Welcome to Death Knells
The Death of Fearing Death
This site shares Life-affirming meditations that heal
misconceptions about Death.
Living beautifully and dying beautifully,
Embrace Death
as our Birth into limitless Life Awareness.
misconceptions about Death.
Living beautifully and dying beautifully,
Embrace Death
as our Birth into limitless Life Awareness.
The anthropologist Byrd Gibbens writes,
"Many native traditions held clowns and tricksters
as essential to any contact with the sacred.
People could not pray until they had laughed,
because laughter opens and frees from rigid preconception.
Humans had to have tricksters within the most sacred ceremonies
for fear that they forget
the sacred comes through upset, reversal, surprise.
The trickster in most native traditions
is essential to creation, to birth."
In our laughter,
we understand a little more about life and death.
Colin Dickey
Afterlives of the Saints
If we judge by appearances,
we might think
that you and I are gradually dying
because each day some part of this form
is dying and being reborn again.
But am I dying every day and being reborn?
No, I am intact, I am complete.
Someday each one of you
will have to realize what I am saying to you:
I am I.
I am that I AM,
I always have been, and I always will be.
Should the time come when,
instead of just sloughing off a little of this form each day,
the whole thing drops away,
I will still be I.
In that awareness,
there will be no need for me to reincarnate,
because I will have already died to the belief
that this form is “me.”
This body is only the instrument
that I have been walking around with and using.
It is the vehicle,
the visible form,
but I, myself,
am not in it.
Joel S. Goldsmith:
The Altitude of Prayer
Death is certain.
You may know it or you may not know it;
you may look at it, you may not look at it –
but death is certain.
Still, even with so much certainty
one is afraid to go into it.
One clings with uncertain life,
with dreamlike life.
Death seems to be more real
than whatsoever you call your life.
Buddha says it is difficult to accept death
and move into death,
and it is difficult to disregard so-called life.
But a man of understanding
tarts disregarding life and regarding death.
He respects death more
because death is more certain,
must be more part of reality than so-called life
because the so-called life
is just like dreaming.
OSHO
20 Difficult Things to Accomplish in this World:
life's challenges according to Buddha
Perhaps we should regard ourselves from outside,
somewhat as we regard other people,
and try to have nothing further in common with ourselves:
If, toward myself,
I were to behave as a stranger,
I should see myself die with utter unconcern;
my death would be “mine”
no more than my life.
E. M. Cioran
The New Gods
Our President is a man with a great deal of authority
and power, wealth and fame,
but if he does not know who he really is,
when he departs this period of time
he will find himself in a world just like this one.
May I tell you:
there is no other world
until you escape this world of death.
This I know from experience.
I have sat in a chair with my eyes shut
and stepped into a world of people
just as solid and real as we are right now . .
yet I know I am in an entirely different world.
When you die
you are only dying to this time and space,
for you simply step into another time and space
to continue your dream.
Neville Goddard
Our relationships with one another
are like the chance meeting of two strangers in a parking lot.
They look at each other and smile.
That is all there is between them.
They leave and never see each other again.
That is what life is—j
ust a moment, a meeting, a passing,
and then it is gone.
If you understand this,
there is no time to fight.
There is no time to argue.
There is no time to hurt one another.
Whether you think about it in terms of humanity, nations,
communities, or individuals,
there is no time for anything less
than truly appreciating the brief interaction
we have with one another.
Chagdud Tulku Rinpoche
Life in Relation to Death
The social fear of death
traps us in a playing-it-safe existence
in which we no longer actualize our inborn audacity
to live up to our own ideals.
Julia Assante
The Last Frontier:
Exploring the Afterlife and Transforming Our Fear of Death
The reason we don’t know more about the afterlife
and how to make contact is simple:
we are scared to death about death.
Although the strongest force on earth is love,
I have no doubt
that the second strongest is the fear of death.
Expectations of what is to come
affect every private moment,
shaping what we think and do,
what we hope for,
and what we hold
as the meaning of life and reality in general.
Julia Assante
The Last Frontier:
Exploring the Afterlife and Transforming Our Fear of Death
We can never cease
creating forms of some sort by our mental activity,
thinking life into them.
In our entire ignorance or imperfect realisation of this
we create negative forms and think life into them.
We create forms of death, sickness, sorrow, trouble,
and limitation of all sorts,
and then think life into these forms;
with the result that, however non-existent in themselves,
to us they become realities
and throw their shadow across the path
which would otherwise be bright
with the many-coloured beauties of innumerable flowers
and the glory of the sunshine.
This need not be.
It is giving to the negative an affirmative force
which does not belong to it.
Thomas Troward
The Hidden Power
That which existed is always present;
and that which never existed cannot exist.
What is born?
What is it that dies?
Waking is birth and sleeping is death.
Did your wife accompany you
whenever you attended to your duties
and during your sleep?
She was staying separately somewhere,
but you were then thinking that she was living.
Now after her death
you think that she does not exist.
Therefore the difference about your wife
is in the kind of thoughts that constitutes your sorrow
that she does not exist.
The whole thing is a creation of your mind.
Ramana Maharshi, Paul. Brunton:
Conscious Immortality
Q. What is death?
A. Death is intervening sleep
between two successive births
while sleep intervenes
between two waking states
and both are transient.
Ramana Maharshi, Paul. Brunton:
Conscious Immortality
The bedside of the dying offers a view into eternity.
Like looking through a window into elsewhere,
from time to time I see lights
and twice have had clear views of what appear to be structures.
On both occasions
I saw patients leave their bodies in a cloud form.
I saw them rise out of their bodies
and head toward these structures.
experience of a hospice psychologist
Raymond Moody, Paul Perry: Glimpses of Eternity:
Sharing a Loved One's Passage from this Life to the Next
The deathbed scene is not fully in this world.
