The Miracle of Death
By Betty J. Kovács, Ph.D. 

      Despite the popularity of shows such as “Crossing Over with John Edwards,” Western society seems to have forgotten Rainer Maria Rilke’s belief that the afterlife and the living life interact, and as Antoine de Saint-Exupéry wrote in THE LITTLE PRINCE, “What is essential is invisible to the naked eye.”

     It took the death of 20-year-old Pisti (Hungarian for Istvan or Steven) Kovács in a car accident for his academic mother Dr. Betty “Kicsi” Kovács and father Istvan to put into perspective Western civilization’s rejection of death and the institutions, including organized religion, that cause us to fear “a consummation devoutly to be wished,” in Shakespeare’s words. Interestingly, Dr. Kovacs argues against a dichotomy of thought that cut off the instinctive and dream knowledge as ruthlessly as Puritans arrested women for being witches. She condemns Christianity’s eschewing older forms of knowing, i.e. dreams and visions and speaks of Jesus Christ dancing the Round Dance and embracing a “radically egalitarian” view. She borrows from the Eleusinian Mysteries, Hellenistic religion, the I Ching, ancient Egyptian gods, and the world’s great religions (though one wonders why the treatise on the nature of spirit, the BHAGAVAD-GITA, isn’t included). Her Greek imagery and symbolic language is not the empty Dionysian dialogue of Nietzsche’s nihilism, but a richness of metaphor and history. It is also a language of dreams, the prophetic symbolic dreams Dr. Kovács, Istvan and Pisti’s beloved girlfriend Jenny experience before and after his death. The dream imagery guided Dr. Kovács toward stunning insights about the meaning of death.

     Dr. Kovács’ subsequent loss of her beloved husband Istvan, who like her had come to accept the reality of death and a new spiritual dimension, crystallized her belief that there is nothing but life, and that Western civilization’s ignorance of that truth has caused a breakdown in our society. As we begin to search for understanding of the death and horror of September 11, Dr. Kovács loving insights, which offer an alternative to our worldview although not a prescription for transformation, deserve to be heard, so that a new creativity of thought and being can emerge.