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.

Follow on Twitter @DeathKnells

The immortal is the reality;
the mortal is the unreality.
During each period of earth life,
reality thus dwells in unreality,
to be liberated from it temporarily by death
​ and permanently by illumination

Manly P. Hall
Secret Teaching of All Ages 





death is a nothing jumbo

 Charles Bukowski
Run With The Hunted 






I hear a good many pretend that they are going to die;
or that they have died, for aught that I know.
Nonsense!
I'll defy them to do it.
They haven't got life enough in them.
They'll deliquesce like fungi,
and keep a hundred eulogists mopping the spot where they left off.
Only half a dozen or so have died since the world began.
Do you think that you are going to die, sir?
No! there's no hope of you.
You haven't got your lesson yet.
You've got to stay after school.
We make a needless ado about capital punishment,
--taking lives, when there is no life to take.
Memento mori!
We don't understand that sublime sentence
which some worthy got sculptured on his gravestone once.
We've interpreted it in a grovelling and snivelling sense;
we've wholly forgotten how to die.

Henry David Thoreau 



It seems as if no man had ever died in America before;
for in order to die you must first have lived.
I don't believe in the hearses, and palls,
and funerals that they have had.
There was no death in the case,
because there had been no life;
they merely rotted or sloughed off,
pretty much as they had rotted or sloughed along.
No temple's veil was rent,
only a hole dug somewhere.
Let the dead bury their dead.
The best of them fairly ran down like a clock.
Franklin,--Washington,--
they were let off without dying;
​they were merely missing one day.

Henry David Thoreau 





Remember that if there is a link of love
you will certainly meet again,
and that nothing that is good, or beautiful, or true,
can ever be lost.
On this plane
we often see our friends or our dearly loved ones go away
to live in a distant country
knowing that we shall not see them again for several years--
​and death is really nothing more than this.

Emmet Fox 
The Emmet Fox Reader 






Where there is a strong sense of bereavement;
or where the survivors are left in tragic circumstances,
the dead person will of course suffer acutely.
As a matter of fact, the so-called dead
are very sensitive to our thoughts
for a considerable time after they have passed over to the other side,
and for this reason excessive grief is to be deprecated.
It saddens them and prevents their focusing their attention
as they should upon the new life which they are starting.
Of course, it seems very hard to tell people not to grieve
when one whom they have dearly loved passes out of sight;
but the fact remains
​that excessive grief is bad for both parties.

Emmet Fox  
The Emmet Fox Reader





I often like to think that our map of the world is wrong,
that where we have centered physics,
we should actually place literature as the central metaphor
that we want to work out from.
Because I think literature occupies the same relationship to life
that life occupies to death.
A book is life with one dimension pulled out of it.
And life is something that lacks a dimension
which death will give it.
I imagine death to be a kind of release into the imagination
in the sense that for characters in a book,
what we experience
​ is an unimaginable dimension of freedom.

Terence McKenna


If an ordinary man, when he is about to die,
could only see the five elements of consciousness as void;
the four physical elements as not constituting an ‘I’;
the real Mind as formless and neither coming nor going;
his nature as something neither commencing at his birth
nor perishing at his death,
but as whole and motionless in its very depths;
his Mind and environmental objects as one--
if he could really accomplish this,
he would receive Enlightenment in a flash.
He would no longer be entangled by the Triple World;
he would be a World-Transcender.
​He would be without even the faintest tendency towards rebirth.

Huang-Po 
On the Transmission of Mind





The dreams of those about to die
often involve dream structures
that already prepare them for future existence.
In fact, towards death
a great dream acceleration is involved
as new probabilities are considered --
a dream acceleration
​that provides psychic impetus for new birth.

Jane Roberts:
The Nature of the Psyche: Its Human Expression
(A Seth Book)







You read yourself in too-narrow terms.
Much of the pain connected with serious illness and death
results because you have no faith in your own continuing reality.
You fight pain
because you have not learned to transcend it,
or rather to use it.
You do not trust
the natural consciousness of the body,
so that when its end nears --
and such an end is inevitable --
you do not trust the signals that the body gives,
​that are meant to free you.