And although I am not religious,
hospice work has awakened me to a spiritual dimension of life.
Everyone who works with the dying long enough
must have some awareness of these experiences.
I believe the spiritual experiences of dying people
somehow leak out and pervade the area around them.
If you step into that area with the right temperament,
you will receive, I feel, a sense of the sacred
in the presence of the dying.
I have experienced the room taking on a different configuration.
The only way that I can describe it
is that moving energy pulses through the room.
I often feel something that I can't name.
experience of a hospice psychologist
Raymond Moody, Paul Perry: Glimpses of Eternity:
Sharing a Loved One's Passage from this Life to the Next
Reincarnation, astral planes, survival after death, etc.
are true but only from a lower standpoint.
It is all a matter of standpoint.
From the highest, that of the real Self,
all else disappears as illusory
and only the Reality remains.
It is true that subtle astral bodies exist,
because in order to function in the dream-world
a body is necessary for that world,
but it too is real only on its own plane
whereas the One Self is always real,
always and eternally existent,
whether we are aware of it or not.
Hence it is better to seek that,
because the other self-bodies are only conditionally real.
Ramana Maharshi, Paul. Brunton: Conscious Immortality
There is a traditional Tibetan mind training slogan that reads,
“Regard all dharmas as dreams.”
Trungpa Rinpoche reworded this as
“See everything as a passing memory.”
When we practice recognizing birth and death in every moment,
this becomes our natural way of seeing.
Nothing that happens in our lives
is more fixed or solid than a passing memory.
If we can begin to actually experience this,
it will enrich our lives and our deaths immensely.
Pema Chodron:
Welcoming the Unwelcome
As you contemplate birth and death in every moment,
you start to realize that “you” and “I” have no fixed identities.
This morning’s breakfast, last night’s phone call, yesterday’s errand--
every vignette you have lived through is experienced by “you,”
but that “you” keeps changing.
The main character in one scene goes away,
to be replaced by the main character of the next scene.
It’s a different “you” in every scene.
Even the “you” that began reading this chapter is no longer here.
You and I are continually dissolving and regrouping,
continually experiencing death and rebirth.
Pema Chodron:
Welcoming the Unwelcome
We usually think of birth and death
in terms of the whole cycle this body goes through,
which can take place over many decades.
But every day,
we go through continual cycles of birth and death.
Every event of our lives
has a beginning, a middle, and an end.
First, it comes into being;
it is born. Then it ends; it dies.
And in between these births and deaths,
there are many smaller moments
with their own births and deaths.
Every day is made of countless moments,
and each of these precious moments
ends and becomes a past lifetime.
Pema Chodron:
Welcoming the Unwelcome
If you fight death,
refusing to consider an illness fatal,
delighting when someone minimizes your illness
and hating when someone says it is serious,
fussing with doctors,
making impossible prayers and vows,
thinking in a confused manner,
making no final statement
even though your illness gradually worsens,
this is like the death of a dog or cat.
To spoil your one and only last hour like this
is a slovenly way to die,
resulting from failure to keep death in mind at all times.
Hating to hear when someone dies,
feeling that you will be in this world forever,
being deeply desirous and greedy for life--
if you go onto a battlefield with such a cowardly attitude,
there is no way you can die a splendid death
in the cause of loyalty and duty.
This is why those who cultivate warriorship
refer even to dying in bed of sickness
as the“once-in-a-lifetime major event.”
Code of the Samurai
Translated by Thomas Cleary
Your journey on Earth
is part of your spiritual legacy,
for death does not destroy consciousness --
you continue to learn and grow and experience life
in numerous cycles of time.
Part of living involves knowing how to die;
you can learn to intentionally walk through your fear of the unknown
and to use your will and intent
to ride your consciousness into another reality,
graciously leaving behind your physical form.
Death is part of life.
It is not a random act;
it is rather a timely agreement,
and you have more power over your life and death
than you realize.
Barbara Marciniak:
Path of Empowerment
When very young children die--
called in Goethe’s Faust, the ‘midnight-born’--
their etheric bodies are very old, senescent,
yet strong in will.
Such etheric bodies will be able to work vigorously
upon those that have passed through a long life,
that come from the old.
The death of young people,
the mystery of their death,
is wisely interwoven with the whole of our evolutionary fabric,
for these early deaths provide the seeds
for soul capacities that humanity needs in its further evolution.
Rudolf Steiner: Growing Old
Death seen from the world of spirit
brings us proof that the spirit is always victorious
over all that is not spirit,
that spirit is invariably life everlasting,
an ever-replenished source.
It is in fact proof
that there is in reality no death,
that death is maya, illusion.
Herein lies the great difference
between life that lasts from death to rebirth,
and the life here on earth from birth to death.
Rudolf Steiner: Growing Old
Death is something that, more than anything else,
has two totally different aspects.
Seen from here, from the physical world,
death no doubt has many aspects that are painful and comfortless.
But it really is true to say
that we only see death from one perspective here,
and after death see it from a quite different one:
there it becomes the most fulfilling, consummate event
that we can experience, a living reality.
Rudolf Steiner: Growing Old
Life moves on,
whether we act as cowards or as heroes.
Life has no other discipline to impose,
if we would but realize it,
than to accept life unquestioningly.
Everything we shut our eyes to,
everything we run away from,
everything we deny, denigrate or despise,
serves to defeat us in the end.
What seems nasty, painful, evil,
can become a source of beauty, joy and strength,
if faced with open mind.
Every moment is a golden one
for him who has the vision to recognize it as such.
Life is now, every moment,
no matter if the world be full of death.
Death triumphs only in the service of life.
Henry Miller:
The World of Sex
So far as the creative individual goes
life and death are of equal value;
it is all a question of counterpoint.
What is of vital concern, however,
is how and where one meets life—or death.
