Death is one of the themes that runs through Nectar of Time. Below is everything in the Nectarium that touches on it.
Where it comes up 12
Within this theme 64
Concepts 17
- Big Questions in Fiction
Logan's diagnosis of contemporary fiction: writers with comfortable Western lives lack the hard experiences (wars, whaling ships) that drove the classics, so big questions of life, death…
- Gnosticism
Tamir's 'thought experiment': unlike the Judeo-Christian view of a perfect world and imperfect humans with a divine spark, Gnostic mythology holds that creation on Earth was a cosmic…
- Death Salon
Gatherings, also called death cafes, where strangers talk about grief, death and loss and share book excerpts and poetry. Mia borrowed the term from a Brooklyn therapist and is piloting…
- Limbo between life and death
Salih's reading of Murakami's other world as a neutral zone between life and death where the body can do impossible things and body and mind separate, so a person loses what they stand for…
- Dying Complete
A frame Ian teaches. Don't ask whether you'll die complete in 60 years. Ask what you'd need to do today to die complete if tonight were your last night. It shrinks what matters down to a…
- Secular Ritual Gap
Tamir's observation that religious death rituals (Tibetan bardo prayers, Jewish psalms, Irish wakes) have no analog in secular culture beyond the funeral, a gap Mia's gatherings try to fill.
- Bardo States
From the Tibetan tradition, the intermediate states a soul passes through after death, which depend on how one dies. Mia describes monks commanding their bodies to die while family pray…
- Samsara
The Hindu cycle of rebirth that brings you back until you figure it out. Tamir contrasts the comfort his 'Hindu side' finds in it with the pressure his 'Jewish side' feels to get it right…
- Hierarchy of Grief
Tamir asks whether there is an objective hierarchy of grief: sudden death versus prolonged illness, suffering plus death as the ultimate tragedy (as in Holocaust stories). Mia answers that…
- Song of Ascents
A group of Psalms that Tamir says are recited during the seven days of Jewish mourning at the family's home; his example of religious death ritual that has no secular counterpart.
- Peacekeeper Archetype
The diplomat or ambassador archetype Mia says a grief guide must tune into to find common ground among Christians, Muslims and others: the shared fact that none of us knows what happens…
- Dying at 30, buried at 80
Saying used by both speakers for people who stop truly living because they lack a vision for their life.
- Plant trees whose shade you'll never see
The proverb, usually given as Greek, that society grows great when people plant trees whose shade they'll never sit in. Colin, paraphrasing and unsure of the source, uses it to argue that…
- Shiva
The seven-day Jewish mourning period at the bereaved family's home that Tamir describes (not named on air).
- Death practice
Tamir and Samantha wonder what it would be like if our relationship to death were like waking up from a dream. Tamir says a death practice comes late in the journey and many never get to…
- Irish Wake
Tamir's example of cultures that turn death into a celebration of life; he finds it hard to reconcile since every funeral he's attended has been solemn.
- Legacy
What you leave behind and what people say about you; Ian uses it as a compass for daily priorities.
Books 13
- Kafka on the Shore
Both find it absurd: fish falling from the sky, Colonel Sanders as a pimp. Tamir only recommends it to die-hard fans.
- Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage
Tamir loves the scene where a friend tells Tsukuru a strange story about a man his father met at a mountain inn, an example of Murakami's one-on-one conversations that feel like portals.
- Slaughterhouse-Five
The only Vonnegut novel Colin has read, and one he loves. What he takes from it is how the protagonist, despite the firebombing of Dresden, learns to make friends in the course of the story.
- Makers of Empire
Prose-poem about dreamers as 'the architects of greatness' whose visions outlast crumbling empires; Tamir reads it aloud and it frames the episode's question of reconciling greatness with…
- Meditations
Tamir's example of speaking with the dead: opening Meditations is talking to Marcus Aurelius, because books are how people become immortal.
- The City and Its Uncertain Walls
Murakami's new novel, due out November 19 (2024) in English, his first in six years and a kind of sequel to Hard-Boiled Wonderland.
- Childhood (Hesse poem)
Poem Tamir reads ('My farthest valley... O dark gate, O dark hour of death, come forth') about longing for death as a return home to one's dreams; Mia hears in it someone letting themselves…
- Psalms
Tamir describes reciting the Songs of Ascents from the Psalms, traditionally attributed to King David, at the mourners' home for seven days after a Jewish death.
- The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying
The book Mia actually draws on (correcting herself from the Book of the Dead) when she teaches grievers about the bardo states and how Tibetan lives are ended.
- Poems (Hermann Hesse)
Hesse's well-known poetry collection in a bilingual edition (German on the left, English on the right) that Tamir reads from.
- Tibetan Book of the Dead
Mia first names it before clarifying she means the similar Tibetan Book of Living and Dying.
- Tokyo Ueno Station
Novel narrated by the ghost of a homeless man in Tokyo whose family has died, struggling to reconcile the point of his existence. Tamir reads a passage asking whether death is where time…
- Book of Jonah
Jonah in the belly of the whale appears in the Murakami passage Tamir reads, as an image of Tsukuru having fallen into the bowels of death.
