ancients taught not to be afraid of death — when it comes, we will no longer be,” psychologist Dmitry Leontiev comments on the book. – But modern psychology clarifies: death often penetrates our lives long before it ends. And depending on how well we realize this and how ready we are to recognize its reality and inevitability, it either poisons us for many years, or, conversely, makes life brighter and deeper, making us feel more responsible for it.”

4. “Thanatotherapy” Vladimir Baskakov

Thanatotherapy helps to establish a person’s contact with the processes of death and dying, it models these processes, explains the author of the method, psychotherapist Vladimir Baskakov. It is difficult for us to contact with death, it’s like grabbing a hot frying pan with your hand.

The art of thanatotherapy is to bypass psychological defenses and open access to a special state: those who have experienced it describe it as pleasure, joy and happiness. It arises from the experience of those characteristics of one’s body that the bodies of the dead possess: the complete disappearance of muscle clamps and tensions, the rejection of overcontrol (which our consciousness usually exercises), the ability to feel one’s body as a thing, as an object.

Such help allows you to safely come into contact with the thought of your mortality and learn to perceive it as part of life, its natural completion.

5. “From death to life: how to overcome the fear of death” Editor-compiler Anna Danilova

Among the authors of the collection are Metropolitan Anthony of Surozh and Elizaveta Glinka (Dr. Lisa), psychologist Larisa Pyzhyanova, and the Dutchwoman Frederika de Graaf who works in the Moscow hospice. They are united by a close acquaintance with death: they helped or help people who are dying, staying with them until the last moments, and found the strength to generalize this poignant experience.

Whether to believe in the afterlife and the immortality of the soul is a personal matter for everyone. The book is not about that, though. And that death is inevitable. But her fear can be overcome, just as grief from the loss of loved ones can be overcome. As paradoxical as it sounds, “From Death to Life” fits right in with the “how to succeed” manuals. With the tangible difference that the recommendations of the authors involve mental work, much more serious and deep than following the step-by-step instructions of coaches.

6. “At the last line. A deadly disease as a journey of the soul.” Jin Shinoda Bolen

Any serious diagnosis plunges us into a deep crisis and overturns all the foundations of life. It takes us out of the mainstream of everyday worries and awakens the soul, connects us to spiritual resources and can become a true initiation.

Psychiatrist and Jungian analyst Jin Shinoda Bolen knows this not only as a doctor: the death of her son after a serious illness radically changed her personal life too. She describes this arduous process of spiritual transformation and tells how our soul journey is supported by connections with other people through inspiring stories, prayers and rituals, all of which help us focus on the soul and, at least for a while, find relative serenity.

7. “Life after life. Light in the distance by Raymond Moody

Dr. Moody’s first book, Life After Life, was published 25 years ago and was a bombshell. Seriously interested in the topic of near-death experiences, the young doctor collected, recorded and analyzed hundreds of stories of people who survived clinical death and managed to describe such well-known phenomena today as leaving their bodies, viewing their own lives in “fast forward” and, of course, the notorious “light in end of the tunnel.”

Controversial, contradictory and ambiguous, Moody’s book, nevertheless, for almost the first time since the advent of the great world religions, was able to change the ideas of mankind about what awaits him on the other side of the last line. Moody continues his exploration of near-death experiences, this time focusing on what children experience at the moment of near-death experience, as well as the special role that these amazing experiences play in the later lives of those who happened to experience them.