Life can be more deadly than death,
and death on the other hand
can open up the road to life.
Henry Miller:
Max and the White Phagocytes
It is one thing to die into a dead world and,
metaphorically speaking,
leave one’s bones to bleach on a desert
lit only by a dying star.
It is another thing to die into the actual world,
which seethes with life,
with agency other than our own,
and, at the very least,
with endless possibility.
For those of us, which is probably most of us,
who—with or without drugs or religion--
have caught glimpses of this animate universe,
death is not a terrifying leap into the abyss,
but more like an embrace of ongoing life.
Barbara Ehrenreich: Natural Causes:
An Epidemic of Wellness, the Certainty of Dying,
and Killing Ourselves to Live Longer
People should not be afraid of dying.
Death is no more to be feared than breathing.
Dying is as natural and as painless as … blinking your eyes.
And that’s almost the way it is.
At one moment you’re in one plane of existence
and you blink your eyes, so to speak,
and you’re in another plane of existence.
That’s about the physical sensation you have,
and it’s as painless as that.
Dolores Cannon: Between Life and Death:
Conversations With A Spirit
From this side of life,
death appears to be a dissolution,
something in face of which the human being
has a ready fear and dread.
From the other side,
death appears as the light-filled beginning
of experience of the Spirit,
as that which spreads a sun-radiance
over the whole of the subsequent life
between death and a new birth;
as that which most of all warms the soul through
with joy in the life between death and a new birth.
The moment of death
is something that is looked back upon
with a deep sense of blessing.
Described in earthly terms:
the moment of death,
viewed from the other side,
is the most joyful,
the most enrapturing point
in the life between death and a new birth.
Rudolf Steiner
Beat upon beat, beat upon beat,
our lives inch forward,
the increments of change so small we don’t notice them.
For months, years,
we can maintain the illusion of our immutability.
For illusion it is.
Underneath,
in the dark hidden recesses of our bodies,
change is constant.
Cell death, cell replacement:
an unrelenting cycle of growth and renewal,
of decay and decline.
Until, at last,
this quiet change
that has been wreaking its havoc in the darkness
announces itself to us.
It may be quietly done.
A persistent cough; nothing to worry about.
Or simply a noticeable loss of appetite.
Phil Dwyer: Conversations on Dying:
A Palliative-Care Pioneer Faces His Own Death
If you believe that life is immortal
and that your life is eternal,
you must believe
that even should you for any reason at all
experience death or passing,
that would only be a momentary lapse from consciousness.
You would immediately pick yourself up
and go right on
because consciousness cannot end;
consciousness does not stop at the grave.
Life does not end at the grave:
Life is eternal,
and that life manifests itself eternally
as what we call our individual experience.
Joel S. Goldsmith:
CONSCIOUS UNION WITH GOD
If one were conscious of his union with Life,
he would never fear death.
Ernest Holmes: The Art of Life
Now I’m here with you.
We’re talking, there’s this table between us, there are pictures on the wall,
and we’re in this space together.
Then this experience will be over.
It’ll be another memory.
It’ll pass away and never be the same again.
And you and I both will be in another lifetime.
This morning was like a past lifetime,
our conversation now will soon be another past lifetime,
and then there’ll be another lifetime after that.
Things are continuously being born and ceasing.
And it will keep going like that
in a continuous flow
for all of eternity.
Anam Thubten Rinpoche speaking with Pema Chodron
Pema Chodron:
Welcoming the Unwelcome
Every sentient being begins to die
from the moment it is created.
A simple glance at the phenomenal manifestation in the correct perspective
is enough to bring home to us
the utter unreality of the process of life and death,
which then gets translated naturally
into sweet surrender to That Which Is.
Ramesh S. Balsekar:
A Net of Jewels
What is born must in due course die.
The objective body will thereafter be dissolved
and irrevocably annihilated.
What was once a sentient being will be destroyed,
never to be reborn.
But the consciousness is not objective,
not a thing at all.
Therefore, consciousness is neither born nor dies,
and certainly cannot be ‘reborn’.
Ramesh S. Balsekar:
A Net of Jewels
I’ve observed a number of people die.
When they’ve made a relationship to death,
they’re usually able to let go
and make the transition more easily.
But if they’re afraid of death,
it can be painful to watch.
You see a terror in their eyes
as if they’re being pushed into a deep pit.
Having witnessed both of these kinds of death,
I know which way I want to go.
This has been a very important inspiration for me
to keep contemplating death.
Now, having worked with it for a long time,
I no longer see death as frightening.
And I’ve started to teach more about death
because I feel that being so afraid of it
is really unnecessary.
Pema Chodron:
Welcoming the Unwelcome
Cultivating the experience of emptiness
will give us a context for what’s going on
when the bottom falls out of our lives.
It will give us a way of facing the most difficult and disorienting times--
such as illness, loss, and eventually our own death--
without so much despair and rejection.
Pema Chodron:
Welcoming the Unwelcome
Fundamentally we are already within the higher worlds
every time we go to sleep,
for in sleep we enter unconsciously
the same realm we enter after death.
Rudolf Steiner:
Life between Death and Rebirth
After death
many things appear vividly before the soul
of which it had no inkling during life.
Rudolf Steiner:
Life between Death and Rebirth
Our present waking life is actually just a dream
that is occurring in our imaginary sleep of self-forgetfulness or self-ignorance.
When we imaginarily ignore or forget our real self,
which is infinite being, consciousness and happiness,
we seemingly separate ourself from the perfect happiness that is our own self.
Therefore until we reunite with our own reality,
which is absolute happiness,
we cannot rest,
except during the brief but necessary interludes that we experience
in sleep, death and other such states,
in which our mind subsides
in a state of temporary abeyance or inactivity.