Jane Roberts:
The Nature of the Psyche: Its Human Expression
(A Seth Book)









Your life seems synonymous with your consciousness.
Therefore it appears
that your knowledge of yourself grows gradually,
as your self-consciousness develops from your birth.
It appears, furthermore,
that your consciousness will meet a death
beyond which your self-consciousness will not survive.
You may think longingly and with an almost hopeful nostalgia
of the religion of your childhood,
and remember a system of belief that ensured you of immortality.
Yet most of you, my readers,
yearn for some private and intimate assurances,
and seek for some inner certainty
that your own individuality
​ is not curtly dismissed at death.

Jane Roberts:
The Nature of the Psyche: Its Human Expression
(A Seth Book)











Time destroys all that it creates,
and the end of every temporal sequence is,
for the entity involved in it,
some form of death.
Death is wholly transcended
only when time is transcended;
immortality is for the consciousness
that has broken through the temporal into the timeless.
For all other consciousnesses
there is at best a survival or a rebirth;
and these entail further temporal sequences
and the periodical recurrence
​of yet other deaths and dissolutions.

Aldous Huxley
 The Divine Within




The wave
does not need to die
to become water.
​ She is already water.

Thich Nhat Hanh





My wife proved to be an excellent psychic intermediary
and was easily controlled by discarnate intelligences. 
  In answer to her doubts concerning the right of “disturbing the dead”
these intelligences asserted
that a grievously wrong conception existed among mortals
regarding the conditions prevailing after death.
They stated that there is in reality no death,
but a natural transition from the visible to the invisible world,
and that advanced spirits are ever striving
to communicate with mortals
to enlighten them concerning the higher possibilities
which await the progressive spirit. 
  But death - the freeing of the spirit from the body -
is so simple and natural
that a great majority do not, for a longer or shorter period,
realize the change.

Carl August Wickland 
Thirty Years Among the Dead 





This is a world of time,
where all things begin and end.
Although death appears to be,
there is none.
Those who remain, experience their death;
but to themselves they do not die.
Instead, they are restored to life
in a young body with nothing missing.
There they will get older and eventually die,
to be instantly restored . .
​again unaccountably new . .

Neville    


 What happens after death
is so unspeakably glorious
that our imagination and our feelings
do not suffice to form even an approximate conception of it.
The dissolution of our time-bound form in eternity
​brings no loss of meaning.

Carl Jung 




Embrace your grief.
​For there, your soul will grow.

 Carl Jung 





Tell your friend that in his death,
a part of you dies and goes with him.
Wherever he goes,
​you also go.
He will not be alone.

Krishnamurti 






Find out what it means to die -
not physically, that's inevitable -
but to die to everything that is known,
\to die to your family, to your attachments,
to all the things that you have accumulated,
the known, the known pleasures,
the known fears.
Die to that every minute
and you will see what it means to die
so that the mind is made fresh, young,
and therefore innocent,
so that there is incarnation not in a next life,
​but the next day.

Krishnamurti 


The actual truth is that there is no death.
When a person seems to die,
all that happens is that he leaves his body here
and goes over onto the next plane,
otherwise unchanged.
He falls asleep here
to wake up on the other side
minus his physical body
(which was probably more or less damaged)
but enriched with the knowledge
that he has not really died.
This is the story of what we call “death,”
and in most cases it is easier than being born.

 Emmet Fox
The Emmet Fox Reader 


I want to take away all your consolations before you die.
If you can die innocent,
your death will have a tremendous value.
Put aside your knowledge because it is all borrowed.
Put aside your God because it is only a belief,
and nothing more.
Put aside the idea of any heaven or hell
because they are only your greed and your fear.
Your whole life, you have remained clinging to these things.
At least before you die, gather courage –
now you have nothing to lose!
A dying man cannot lose anything:
death is going to shatter everything.
It is better you drop your consolations by your own hand and die innocently,
full of wonder and inquiry
because death is the ultimate experience in life.
It is the very crescendo.

Osho
In Love with Life:
 Reflections on Friedrich Nietzsche's Thus Spake Zarathustra 





Birth is okay and death is okay,
if we know that they are only concepts in our mind.
​Reality transcends both birth and death.

Thich Nhat Hanh 




Every farewell is a death.
Yes, every farewell is a death.
In the train that we call life
We are all chance events in one another’s lives,
And we all feel sorry when it’s time to get off.

