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Death is ubiquitous. All living creatures die. Life is time limited. Add to these facts Freud's (1920) grim declaration that the “aim of all life is death” (p. 38), and you are struck with a quandary. If death is inevitable, universal, and the eternal rest it offers is a sought-after commodity, then what is all the fuss about the so-called “death anxiety”, or in Freud's (1923) terms, Todesangst? Should not one be calm in the face of the approaching end to life, even, dare I say, relieved to find that an 89 year long struggle is finally coming to an end. Lest this proposal sound preposterous, let me hasten to add that many philosophers, poets, and even psychiatrists, contribute to this view (Akhtar, 2011; Barnes, 2013; Shneidman, 2008).
Yet, many people remain nervous about their mortality and seek solace in all sorts of religious and quasi-religious notions of surviving post-death: heaven and hell, reincarnation, continuing to watch over one's family and friends from the skies above. Such denial of mortality has a more naked form: the search for immortality. Myths and fables about ritualistic practices, magical potions, and divine blessings that can bestow actual immortality upon man abound through historical eras and diverse cultures. Attempts to preserve the human body after death in the hope that it can come back alive some day are sprinkled from time immemorial till today.
More often, immortality remains at the level of metaphor. Here we encounter the Czech novelist, Milan Kundera (1990), who declares that immortality comes in three varieties. Minor immortality refers to the lasting memory of a person in the minds of those who knew him. Great immortality, reserved for poets, artists, and statesmen, denotes the revered posthumous presence of someone in the minds of those who never knew him in person but were deeply affected or moved by his work. Ridiculous immortality is accorded to one who dies under truly ludicrous circumstances. Kundera cites the instance of the