Michael James: Happiness and the Art of Being:
An introduction to the philosophy and practice
of the spiritual teachings of
Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharshi
I live without inhabiting myself
In such a way that I am dying
So that I do not die.
St John of the Cross
Although he described his experience of death in so many words,
he explained that this truth actually dawned upon him in an instant,
not as reasoning or verbalised thoughts,
but as a direct experience,
without the least action of mind.
So intense was his fear and consequent urge to know the truth of death,
that without actually thinking anything
he turned his attention away from his rigid and lifeless body
and towards the innermost core of his being –
his essential, unadulterated and non-dual self-consciousness
‘I am’.
Because his attention was so keenly focused on his consciousness of being,
the true nature of that being-consciousness revealed itself
as a flash of direct and certain knowledge –
knowledge that was so direct and certain
that it could never be doubted.
Michael James: Happiness and the Art of Being:
An introduction to the philosophy and practice
of the spiritual teachings of Bhagavan Sri Ramana
All right, death has come!
What is death?
What is it that dies?
This body is going to die –
let it die.
Ramana Maharshi
Pressing and poignant though the problem of my mortality,
of the end of this life – certainly is,
it is not the problem.
The crucial question is:
who is mortal?
Whose life is it, in any case?
Solve that puzzle,
and the rest follows.
There is no other way.
Douglas Harding:
The Little Book of Life and Death
When I say 'I shall die' I flatter myself!
I never lived!
And obviously what never lived can never die.
As this non-living, non-dying Source of life and death,
I'm way beyond both.
Douglas Harding:
The Little Book of Life and Death
To die is different from
What anyone supposes
And luckier.
Walt Whitman
Free yourself from the fear of death,
for death puts the yoke about our necks;
then free yourself from the fear of poverty.
If you would know how little evil there is in poverty,
compare the faces of the poor with those of the rich;
the poor man smiles more often and more genuinely;
his troubles do not go deep down;
even if any anxiety comes upon him,
it passes like a fitful cloud.
But the merriment of those whom men call happy is feigned,
while their sadness is heavy and festering,
and all the heavier because they may not meanwhile
display their grief,
but must act the part of happiness
in the midst of sorrows
that eat out their very hearts.
Seneca: Letters from a Stoic
This one thing, however, you do know –
that death is helpful to many,
that it sets many free from tortures,
want, ailments, sufferings, and weariness.
We are in the power of nothing
when once we have death in our own power!
Farewell.
Seneca: Letters from a Stoic
I feel that age has done no damage to my mind,
though I feel its effects on my constitution.
Only my vices,
and the outward aids to these vices,
have reached senility;
my mind is strong and rejoices
that it has but slight connexion with the body.
It has laid aside the greater part of its load.
It is alert;
it takes issue with me on the subject of old age;
it declares that old age is its time of bloom.
Seneca: Letters from a Stoic
Now comes the greatest revelation that you have ever had:
all that appears as human experience is but an illusion.
You are destined to prove the greatest revelation,
that even death is an illusion.
This is the highest revelation ever given to the world,
the revelation that ultimately will be its salvation.
Death in its most cruel form is an illusion.
Joel S. Goldsmith:
Collected Essays
The appearance called death is not death,
and the appearance called birth
could never be the beginning of Life.
Life has no beginning and no ending.
This Life which is God is Self-maintained and Self-sustained
and has no opposite and no opposition.
There is no power apart from the one Life,
which is your life and my life,
and that Life is eternal.
Joel S. Goldsmith:
CONSCIOUS UNION WITH GOD
Death strikes terror into your hearts.
But you will only begin to live when you are “dead.”
Now you live but in reality you are almost dead.
There are no words to compare
the life in your world of matter
with the life in the world of spirit.
We who are “dead”
know so much more of life than you do.
A. W. Austen:
The Teachings of Silver Birch
You have not tasted the joys of the world of spirit.
There is nothing in your world of matter
with which you can compare the life of the spirit,
freed from the trammels of the flesh,
escaped from the prison of the body of matter,
with liberty to go where you will,
to see your thoughts take shape,
to follow out the desires of your heart,
to be freed from the troubles of money.
No, you have not tasted the joys of the world of spirit.
You who are encased in matter,
do not yet comprehend beauty as it can be.
You have not seen our light, colour, scenery,
trees, birds, rivers, streams, mountains, flowers--
and yet your world fears death.
A. W. Austen:
The Teachings of Silver Birch
The whole process of leaving the earth
—of dying--
is a perfectly natural one.
It is merely the operation of a natural law.
But for thousands of years the generality of people
have lived in entire ignorance
of the truth of “dying” and of the “hereafter.”
And in this, as in so many cases,
ignorance, or lack of knowledge,
means fear.
It is fear of the future following upon “death”
that has surrounded the act of transition
with so many mournful and morbid solemnities
and doleful trappings.
Anthony Borgia: The World Unseen
Your elders are no closer to their death
than you are to yours.
Your death and theirs are at the end
of the shuffle of your days and their days.
Oh, you may have more upright days than older people,
if you were to start counting the days from now.
But why call today the magic beginning of anything,
no matter how important you feel today,
no matter what that fridge magnet in your kitchen says?
We miss the beginnings of almost everything, truth be known.
We catch up to them after they’ve already begun,
if fortune and mercy mingle and the Gods prevail.
Most everything in life
begins somewhere in our hindsight.
Stephen Jenkinson:
Come of Age
Man has neglected the most important study of all
—the study of himself,
and, arising from it,
the study of his ultimate destination
when, after his very, very brief span of life on earth,
the time comes for him to leave it at “death”
and to journey forth—where?
What man does not realize
is that he is a spirit, first, last, and always.
The physical body is merely a vehicle for his spirit body
upon his journey through his earthly life.
