Neither Created Nor Destroyed

The Oxford Book of Death

by

D. J. Enright

"It is indeed impossible to imagine our own death; and when we attempt to do so we can perceive that we are in fact still present as spectators. Hence the psycho-analytic school could venture on the assertion that at bottom no one believes in his own death, or, to put the same thing another way, that in the unconscious every one of us is convinced of his own immortality(153-154)(Freud as cited by Enright).

This theory is interesting because it brings into light the question of do we actually experience ultimate death with our mind or are we simple observing the death of our flesh while the mind is set apart. Class discussion, textual material and my own near death experience have me leaning towards the second possibility. If that is true and the mind is separate from the body and continues to exist, in theory, after the body dies, it could indicate that that conscious beings do not actually die, and their mind at least is immortal. There are a lot of directions that this could take, for example, matter can neither be created nor destroyed so is it possible that the mind is matter? Or is it something else entirely.