Fernando Pessoa
  A Little Larger Than the Entire Universe 



The insect that hurls itself into the flame
does not really wish to die
but desires to return in a different form.
It wishes to be reconfigured by the flame.
And so death is everywhere.
Death is not what destroys creatures but,
when it is properly conducted,
only transforms them.
There is a profound connection between everything in external nature.
The butterfly is formed from light,
but first the light has to be made into thread
by taking up earthly matter to form a cocoon.
All animal creatures are created out of light,
as is the human being.
  In truth it is light
that creates a new human being in the mother's body,
makes it possible for a human being to develop
from and through light.
We can see therefore
that the butterfly arises from light
that is first captured and internalized.

 Rudolf Steiner
  Butterflies: Beings of Light 






I want you to open up those barriers
that you have erected within yourselves.
 Forget the cringing selves
that you sometimes are and remember,
instead,  accept the magic essence of your own being
that sings even now through your fingertips.
That is the reality which you are seeking.
Experience it fully.
Do you need an old dead thing like me
​to tell you what life is?

Jane Roberts,
Seth Speaks


In the presence of death,
you feel the passing of wings.

Deepak Chopra 



It’s been shown
that death rates rise significantly after Christmas,
 and the same spike occurs
after mortally ill people have a birthday.
The implication is
that when someone is dying,
she can postpone her time of death
​ until after a day she wants to live to see.

Deepak Chopra
Reinventing the Body, Resurrecting the Soul:
How to Create a New You 








For "death" occurs
only because the consciousness has to depend on an external world
with which it enters into communication through the physical sense organs.
When these physical sense organs fail,
every relation to the environment ceases.
That is to say, the man "has died."
However, when his soul is so far advanced
that it does not receive
the influences of the outside world through physical instruments,
but receives them through the images
which the soul creates out of itself,
then it will have reached the point
where it can regulate its intercourse with the environment independently,
that is, its life will not be interrupted against its will.
​It has become lord over birth and death.

Rudolf Steiner
Cosmic Memory 









I always found my deaths highly educational.
It was always a lesson between lives
to trace the thoughts and events that “led to a given demise.”
None of my deaths surprised me.
I felt during the process the inevitability, the recognition,
even a sense of familiarity:
“Of course, this particular dying is mine and no other.”
And I accepted even the most bizarre circumstances then,
feeling almost a sense of perfection.
The life could not be finished properly without the death.
There is a great sense of humility,
and yet a great sense of exaltation
as the inner self senses its freedom when death occurs.
All my deaths were the complement of my lives,
​ in that it seemed to me that it could not be otherwise.

Jane Roberts
Seth Speaks







If only my life were an oxcart
That creaks down the road in the morning,
Very early, and returns by the same road
To where it came from in the evening . . .
I wouldn’t have to have hopes, just wheels . . .
My old age wouldn’t have wrinkles or white hair . . .
When I was of no more use, my wheels would be removed
And I’d end up at the bottom of a ditch, broken and
overturned.
Or I’d be made into something different
And I wouldn’t know what I’d been made into . . .
But I’m not an oxcart, I’m different.
But exactly how I’m different no one would ever tell me.

Fernando Pessoa
 A Little Larger Than the Entire Universe





When I die, my son,
Let me be the child, the little one.
Pick me up in your arms
And carry me into your house.
Undress my tired and human self
And tuck me into your bed.
If I wake up, tell me stories
So that I’ll fall back asleep.
And give me your dreams to play with
Until the dawning of that day
You know will dawn.

Fernando Pessoa
 A Little Larger Than the Entire Universe 




The only tragedy there is in the world
is unwakefulness and unawareness.
From them comes fear,
and from fear comes everything else,
but death is not a tragedy at all.
Dying is wonderful;
it’s only horrible to people
who have never understood life.
It’s only when you’re afraid of life
that you fear death.
It’s only dead people who fear death.
But people who are alive
​ have no fear of death.