Anthony Borgia: The World Unseen
For everyone living in the U.S., Canada, Britain, and other countries,
How To Die In Oregon is a must-see documentary
that reveals the empathy and humanity of “Death With Dignity” legislation,
and why every terminally ill patient
should have the option of assisted death.
Elaine Feuer:
To Gently Leave This Life:
The Right To Die
If it is true
that the birthday is a continuation day,
then what you call the day of death
is also a continuation day.
If your practice is strong,
at the moment of dying
you will sing a song of happy continuation.
Thich Nhat Hanh:
No Death, No Fear
Some fifteen or so years ago,
neuroscientists discovered that the active ingredients of opium
are produced inside the brain.
These chemicals are called endogenous opiates, or endorphins.
It was also discovered
that when a person is under severe stress
—such as facing death--
these substances are released
and cause analgesia, a loss of sensitivity to pain.
Hence if somebody is confronting death,
it is conceivable that he or she
could in fact be having an opium experience.
That’s a possible reason why
it would seem blissful and pleasant and very luminous.
Sleeping, Dreaming, and Dying:
An Exploration of Consciousness
Once the spontaneity of the whole process of manifestation
in its totality is apprehended
and the hollowness of the distinction
between “self” and “other” is realized,
there cannot possibly be any more question
of a separate individual
who can either be “born” or “die.”
Ramesh S. Balsekar: A Net of Jewels:
Daily Meditations for Seekers of Truth
I teach dying people meditation
and encourage them not to shy away from the altered states
that come in the course of the experience of dying,
but to establish a strong mental foundation
so that they can investigate these states
with some degree of equanimity.
Joan Halifax
Befriending our death is a lifelong spiritual task
but a task that, in all its different nuances,
deeply affects our relationships with our fellow human beings.
Every step we take toward deeper self-understanding
brings us closer to those with whom we share our lives.
As we learn, over time,
to live the truth that death does not have a sting,
we find within ourselves the gift to guide others
to discover the same truth.
We do not first do one of these things and later the other.
Befriending our own death
and helping others to befriend theirs
are inseparable.
Henri J. M. Nouwen: Our Greatest Gift:
A Meditation on Dying and Caring
When you get ready to die,
do not worry about the usual things,
like following rituals or taking care of everyday business.
Be prepared
so that you can die in the best way possible.
Use all the mighty influence
of those powerful strong minutes of death,
when a person exists partially in the other world,
and his words and deeds have special power
over those who remain in this world.
Leo Tolstoy:
A Calendar of Wisdom
There are two different states of human existence:
first, to live without thinking of death;
second, to live with the thought that you approach death with every hour of your life.
The more you transform your life from the material to the spiritual domain,
the less you become afraid of death.
A person who lives a truly spiritual life
has no fear of death.
Leo. Tolstoy:
A Calendar of Wisdom
Not all will admit they are dying,
not even to themselves.
Unbelievable as it may seem,
some people go through the dying process with such denial
that they realize their condition is irreversible only after death.
Several dead I have worked with took days
to fully come to terms with their new situation...
Difficult adjustments are usually short-term,
lasting no more than a few days from our standpoint.
And someone is always on the other side ready to assist.
If the dying were to explore the afterlife as it is actually lived,
postmortem turmoil would all but cease.
Julia Assante: The Last Frontier:
Exploring the Afterlife and Transforming Our Fear of Death
I tell you:
there isn’t a thing that does not exist now and here.
We speak of the moon as billions of years old;
but you cannot measure your age
because there never was a time when you were not,
nor will there ever be a time when you will cease to be.
You didn’t begin in time.
You came down into time--
which you, yourself created--
to experience good and evil,
to expand the being that you always were.
Even though your birth certificate shows you began in time,
you didn’t,
for you are the wearer of the garment.
Neville Goddard:
Infinite Potential
Death and birth are two limits,
and something similar is hidden behind each.
When you think about what will happen to your soul after death,
think also about what happened to your soul before your birth.
If you plan to go somewhere,
then you came from somewhere.
Where do we go after death?
We go to where we came from.
There is nothing which can be called ourselves in that land;
therefore, we do not remember
what has happened to us there.
Leo Tolstoy:
A Calendar of Wisdom
You are the sea, and the sky, and the earth,
and the man dying on the other side of this planet.
You are the child being born.
You are death itself,
and life itself,
because the eternity of being
is known as broadcast in coherence to this majesty that is life itself.
It is not that the individuated self is extinguished.
The individuated self is expressed as all.
Paul Selig:
Beyond the Known: Realization
Life is just a dance,
the purpose and meaning of which
is only to dance,
and when the dance is over,
you are precisely where you were -
on the floor.
When you dance,
there is no expectation of anything to achieve.
Before you started to dance,
you were still
and then there was movement when the dance began,
and when the dance ended,
there was again stillness.
You were born and the movement began;
when you are dead,
the movement will have ceased
and "you" will be back in that state of rest
which existed before you were born.
Ramesh S. Balsekar. Final Truth:
A Guide to Ultimate Understanding
Consciousness as such is all that "one" is.
This conviction leads to what may be called a "noumenal living",
disidentified from the phenomenal object.
Living noumenally means being in non-objective relation with all things.
Being in non-objective relation with all things
means living without volition.
Living without volition means ceasing to objectify.
Living in pure thought ("I Am")
prior to "name and form"
means merely witnessing (without reaction)
all events which are indeed "moved only by the Will of God".
This is what disidentification means.
Identification means separation and conflict.
Ramesh S. Balsekar. Final Truth:
A Guide to Ultimate Understanding
Our effort to separate one pole of a magnet from the other
can only mean breaking the magnet itself.
The "freed" sage is no longer interested
in manipulating the opposites
so as to choose one from the other.
He is content to accept both
as the very basis of life.
He fully understands that what-is,
is not good against evil,
not life against death.
There is a center of attention,
an awareness
that witnesses and transcends both.
