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What can make that process difficult is "the guilt of the survivor"—the usually irrational feeling in those who have survived concentration camps, atomic war or natural disasters that they may somehow have caused the deaths of others, or may have deserved survival no more than others. Stewardess Sharon Transue, for one, reported after the Florida accident: "I kept thinking, I'm alive. Thank God. But I wondered why I was spared. I felt, it's not fair; everyone else is hurt. Why aren't I?" Recalling his own escape from a crash at O'Hare Airport in Chicago, Geologist Richard Ojakangas remembers:
"The plane burst into flames, and my son Greg said, 'Dad, there're still people in there.' It's wonder I feel. Why did we get out and not them?"
Some survivors conclude, unconsciously, that they got out because they possessed a kind of magic invincibility For them, survival is "the moment of power," as Social Critic Elias Canetti puts it, and can confer a lasting sense of being in command of death. In other cases, a feeling of invulnerability precedes survival and can produce a cavalier attitude in the midst of danger. John Rauen Jr., a former Marine who survived World War II combat, reports that "I knew we were going to crash, but I didn't expect to die." Psychiatrist Stein calls this mental invincibility "the silver bullet reaction"—the conviction that "nothing can get me but a silver bullet."
More often, according to Lifton, a brush with death has long-lasting effects because it brings the survivor face to face with his own mortality, especially with the possibility of "premature death and unfulfilled life." Many survivors remain forever "in thrall to their death encounter." For some, the "death spell" takes the form of "fascination with scenes of death and devastation." Others grieve because they have lost their "innocence of death."
As Lifton sees it, every survivor faces a major task: to overcome his psychic numbness, to open himself to his real feelings and to find meaning and value in his encounter with death. "The result," Lifton told TIME last week, "can be an increased capacity to feel, or even the kind of expanded consciousness that many seek in drugs or meditation." It can lead also to a sense of rebirth. Ojakangas finds that "things are different for me now. I appreciate everything more, my children, my family, everything." But he is concerned: "I wonder how long these feelings will last. Will I become too busy again to remember?"