Asked about dreaming, Baba Hari Dass once responded, “Life is also a dream and death is the end of that dream. After death another dream starts.” If so, how convincing a dream! Each of us has a fear, deep or shallow, of the dream’s end. Everything we hold dear, everything we call ourselves, is threatened. So we usually don’t think it, or assure ourselves we believe in an enduring personality or soul, or take a certain comfort in an existential view of our impermanence, futile actors on an empty stage. Most of us just don’t know, and it’s that uncertainty we’d most like to repress. As a culture we desensitize. The media glamorizes and oversaturates us with death — in the news, in sports, in entertainment — with a cartoon flair. Our funerals are hushed and cosmetic, high-priced consolation for the living.