Ramesh S. Balsekar. Final Truth:
A Guide to Ultimate Understanding
As you address eternity,
which is only known in the moment you are embodied in,
death itself is just a re-articulation to a new way of being.
If you are not frightened of the loss of the body,
if you welcome the opportunity
to move beyond this plane to your next encounter,
if you are willing to be known in a high octave while present here,
the transformation through death,
which is simply your participation
in the eternal cycles of life that you see out-pictured upon this plane,
you will decide that the freedom you have claimed
in the announcement “I am free, I am free, I am free”
must include the fear of the release of the physical self.
Paul Selig: Beyond the Known: Realization
Life and death are brother and sister,
who work hand in hand to further the evolutionary process.
We see death as something frightful,
but just try to imagine what would happen
if death ceased to do its work –
that would be far worse.
Omraam Mikhaël Aivanhov:
Cosmic Balance; the Secret of Polarity
Old heart cells can’t go to heaven,
yet they survive physical death in their own way.
Your whole body does the same,
putting itself into the grave
and rising from the dead thousands of times a minute
as old matter is exchanged for new.
Deepak Chopra:
Life After Death
Death itself is a lie
only at the level of the false self,
because the True Self cannot die and is eternal.
The small self, and the idea of death,
and its fear of it is what must be understood
to be moved beyond.
The idea of mortality--
“I am in a mortal plane, having a mortal experience”--
is certainly true.
But you exist in multiple dimensions simultaneously.
The Divine Self that is who and what you are
must be comprehended as eternal,
and eternity must be seen in the moment you stand in
for this to be comprehended.
Paul Selig:
Beyond the Known: Realization
The human inquiry into the mysteries of life and the nature of the soul
is acute during bereavement.
When a loved one dies,
we have no choice but to face up to nearly imponderable questions.
Most of us open ourselves up
to the questions death demands of us.
We don’t necessarily do this by choice, mind you.
Death does not ask permission.
Although we may accept death’s invitation with trepidation,
many of us find that the experience
is not as frightening as we anticipated.
Many of us discover, in fact,
that we have found something quite profound
hidden in the experience.
George A. Bonanno:
The Other Side of Sadness:
What the New Science of Bereavement
Tells Us About Life After Loss
The death of a loved one may come as a relief
even when caregiving is not involved.
There are times when we can do nothing
but lessen a loved one’s suffering;
their death comes as a relief
mainly because it brings an end to their misery.
A loved one’s death may also bring changes to our lives
that we couldn’t have imagined.
Sometimes a loved one’s death
opens new doors.
George A. Bonanno:
The Other Side of Sadness:
What the New Science of Bereavement
Tells Us About Life After Loss
We’re all going to die,
all of us,
what a circus!
That alone should make us love each other
but it doesn’t.
We are terrorized and flattened by trivialities,
we are eaten up by nothing.
Charles Bukowski
One medicinal use of LSD
that touches on fundamental ethical questions
is its administration to the dying.
This practice arose from observations in American clinics
that especially severe painful conditions of cancer patients,
which no longer respond to conventional pain-relieving medication,
could be alleviated or completely abolished by LSD.
It is especially crucial that patients be prepared and instructed
about the kind of experiences and transformations that await them.
Numerous case histories tell of patients
who gained meaningful insights about life and death on their deathbed as,
freed from pain in LSD ecstasy and reconciled to their fate,
they faced their earthly demise fearlessly and in peace.
Albert Hofmann:
LSD My Problem Child
In a deep metaphysical sense
all that is conditioned is illusory.
All phenomena are literally "appearances",
the outer masks in which the One Reality
shows itself forth in our changing universe.
The more "material" and solid the appearance,
the further is it from Reality,
and therefore the more illusory it is.
What can be a greater fraud than our body,
so apparently solid, stable, visible and tangible?
It is a constantly changing congeries of minute living particles,
an attractive centre into which stream continually
myriads of tiny invisibles,
that become visible by their aggregation at this centre,
and then stream away again,
becoming invisible by reason of their minuteness
as they separate off from this aggregation.
In comparison with this ever-shifting but apparently stable body
how much less illusory is the mind,
which is able to expose the pretensions of the body
and put it in its true light.
The mind is constantly imposed on by the senses,
and Consciousness,
the most real thing in us,
is apt to regard itself as the unreal.
In truth, it is the thought-world that is the nearest to reality,
and things become more and more illusory
as they take on more and more of a phenomenal character.
Annie Besant:
Death-- And After?
At the solemn moment of death every man,
even when death is sudden,
sees the whole of his past life marshalled before him,
in its minutest details.
For one short instant
the _personal_ become one
with the _individual_ and all-knowing Ego.
But this instant is enough
to show to him the whole chain of causes
which have been at work during his life.
He sees and now understands himself as he is,
unadorned by flattery or self-deception.
He reads his life,
remaining as a spectator,
looking down into the arena he is quitting.
Annie Besant: Death-- And After?
death should be loved constantly…
separation thought of vigilantly…
termination a constant friend…
never should we ever forget this will all end
what other purpose does accomplishment serve,
than to unite with the cosmos
beyond space and time?
Mantak Chia: Endless Cosmic Orgasm:
Darkness Retreat for Lucid Living,
Lucid Dreaming & Lucid Death
There are many people,
particularly in our materialistic age,
who ask why they should concern themselves
with life between death and rebirth or,
if the idea of repeated earth lives is rejected,
with an existence after death,
since they surely can wait and see what happens
after death when the time comes!
This is said by people today
who have not quite lost the feeling for the spiritual world
but who are not yet equipped with sufficient soul-powers
to acquire concepts and feelings about the super-sensible.
They add that if they perform their duty here on earth,
they shall experience in the appropriate way
what awaits them after death.
