Dying, as treated across the depth-psychology and allied contemplative corpus, is never merely a biological event but a psycho-spiritual process demanding preparation, witness, and interpretive framework. The literature divides broadly into three registers. First, the soteriological-instructional tradition represented most fully by the Tibetan Book of the Dead in both its Evans-Wentz and Coleman translations: dying is a technē, an Art of Dying, in which the sequence of psychic dissolution must be navigated with trained awareness if liberation is to be seized at the threshold of the Clear Light. Second, the existential-psychotherapeutic register exemplified by Yalom and Hillman: dying confronts the ego with its fundamental groundlessness, and clinical work that refuses this confrontation remains superficial. Hillman adds a characteristically archetypal inflection, arguing that the experience of death arrives in the soul before organic dissolution, and that fear belongs to the process of dying rather than to death itself. Third, a contemplative-ethical strand — visible in Evagrius, Easwaran, and Spiegelman’s account of the Japanese isagi-yoku — reads dying as the practitioner’s daily discipline, a moral orientation that dissolves possessiveness and engenders compassion. Bion’s object-relations formulation — in which the infant’s fear of dying may be metabolized or returned as nameless dread — adds a developmental counterpoint. Together these voices insist that dying is the central, not peripheral, concern of psychological and spiritual seriousness.
if need be, bodily suffering and infirmities, as they would be able to do had they practised efficiently during their active lifetime the Art of Living, and, when about to die, the Art of Dying.
Evans-Wentz frames dying as a learnable art requiring lifelong preparation, exemplified by Milarepa’s triumphant, conscious relinquishment of the body in samādhi.
, The Tibetan Book of the Dead (Evans-Wentz Edition), 1927thesis
Death comes first as an experience of the soul, after which the body expires. ‘Fear,’ says Osis, ‘is not a dominant emotion in the dying’, whereas elation and exaltation occur frequently.
Hillman argues that the soul undergoes death as an interior event prior to organic dissolution, and that the phenomenology of the dying contradicts rationalist claims that death cannot be experienced.
, Suicide and the Soul, 1964thesis
The infant who started with a fear he was dying ends up by containing a nameless dread… the will to live, that is necessary before there can be a fear of dying, is a part of the goodness that the envious breast has removed.
Bion reframes dying as a primitive psychic fear that, when the containing object fails through envy, is returned to the infant as formless dread rather than transformed experience.
, Learning from Experience, 1962thesis
The dying Antony commanded his disciples to ‘live as though dying each day’… expecting each day to die we will live without property and forgive everything to everyone.
The Evagrian-Antonian tradition treats dying as a daily ethical practice: the continuous contemplation of mortality dissolves possessiveness and cultivates universal forgiveness.
, Evagrius of Pontus: The Greek Ascetic Corpus, 2003thesis
Dying isagi-yoku is the attitude of being ready to face death in such a manner that neither we nor others have regrets.
Spiegelman presents the Japanese Buddhist aesthetic of isagi-yoku as an archetypal orientation toward dying — a preparatory detachment that confers dignity upon any critical threshold, not only literal death.
, Buddhism and Jungian Psychology, 1985thesis
O nobly-born… the time hath now come for thee to seek the Path [in reality]. Thy breathing is about to cease… all things are like the void and cloudless sky, and the naked, spotless intellect is like unto a transparent vacuum without circumference or centre.
The Bardo Thödol’s instructions at the moment of dying direct the dying consciousness to recognize the Clear Light as its own nature, identifying the instant of death with the possibility of liberation.
, The Tibetan Book of the Dead (Evans-Wentz Edition), 1927thesis
This line argues that dying can be experienced, but not death. If we follow along we are led into foolishness, for we will have to say sleep and the unconscious can also not be experienced.
Hillman critiques the rationalist position that equates dying with mere logical negation, insisting that psychological experience encompasses states consciousness cannot fully illuminate from within.
, Suicide and the Soul, 1964supporting
the act of writing, of being a writer, is tied with the dying of the elephant, as if a calling rises like a ghost from the soul of the falling beast.
Hillman reads the witnessed dying of the elephant as a psychic catalyst through which vocation, compassion, and moral vision are born — dying as transformative event for the living witness.