People 9
- Mia Cosco
Research assistant at Harvard working on psychedelic research, specifically how psychedelics can help with grief; hosts grief dinner parties, death salons and death cafes, and is writing a…
- Carl Jung
Swiss psychiatrist; Tamir says Hesse and Jung were neighbours and friends, which shows in Hesse's work, as an example of novelists absorbing non-fiction knowledge.
- Hermann Hesse
German-Swiss novelist (Siddhartha, Steppenwolf). Tamir read him as philosophical fiction; Tamir says Hesse knew Carl Jung and that Jung's influence shows in his writing.
- Ernest Hemingway
Author of The Sun Also Rises, whose slow fishing interlude Grant came to love only years later.
- Marc Harris Silverman
Sheela's first husband, whom she still calls by his sannyas name Chinmaya ('Shin Maya' in the captions). They met at school in the US; he had Hodgkin's disease and was given a year and a…
- J. R. R. Tolkien
Logan points out that The Lord of the Rings draws on Tolkien's love of language, mythology and his Catholic faith, but also heavily on his time in the trenches of World War I.
- Gautama Buddha
Tamir uses the Buddha as an example of someone perfectly happy to leave his body behind in search of full oneness, which he sees as a late, advanced stage of a death practice.
- Benjamin Franklin
Tamir attributes to him (unsure whether it was Franklin or Disraeli) the line that most men die at 30 but aren't buried until 80, used as a motif for living without a vision.
- Brian Johnson
Mentioned as the person closest to chasing an immortality formula, in the aside that life is a game nobody wins in the end.
Quotes 7
If it's an end, and there we are not quite certain about this end, because there are these peculiar faculties of the psyche, that it isn't entirely confined to space and time. You can have dreams or visions of the future, you can see round corners and such things. Only ignorance denies these facts.
We don't know what happens when we die. But imagine if the experience or relationship we had to death was like waking up.
If my head were to hit the pillow tonight, lights were out, that was it. What would I have to do today so that I could die complete tonight?
Most men die at 30 but they're not buried till they're 80.
Walls crumble and empires fall... the rotting nations drop off from time's bough, and only the things the dreamers make live on.
The way people become immortal is through books. Every time you open a book, if you open up Meditations by Marcus Aurelius, you're talking to the dead.
What would I need to do today so that I could die complete tonight?
Insights 5
- Limbo separates body from mind
Murakami's other world is a limbo between life and death where body and mind split, and a person who loses that unity loses what they stand for.
- Secular culture lacks death rituals
Religions give mourners structured practices (bardo prayers, psalms for seven days, wakes), while secular culture has only the funeral and worries about wills and costs.
- Unite on not knowing
With mourners of different faiths, the common ground isn't doctrine but the fact that none of us actually knows what happens after we die. Mia doesn't dispute anyone's truth.
- Every belief about death is a choice
Faced with death's cliff, everyone picks a mythology to make sense of it. Even atheism is a decision about what to believe.
- Religious war is trauma at scale
Wars over religion are the ego shielding people from facing the truth of death. Facing it risks a downward spiral but carries the seed of something new, if you're brave enough to jump.
Practices 4
- Die complete tonight
Ask each day: what would I need to do today so I could die complete tonight? Orient the arc of the day around those few things. Ian's answer: undivided presence with his wife, time in…
- Write your own eulogy
Skip the self-help books, sit for an hour and write what you want people to say about you when you die, then derive what you must do every day to build that legacy, and do it.
- Die Complete Tonight
Ask yourself: if my head hit the pillow tonight and that was it, what would I need to do today to die complete? Use the answer to cut your priorities down to the one or two things that…
- Death and deathbed visualizations
Guided meditations Ian runs with his men's groups: facing death, picturing yourself in the hospital bed in your last moments (who is around you, what they say), and imagining what cards…
Stories 5
- Ryan Holiday on the Oracle
Tamir happened to be studying the Oracle of Delphi when Ryan Holiday spoke in Vancouver and told how a philosopher asked the Oracle for the best source of wisdom and was told 'the dead'…
- Arguing a dying man into love
Sheela's first husband, Chinmaya, had Hodgkin's disease and a year and a half to live, so he refused to get involved with her because it would be unfair to her. Both loved logic, so she…
- Tamir can't answer 'die complete'
Asked what he'd need to do today to die complete tonight, Tamir says his brain 'produces an error code'. So much of his life is spent on future business goals and visions that today feels…
- Borrowing death salons from Brooklyn
Mia didn't coin 'death salon': she hit it off with a Brooklyn therapist who co-hosts them, gathering strangers to share grief, book excerpts and poetry. Mia has since moved to Boston to…
- Losing her mother at seven
Mia lost her mother at seven. She doesn't remember her voice, laugh or favorite color and barely knew her, yet still feels a strong, 'spooky' connection to her, which is why she won't tell…
Films, music and art 4
- After Life
Ricky Gervais's series about a man grieving his late wife. Colin recalls a woman telling him that happiness is a great thing even if it isn't yours, and a line about planting trees whose…
- The Lord of the Rings
Source of Gollum, the figure Ian used to personify his grasping, needy shadow.
- Face to Face (Carl Jung interview)
1959 BBC interview in which Carl Jung discusses death as psychologically as important as birth; a clip from it opens the episode.
- Succession
Mia calls it a great show but uses it to typify how the West approaches death through inheritance ('how much money am I getting?') rather than ritual.