When Death Comes: Our Ultimate Transformation
We have never known more about the biology of death, but we have never been more removed from the experience of dying. Science on its own cannot illuminate the darkness. Only in partnership with philosophy and literature, and in touch with human experience, can it help us come to terms with death—and its significance for life.
In When Death Comes, Evan Thompson—a renowned philosopher and author of groundbreaking books on the mind and consciousness—offers a deeply original literary, philosophical, and scientific account of the meaning of mortality. Bucking the tide of reductionism, he interweaves neuroscientific research with the perspectives and practices of philosophical and spiritual contemplative traditions. Thompson considers works by Leo Tolstoy, William James, Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, and Gabriel Marcel as well as the case of Jahi McMath, a teenage girl whose family did not accept her brain-death diagnosis. He also shares powerful reflections on his own father’s passing.
Ultimately, this book shows that death is not an unfathomable conclusion but a transformative experience. Human death cannot be reduced to brain death, and near-death experiences are not brain-generated illusions. Consciousness might survive bodily death, mystical experiences enable us to transcend our mortality—and love and hope give us power in the face of death.
Praise for When Death Comes
“Evan Thompson has written that very rare book that subjects scientific claims about life and death to the critical scrutiny of human experience itself. He does this movingly with help from some of the great stories in literature and his own life. A must-read as a thinking person’s meditation on a mortal life with hope.”
— Allan Kellehear OBE, University of Northumbria at Newcastle
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“Death, the ultimate transformative experience, awaits us all. Drawing on philosophy, literature, and the testimony of the dying, this sensitive and insightful meditation explores how letting go of control can open the dying to an unexpected sense of belonging to a larger whole. Thompson shows us that to face death well is to bear witness: to be present, in love and grief, with those who are dying.”
— L. A. Paul, Yale University
“Philosopher Evan Thompson’s remarkable new book When Death Comes is a wise and unflinching exploration of the experience of dying and death. Diving deep into philosophy, art, the power of myths, grief, the realization of our own mortality, and yes, science, the reader discovers that death is our ultimate transformation. The final chapter on love and hope bring resolution to the mystery of death. This book is a powerful exploration of what it means to die.”
— Joan Jiko Halifax, Abbot, Upaya Zen Center