Now a genuine connection with life between death and rebirth
brings out clearly the fallacy of such a view
and how important it is during earthly existence
to have formed an idea of the conditions of life after death.
Rudolf Steiner:
Life Between Death and Rebirth
It is important to understand
the necessity of preparing yourselves for sleep every evening
as for a sacred journey,
so as to be ready, one day,
for the far more decisive journey of death.
Just as our attitude as we fall asleep
is important for the following day,
the attitude at the moment of death
is of vital importance for the next incarnation.
The attitude of a dying man
has repercussions in the next world
which continue until his next incarnation,
for no single phenomenon, no thought,
feeling or action, can exist in isolation;
every single thing has both a cause and consequences,
whether immediate or remote.
Omraam Mikhaël Aïvanhov:
Looking into the Invisible:
Intuition, Clairvoyance, Dreams
Just before you go to sleep,
commend yourself into the hands of the angel of death –
known to the Cabbalah as the angel of sleep –
for each night we die
and each morning we rise from the dead.
To go to sleep, to leave our physical body,
is something we practise every night
in order to be ready when the time comes
for our true departure to the next world.
Someone who is not good at going to sleep
will be no better at dying.
There is no difference between dying and going to sleep,
except that when we die
we leave our present house for good,
whereas when we go to sleep,
although we leave our house,
we remain attached to it by the silver cord.
Omraam Mikhaël Aïvanhov:
Looking into the Invisible:
Intuition, Clairvoyance, Dreams
Life on earth is a sleep.
This is why it is true to say
that death is an awakening in the next world.
But, even there, man is still asleep –
more lightly, to be sure –
but he is still asleep.
Omraam Mikhaël Aïvanhov:
Looking into the Invisible:
Intuition, Clairvoyance, Dreams
Everyone will live after what you call death,
not because of believing in a creed,
a doctrine or dogma,
but because it is an unalterable natural law.
It has nothing to do with religion.
Silver Birch
I AM NOT I
I am not I.
I am this one
walking beside me whom I do not see,
whom at times I manage to visit,
and whom at other times I forget;
who remains calm and silent while I talk,
and forgives, gently, when I hate,
the walks were I am not,
who will remain standing when I die.
Juan Ramon Jimenez
There is only one ego appearing as many.
Among the seemingly separated ones
there is no belief where compromise is more willingly accepted
than the belief in the dream of death.
If death is real for anything,
there is no life.
Death denies life.
But if there is reality in life,
death is denied.
Gary R. Renard:
The Disappearance of the Universe
You should look at the illusory death of your physical body
as graduation day.
It means you’ve gotten all you’re supposed to get
out of this particular, temporary classroom.
The lessons have been learned!
It should be a celebration.
I assure you it will be a lot of fun.
In most cases,
if people knew what freedom from the body is like
they wouldn’t mourn the dead--
they’d be jealous.
Gary R. Renard:
The Disappearance of the Universe
Your journey on Earth
is part of your spiritual legacy,
for death does not destroy consciousness --
you continue to learn and grow
and experience life in numerous cycles of time.
Part of living involves knowing how to die;
you can learn to intentionally walk through your fear of the unknown
and to use your will and intent
to ride your consciousness into another reality,
graciously leaving behind your physical form.
Death is part of life.
It is not a random act;
it is rather a timely agreement,
and you have more power
over your life and death than you realize.
Barbara Marciniak: Path of Empowerment
Pleiadian Wisdom For A World In Chaos
Today, I woke before daylight
to an invitation from Death.
Like my Aztec ancestors,
I welcome it with the gratitude of a warrior
who has fought well
and wishes for a safe homecoming . . .
and a long rest.
Don Miguel Ruiz:
The Toltec Art of Life and Death
When you are on earth,
the spirit world is regarded as the “life after death”, the next world”,
and is treated solely from the religious standpoint,
except by a comparatively select few.
I call them select because those few possess the truth--
not all the truth, naturally,
but sufficient for absolute comfort.
The religions of the earth have assumed rights over this life
to which they are not entitled.
The passing from earth to the spirit world i
s not a religious affair whatever,
it’s a purely natural process,
and one that cannot be avoided.
Living a good life on earth is not a religious matter.
Why should it be?
Anthony Borgia:
More About Life in the World Unseen
Some feel compelled to make sure
they have done everything they can to ease the journey into eternity.
They sit down, hold both my hands,
lock eyes, assume the countenance of a longtime hemorrhoid sufferer
and grill me about their version of redemption.
They then use their close association with the Almighty
to broker a good plea bargain on my behalf.
I know they mean well.
But so do I when I say:
Please don’t.
Eddie Ryshavy
excerpt from this commentary published one week before his death:
Thoughts for the living from one of the dying
http://www.startribune.com/thoughts-for-the-living-from-one-of-the-dying/565907532/
This place is a dream.
Only a sleeper considers it real.
Then death comes like dawn,
and you wake up laughing
at what you thought was your grief.
Rumi
HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!
At the moment of death,
you engage the deepest mysteries of the universe--
you may do your most profound spiritual work
in your last few minutes.
Whether or not you believe in reincarnation
or even heaven,
prepare yourself by letting go of self-judgment and regret
to be as peaceful, receptive, and loving as possible
during your last moment.
Ram Dass.
Walking Each Other Home:
Conversations on Loving and Dying
GODSPEED BABA RAM DASS
I have come to understand death
as a rite of passage.
We start out identified with the body and ego.
Then, we let go of the physical plane and begin to identify with soul--
The soul has experienced many deaths,
so the more gracefully and fully
you can identify with soul,
the less you will fear.
Ram Dass.
Walking Each Other Home:
Conversations on Loving and Dying
GODSPEED BABA RAM DASS
Being in nature is helpful.
Sitting in a forest,
looking at the fallen trees and other things that are rotting,
at new shoots growing,
at everything changing,
at flowers blooming and dying.
