Stephen Levine — Conscious Dying

An icebreaker

A poet and meditation teacher spent decades sitting with dying people and their families, arguing that facing death openly, rather than avoiding it, changes how a person lives.

Ask one of these · tap to take it

What would change if you thought about death more directly?
Is looking at grief straight on different from dwelling on it?
Could sitting with a dying person teach you something living can't?
What do you think 'a good death' would actually look like?

copy the questions

Worth knowing · 1 of 5

What work is he known for?

With his wife, he wrote 'Who Dies?' (1982), one of the first widely read books to treat facing death directly, rather than avoiding it, as part of living fully, drawn from years of sitting with dying people and their families.

Worth knowing · 2 of 5

What was the Dying Project?

Founded around 1980 with support from a fellow teacher's foundation, it offered counseling and guidance to dying people and their families, an early effort to bring this approach to conscious dying to anyone who asked.

Worth knowing · 3 of 5

What does 'conscious dying' mean in his work?

He held it as staying present and aware through the dying process, one's own or someone else's, instead of turning away from pain or fear. It wasn't offered as painless or easy, but as more honest than avoidance.

Worth knowing · 4 of 5

Did he treat grief as something to fix quickly?

No. In later books he described mourning as its own long process deserving direct attention, not something to rush past. If grief turns into despair, your local emergency number or a crisis line is real help.

Worth knowing · 5 of 5

How is his work regarded now?

Hospice and palliative-care writers still cite his and his wife's decades of direct work with dying people as an early, influential model for treating death openly within a therapeutic and spiritual frame, alongside the wider hospice movement that grew up around the same years.

Words to know

Conscious dyingHis term for facing the process of death with direct awareness, rather than distraction, denial, or numbing.

HospiceCare focused on comfort for people with a terminal illness, rather than on curing the underlying disease.

Hanuman FoundationThe organization co-founded around Ram Dass's teaching, under which the Dying Project was established in the 1970s.

More words

Grief workSustained, active attention to mourning a loss, treated in his later books as its own long process.

A voice · 1 of 3

Stephen Levine · Author and meditation teacher

In 'Who Dies?' (1982), co-written with Ondrea, he argued that meeting death and grief with direct awareness, instead of avoidance, was part of living fully, drawing on years of sitting with dying people and their families.

A voice · 2 of 3

Ondrea Levine · Co-author and co-teacher

Alongside Stephen, she co-directed the Dying Project and co-wrote their books on death and grief, drawing on years of sitting with dying people and their families.

A voice · 3 of 3

Ram Dass · Collaborator on the Dying Project

Through his Hanuman Foundation, he backed and worked alongside Levine on the Dying Project, which offered counseling and guidance to dying people and their families and grew out of their shared teaching on conscious dying.

A line to leave them with

He sat with the dying without pretending it was easy.