, Animal Presences, 2008supporting
all those scenes of death and dying planted deep in my consciousness the fervent desire to go beyond death once and for all… This is the secret of facing death. As long as there is something we want
Easwaran locates the transformative power of witnessing dying in its capacity to awaken the spiritual will — the desire for liberation arises from confrontation with the suffering of the dying.
, The Bhagavad Gita for Daily Living: A Verse-by-Verse Commentary, 1975supporting
the technique of dying makes Death the entrance to good future lives, at first out of, and then again in, the flesh, unless and until liberation (Nirvana) from the wandering (Saṃsāra) is attained.
Evans-Wentz presents dying as a technical-soteriological procedure: mastery of the dying process determines the quality of post-mortem states and future incarnations.
, The Tibetan Book of the Dead (Evans-Wentz Edition), 1927supporting
Although people who are dying may lose physical and cognitive abilities, many seem to find an intuition that healthy individuals capture only later in life. They have an incredible capacity to connect to others, to be humorous, and to be wise.
Neimeyer’s narrative-constructivist perspective finds that the dying often access wisdom, humor, and relational depth that exceed what healthy individuals ordinarily achieve.
, Meaning Reconstruction and the Experience of Losssupporting
The Japanese hate to see death met irresolutely and lingeringly; they desire to be blown away like the cherry blossom before the wind.
Spiegelman cites Suzuki to illustrate how the Zen-inflected isagi-yoku ideal requires that dying be met with full presence and without clinging — a cultural archetype of beautiful, decisive release.
, Buddhism and Jungian Psychology, 1985supporting
the last breath of the dying — postremum spiritum ore excipere… The ‘last kiss’ is virtually inspiration… with the recipient more, and the transmitter less, active.
Onians documents the archaic European belief that the animus — the breath-soul — was transmitted from the dying to the living through the last kiss, making dying a moment of psychic inheritance.
, The origins of European thought about the body, the mind,, 1988supporting
the science of death, as expounded in this treatise, has been arrived at through the actual experiencing of death on the part of learned lāmas, who, when dying, have explained to their pupils the very process of death itself, in analytical and elaborate detail.
Evans-Wentz establishes the empirical claim of the Tibetan tradition: the phenomenology of dying has been transmitted from masters who narrated their own death-process to disciples, constituting a first-person science of dying.
, The Tibetan Book of the Dead (Evans-Wentz Edition), 1927supporting
Nearing his own death at ninety-two, Pettersson observed: ‘What will sustain me in my last moments is an infinite curiosity as to what is to follow.’
Keltner invokes Pettersson’s attitude at dying as exemplifying the awe-orientation: curiosity rather than terror at the approach of death sustains meaning and moral beauty to the end.
, Awe The New Science of Everyday Wonder and How It Can, 2023supporting
She made the comment, with an embarrassed laugh, ‘If I’m not dying of one thing, I’m dying of another.’ It was probably at least in
Yalom uses a patient’s casual remark to illustrate how death anxiety pervades clinical material that superficially concerns other concerns, requiring the therapist to be ‘tuned in’ to dying as a latent organizing theme.
, Existential Psychotherapy, 1980supporting
What used to occur at home among close family now unfolds in a hospital room among medical professionals… Children who used to witness death close up are now sheltered from the experience.
Pargament observes that the medicalization and institutionalization of dying has severed modern Western culture from firsthand encounter with death, impoverishing the ritual resources available for coping.
, The psychology of religion and coping theory, research,, 2001aside
As Jung has indicated, nature finds innumerable ways to snuff out a meaningless existence.
Nichols, drawing on Jung, suggests that dying may be nature’s response to the failure of psychic vitality — the body enacts what the soul has already undergone when existence loses meaning.
, Jung and Tarot: An Archetypal Journey, 1980aside
No one can take the Other’s dying away from him. Of course someone can ‘go to his death for another’. But that always means to sacrifice oneself for the
Heidegger’s ontological claim that dying is ownmost and non-transferable — no one can die another’s death — establishes the existential solitude of dying as constitutive of authentic Dasein.
, Being and Time, 1962aside