I’ve been researching near death experiences for a while. You could look into that for starters. Also I follow all sorts of hospice nurses that talk about death and the process of dying. It’s a fascinating topic to me as well and I would like to understand.
@TangledUpInBlue I first read about NDEs in Raymond Moody's book Life After Life which was one of the first popular treatments of the phenomenon. Since then I've read other accounts and am familiar with the so-called "proofs," like the Shoe on the Ledge, the Denture Man, and the Pam Reynolds case. These are more out of body experiences but the concept is the same - that human consciousness can persist and have experiences independently from the body. The problem is that these are anecdotal and not conducted under rigorous laboratory conditions. And the books about people dying and meeting Jesus or visiting hell or whatever come across as pure grift. I don't care if someone swears that they met their grandmother in heaven who told them where a long-lost piece of jewelry was, and they shocked their family when they went back and retrieved it. As Thomas Paine said, is it more likely that nature deviates from its course, or a man tells a lie?
Nevertheless this is a fascinating topic that deserves serious research as it could illuminate aspects of consciousness even if it does nothing to answer the question of what happens after we die.
There is an organization called Death Cafe, where groups of people can discuss their thoughts about death. Again, not suicidal, but discussions of the inevitable, preparing for it, individual thoughts about how to deal with it. Sounds somewhat morbid, but the person who told me about it is one of the most positive people I know and it is one of the volunteer groups she supports and works with.
I have a connection to the dead because I've experienced SO much loss. Now I feel most at peace in darkness, silence and graveyards. I spent a lot of time thinking on it and I experience something when ghosties want me too. I have no control over it though.
Research asubha meditation, and go in search of a animal corpse in the forrest etc, and visit it as often as you can and meditate on its progress of decay, as you will not find a human corpse to practise this meditation with. I was shocked when the buddhist nun mentioned this tradition of buddhism, but it was ascribed to help practioners grasp the important law of impermanence.
Instead perhaps you could visit a cemetery and contemplate death and its meanings there, reflect on your own mortality etc.
We are born into this world knowing that we are mortal. We also know that we could die at any time, we see death. How much more connected could we be to death? We have no choice but to accept our fate.
