The Fear of Death
How Fear Holds Us Back from Living and What Bacteria Can Teach Us About Dying
No matter how different people may be, everyone shares the same path of life. We are born, we live, and we die. It’s a simple truth, and yet most people have a problem with it. They don’t want to die.
A Child’s First Glimpse of Death
I remember the first time I consciously thought about death. I must have been five or six years old. I was lying in bed, the room darkened by heavy curtains, waiting to fall asleep. My mind wandered, and suddenly my thoughts, like a fish caught in a net, were ensnared by something dark. It was death.
It appeared to me as black and cold—a vast, devouring abyss. There was nothing positive, kind, or comforting about it. Just the end of my existence, and then nothingness. The idea was overwhelming, unimaginable, but above all, it filled me with an infinite sense of fear.
To realize my own mortality for the first time was a key moment in my life. I became aware that everything is finite, that something was waiting for me at the very end—like a monster, a dragon, ready to devour and erase me. Even though my attitude toward death has changed a lot over the years, I’ll never forget that moment of realization when I first understood there was something lurking that I could not control.
Fear is business
This dark something at the end of our path haunts every human being. Some more, some less. And some so much that it blocks their access to life itself. The fear of death can become so overwhelming that it extinguishes the joy of living.
And this does not go unnoticed. There are companies making money from this fear, offering to freeze your body in a cryogenic state right after death, sparking the hope that one day, far in the future, a more advanced generation will revive you and extend your life by decades or centuries. Or the cosmetics industry, which promises to stop visible aging. Longevity - achieving an excessively long and healthy life - is the latest trend. The pill for life extension hasn’t been invented yet, but it would be an unbelievably successful business. Of course, the pharmaceutical industry is already making countless efforts in this direction. What could be better than making people even more dependent on pills and injections?
But this fixation on death is a double-edged sword. It keeps us from living, steals the joy from the present, and pushes our hopes into some distant future. Unable to perceive the moment with our senses and our being, we fall into a waiting position, building a cocoon that is supposed to break open and bloom in a new form at some undetermined time. Instead, life passes us by, along with all the joys we could have experienced, but which we only see dimly through a fogged-up window because of our fears.
Near-Death Experiences: Waking Up to Life
There are other ways to deal with death. People who have had a near-death experience (NDE) often show an incredibly relaxed attitude toward dying. There are countless books on the subject, and I encourage everyone to read accounts of those who have had an NDE. Their lives usually changed dramatically afterward. Knowing that death is nothing to be feared, these people can experience and enjoy the present moment with a sense of freedom. More than that, they’re brave enough to follow their true calling and pursue what really matters to them in life. All of this is possible because they have come to realize that death is not the monster, not the beast they have always feared, but rather just a change in the energetic state.
Death by the Billions
As a microbiologist, I see death descend upon life billions of times every day. Every autoclave—a device used to sterilize instruments and kill cultures—is the ultimate killing machine. While animal experiments require lengthy approval processes to kill mice or rats in the name of science legally, microorganisms are erased in the lab on a scale that’s almost unimaginable. If we autoclave a single liter of activated sludge in our lab, about two trillion living cells are destroyed in that moment. That’s 250 times the population of our planet. Just like that. Why doesn’t that bother us?
Well, bacteria are simple life forms and lack consciousness. Plus, they’re so tiny—just 1–2 microns on average. And what we don’t see doesn’t move us. This principle of invisibility is perfected in modern warfare: The soldier guiding a drone from thousands of miles away, launching missiles, has the same relationship to those he kills or maims as the microbiologist at the autoclave controls. It’s this distance that makes the act of killing possible at all. Wars would be brutal, but not as devastating, if they were still fought man-to-man.
Altruistic Death in the Microbial World
But let’s stay with the smallest living beings. Bacteria have evolved sophisticated mechanisms to end their own lives. When they run out of nutrients or are attacked by viruses, they can self-destruct to preserve the community as a whole. Of course, they don’t do this consciously—it’s a complex genetic mechanism that triggers this self-destruction. Altruistic behavior at its best.