We are part of nature.
Trees and flowers don’t resist death.
Ram Dass.
Walking Each Other Home:
Conversations on Loving and Dying
GODSPEED BABA RAM DASS
How can brave endurance of death
be anything else than glorious,
and fit to rank among the greatest accomplishments
of the human mind?
For the mind will never rise to virtue
if it believes that death is an evil;
but it will so rise
if it holds that death
is a matter of indifference.
Marcus Aurelius:
Meditations
All discussions
revolving around the reality or falsity of the world
are mere distraction.
Deeply investigate
the reality or falsity of yourself
and all other questions
will fall away.
Roy Melvyn:
Life Never Dies
Altogether the interval is small between birth and death;
and consider with how much trouble,
and in company with what sort of people
and in what a feeble body this interval is laboriously passed.
Do not then consider life a thing of any value.
For look to the immensity of time behind thee,
and to the time which is before thee,
another boundless space.
In this infinity
then what is the difference
between him who lives three days
and him who lives three generations?
Marcus Aurelius:
Meditations
The fear of death
is actually a product of the desire to perpetuate one’s identity.
Were you not dead before you were born?
Those who know Reality
know the falsehood of life and death.
Ramesh S. Balsekar:
A Net of Jewels
He remembered how the old folk used to die back home.
They didn’t puff themselves up
or fight against it and brag that they weren’t going to die--
they took death calmly.
They didn’t stall squaring things away,
they prepared themselves quietly and in good time,
deciding who should have the mare, who the foal....
And they departed easily,
as if they were just moving into a new house.
Alexander Solzhenitsyn:
The Cancer Ward
The majority of humans have a concept of life
which is leading them to death:
physical death or spiritual death
and sometimes both.
Of course, we are all going to die one day,
but that shouldn’t stop us
from studying the one true science:
the science of life.
To be alive
means to be in a constant state of wonder,
to always see people and things
as if for the first time.
Omraam Mikhaël Aïvanhov:
Sons and Daughters of God
This is how Death operates:
it favors no person over another
and nourishes every life.
Those who embrace it
find peace and contentment
no matter what happens.
Karen Wyatt, MD. The Tao of Death:
The Secret to a Rich & Meaningful Life
…that’s the only death,
that’s the real death.
Not this death when you depart the body,
but being dead
while you are alive,
that’s the real death.
Henry Miller
This Is Henry, Henry Miller from Brooklyn
…to make a voyage is only an idea, that there is nothing in life but voyage, voyage within voyage. And that death is not the last voyage but the beginning of a new voyage and nobody knows why or whither, but bon voyage just the same.
Henry Miller
The Cosmological Eye
Immediately after death,
and particularly if cremation has taken place,
man is as much aware and alert to his environment
as he was upon the physical plane when alive.
He becomes consciously aware of himself.
This involves a clarity of perception
unknown to the average man
whilst in physical incarnation.
Alice A. Bailey:
Esoteric Healing
And then a Word sounds forth.
The descended, radiating point of light ascends,
responsive to the dimly heard recalling note,
attracted to its emanating source.
This man calls death
and this the soul calls life.
Alice A. Bailey:
Esoteric Healing
Death comes to the individual man
in the ordinary sense of the term
when the will-to-live in a physical body goes
and the will-to-abstract takes its place.
This we call death.
Alice A. Bailey:
Esoteric Healing
I used to shrink from what I called death.
There are those on this side who shrink from--
what they call death.
Do you know what they call death?
It is rebirth into the world.
Yes, even so.
Elsa Barker:
Letters From a Living Dead Man
While living be a dead man,
thoroughly dead.
Then, whatever you do,
just as you will,
will be right.
Bunan
As long as you do not know
how to die and come to life again,
you are but a sorry traveler
on this dark earth.
Goethe
It has always been known
that the capacity to accept death in the midst of life--
to swing with a conventionally intolerable vibration--
is a source of immense creative power.
“Unless a grain of corn falls into the ground and dies,
it remains isolated.
But if it dies,
it brings forth much fruit.”
Alan Watts: Does It Matter?:
Essays on Man's Relation to Materiality
That I exist is a perpetual surprise.
Rabindranath Tagore
What characterizes the rare one, the wise one,
is the fact that he lives in this world
as if he is not in it.
He is in fact not even concerned
whether he lives or dies.
He thinks and lives vertically
in a world that moves horizontally.
Hence, he remains unintelligible
and unrecognizable
to the average person.
Ramesh S.. Balsekar:
A Net of Jewels
If you have lived a life of awareness,
possibly, you will stay aware in your last moments.
Hence cultivate awareness:
for irrespective of how death comes to you,
you have the ability to die well.
For seekers,
leaving this body consciously
and walking away without damaging it
– just like shedding your clothes –
is the ultimate aspiration.
If you know how to disentangle your being from the physical body,
you can exit whenever the moment is right for you.
This is the ultimate preparation you can make for your death.
Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev
What is death?
The named form and its behaviors are no longer.
That's the extent of it.
When the relative is over,
the Absolute remains.
Roy Melvyn:
Life Never Dies
At the far end of the stage of the world’s play I stand.
Each moment do I see
the shore beyond the darkness
where in the vast consciousness of the Unmanifest
I once lay merged.
Rabindranath Tagore
Do not despise death,
but be well content with it,
since this too is one of those things which nature wills.
For such as it is to be young and to grow old,
and to increase and to reach maturity,
and to have teeth and beard and grey hairs,
and to beget, and to be pregnant and to bring forth,
and all the other natural operations
which the seasons of thy life bring,
such also is dissolution.
This, then, is consistent
with the character of a reflecting man,
to be neither careless nor impatient
nor contemptuous with respect to death,
but to wait for it
as one of the operations of nature.
Marcus Aurelius