Anthony de Mello 
Awareness 









Many think the most important question in the world is:
 “Is there a life after death?”
Wrong!
Nobody seems to be grappling with the problem of:
Is there a life before death?
Yet my experience is
that it’s precisely the ones who don’t know what to do with this life
who are all hot and bothered
about what they are going to do with another life.
One sign that you’re awakened
is that you don’t give a damn
about what’s going to happen in the next life.
You’re not bothered about it;
you don’t care.
You are not interested,
period.

Anthony de Mello 
Awareness 





Are we afraid of the fact of death
or of the idea of death?
The fact is one thing
and the idea about the fact is another.
Am I afraid of the word death
or of the fact itself?
Because I am afraid of the word, of the idea,
I never understand the fact,
I never look at the fact,
I am never in direct relation with the fact.
It is only when I am in complete communion with the fact
that there is no fear.

Krishnamurti 
The Book of Life 



Understanding is fresh, instantaneous;
it is not the continuity of something that has been.
What has been cannot bring you understanding.
As long as one is seeking a continuity--
wanting permanency in relationship, in love,
longing to find peace everlasting, and all the rest of it--
one is pursuing something that is within the field of time
​and therefore does not belong to the timeless.

Krishnamurti
The Book of Life




What if someone dies?
What upset you?
The death of this person?
No.
If you’re upset by it,
you’ve been programmed to be upset when someone dies.
Now, take your time with that.
That goes against everything your culture and mine has taught us.
We’ve been taught to upset ourselves
when we lose somebody.
We’ve been trained to upset ourselves
when someone rejects us, disapproves of us,
leaves us, dies on us.
 So, naturally I’m upset
because someone I was attached to has died.
The death has upset me.
On the occasion of this,
I have been trained to upset myself.
It sounds almost blasphemous, huh?
It’s awful.
​Think it over.

Anthony de Mello
Rediscovering Life









Peace, peace! he is not dead, he doth not sleep— 
He hath awakened from the dream of life--
 'Tis we, who lost in stormy visions, keep                           
 With phantoms an unprofitable strife, 
And in mad trance, strike with our spirit's knife
 Invulnerable nothings.--
WE decay Like corpses in a charnel; fear and grief
 Convulse us and consume us day by day,                             
And cold hopes swarm like worms within our living clay 

 He has outsoared the shadow of our night; 
Envy and calumny and hate and pain, 
And that unrest which men miscall delight,
 Can touch him not and torture not again;                       
From the contagion of the world's slow stain 
He is secure, and now can never mourn 
A heart grown cold, a head grown gray in vain;
Nor, when the spirit's self has ceased to burn,
 With sparkless ashes load an unlamented urn. 
                        
He lives, he wakes--'tis Death is dead, not he;
 Mourn not for Adonais.


Percy Bysshe Shelley
Adonais











If you catch COVID-19,
it’s a long shot that it will kill you--
unless of course you’re old, or fat, or already sick with something,
or possibly young and otherwise healthy,
nobody’s really sure why it takes some people--
but this seems to me as good a time as any
to get ready to die.

Thinking you could die any day
brings your surroundings into sharper focus.
More and more I appreciate the small pleasures--
the sight of pelicans, smell of jasmine,
sound of a song in the car,
tactile feel of addressing an envelope
and selecting the perfect stamp for the recipient,
taste of the pasta sauce made from ingredients bought at the farmers market,
friendly twinkle in the eye of the farmer
as she hands you your change
and you exchange masked thank-yous--
and I seem to find them everywhere
now that I’m about to be bereft of everything.
When you’re about to lose it all,
you realize what a gift it has all been.

Stephen Kessler


Being ready to die means being ready to tell the truth.
Any words you say could be your last.

Stephen Kessler


Life is a long affair,
seventy, eighty, a hundred years.
Death is in one moment.
It is an atomic phenomenon, concentrated.
It is more vital than life
because life is spread out.
Life can never be as intense as death can be,
and life can never be as beautiful as death can be,
because it is spread out.
It is always lukewarm.
At the moment of death
the whole of life has come to a boiling point.
Everything evaporates from this world to the other,
from the body to the bodiless.
It is the greatest transformation that happens.
One should be silent,
one should be respectful,
one should not be wavering,
because it will happen in a single moment
​ and you may miss it.