There is also the phenomenon of symbiotic death. Certain bacteria, known as Rhizobia, reside within plants and lose their ability to exist independently through cell division as soon as they establish themselves in root cells. By fixing nitrogen, they secure the survival of the community as a whole, but in doing so, they relinquish their own independence and individuality. Symbolically, this symbiotic death stands for continuing to exist as part of something greater, just as more and more people today see themselves as part of a whole, inseparably connected. “Everything is connected” - that’s also the message people bring back from near-death experiences.
Becoming part of something bigger. Not fearing the loss of our own individuality, but embracing and cherishing life as a whole—that’s one way to lose the fear of our own end. Because when we realize we’re just a minor point in the infinite web of life, we lose our fear of the extinction of our insignificant existence and fearlessly embrace the beauty of the whole.
On a small scale, we already manage to do this. Our bodies are nothing more than a composition of 30 trillion human cells and 39 trillion bacterial cells. We are a holobiont, existing only as a whole, just as humanity - and life itself - can exist only as a unified entity.
But that’s admittedly hard to live by. In an earlier article, “The Fear of Life”, I tried to describe how some people, out of fear of getting sick, become unable to focus on their lives and therefore can’t enjoy them to the fullest.
Maybe an image makes this clearer: We’re on a plane, afraid it might crash. That fear keeps us from enjoying the flight, which offers incredible views of entire countries from above (“Fear of Life”). And at the same time, we know that something unpleasant awaits us at our destination—a business meeting, a family gathering with disliked relatives, or maybe even a funeral. With this endpoint in mind, our brains become so occupied that the beauty of the moment, “Hey, we’re flying at 33,000 feet with an incredible view of Greenland”, is lost (“Fear of Death”).
What a pity.
Fear is power
Western society reinforces our fears. Death is no longer visible. The dead are taken away as quickly as possible. Isn’t it strange? We spend a lifetime with someone we love, but the moment they die, an astonishing mechanism sets in: Within a short time, the dead person is taken from us by strangers, cooled, and cremated. We lose all control over the process and are left to decide only whether our loved one is buried in a coffin or placed in an urn. We’re not even allowed to keep the ashes. I’ve never understood that. All around us in nature, animals are constantly dying and decaying, but the sterile ashes of a loved one—we’re not allowed to keep them or even scatter them to the wind.
The law for disease prevention or for the protection of human dignity is just a flimsy excuse, one that most people surprisingly accept. In reality, it’s about controlling us, even beyond death. And that’s another interesting aspect: The visual presence of death is taken away from us, but the fear of it must remain because only those who are afraid can be controlled. A person who has lost their fear of death is a dangerous person for the state. How can you control someone who no longer fears death? That’s why the media must constantly confront us with death, in an abstract, dehumanized form, reduced to pure fear.
We are a herd driven by fear, led by the state, which still wants us to believe that “the people” are sovereign. Like rabbits mesmerized by a snake, we stare at the various forms of punishment and fit ourselves obediently into the predefined mold. Life - yes, but only within prescribed boundaries. That’s why war is so important: as a potential early death and an abstract act of punishment. War is peace. Obedience is freedom.
Bacteria show us the way
But what’s the solution?
Well, the bacteria show us.
As unicellular life forms, far from any kind of consciousness, death is a normal part of their life cycle. They cannot be afraid of it. Therefore, even if they can’t appreciate it, they are infinitely free.
It would be a step backward if humans tried to slip from a conscious state into an unconscious one. Alcohol and drugs can achieve that, but that’s not the goal. Instead, we can strive to reach a higher state based on our consciousness, one that focuses us on the present, that turns off the mind trained to teach us fear. That’s the essence of mindfulness.
When we succeed in consciously letting our minds run empty, in not listening, in ignoring our indoctrinated patterns, when we are able to feel the waves of life and let them carry us, then we can break free from our conditioning and lose our fear of death. We are present, experiencing the now with all our senses.
Then, and only then, are we truly free.