Osho
The Empty Boat:
Encounters with Nothingness










You do not have to die to find God.
All That Is, is now,
and you are a part of All That Is now.
As I have told you often,
​you are a spirit now.
The avenues for development are open now.
You can, now, set out
to explore environments
that are not physical if you want to,
but I do not see any rush of students
at that invisible door!

Jane Roberts
 Seth Speaks
The Eternal Validity of the Soul





By filling each moment with meaning--
whether you are rich or poor,
famous or unknown,
well-traveled or homebound--
you will weave together a life filled with meaning.
Then when Death arrives you will be ready
​to dissolve effortlessly into the light.

Karen Wyatt, MD.
The Tao of Death:
The Secret to a Rich & Meaningful Life





If you should have the desire to study Zen under a teacher
and see into your own nature,
you should first investigate the word shi [death].
If you want to know how to investigate this word,
then at all times while walking, standing, sitting, or reclining,
without despising activity, without being caught up in quietude,
merely investigate the koan:
“After you are dead and cremated,
where has the main character [chief actor] gone?”
Then in a night or two or at most a few days,
​ you will obtain the decisive and ultimate joy. 


Japanese Zen Master HAKUIN
(1686–1769)








The Way of Death reminds us to be like water:
adapt to whatever challenges come along,
care for others who need nurturing,
take bold action when necessary,
and work without attachment to the outcome.
But almost no one can do it.

The wisest teachers are the ones who know
that our suffering shapes our transformation,
and embracing Death is the path to a fulfilled Life.
This wisdom is paradoxical but true.

Karen Wyatt, MD.
The Tao of Death:
The Secret to a Rich & Meaningful Life 




How deep-seated is the superstition
that at birth one is mysteriously sentenced
(as if by some secret court from which there is no appeal)
to life-imprisonment,
that one is seldom or never let out on parole,
and that not till death will one be released.
Only to be re-arrested
(reincarnationists would have us believe)
and awarded another life sentence
and transferred to another penal establishment.
 Society is a stratagem, says Rumi,
for putting the king into a pint pot.
And (we must add) persuading him the lid's shut tight.
He'll believe anything he's told often enough and loudly enough -
and all the more uncritically if it's bad news.

Douglas Harding
Head Off Stress  










Now if you would each, for ten minutes a day,
open yourselves to your own reality
there would be no question of self-justification,
for you would realize the miraculous nature of your own identity.
I have said this before in class:
You are as dead now, and as alive,
as you will ever be.
In life you can be as dead as you think any corpse is --
even, by contrast,
​far deader.

Jane Roberts
 Seth Speaks:
The Eternal Validity of the Soul 








Why must death be the topic of study?
Because NonDual requires it.
To be in your life and simultaneously not be attached to your life
is where NonDual Reality resides.
Being in your life is already a challenge,
but it is an even greater challenge to not be attached to your life,
to experience that nothing is really about you
in the way that you believe you are.
​That is the holy grail of NonDual.

Liam Quirk
  The NonSense of NonDual:
From Mindfulness to Oneness  






Death, and the study of death,
must be your daily medicine
if you are not able to turn back from your inquiry into NonDual Reality.
And I am not talking about contemplating your own death,
for that is too complicated and tricky.
There are plenty of other kinds of death to go around
before you attempt to be at one with your own death.
We should walk before we try to run a steeplechase.
In this case,
​the backdoor approach is best.

Liam Quirk
  The NonSense of NonDual:
From Mindfulness to Oneness  


Death is not a battle we have lost.
 Death is not a failure of will.  
Death is not something we let happen.
 Dying is living.

Dr. Leslie Blackhall
TedXTalks
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KQEWc3LVfyc




Death is not sober and it is not death.
You simply take a giant step forward.  
All vitality rings...
and it rings through this frame
and it rings through your own frame...
and it is lighthearted...
and it is joyful...
and it knows not sobriety...
Death is a lighthearted thing.
Consciousness left to itself
is like April left to itself.
It is you who project disasters into the month of April...
whenever disasters occur.
And it is you who project disasters into consciousness
​when those disasters occur.

 Jane Roberts
The Early Sessions: Book 9 of The Seth Material 





You may die at eighty
and after death think of the youth and vitality that you had at twenty,
and find then that your form changes
to correspond with this inner image.
Most individuals after death
choose a more mature image
that usually corresponds to the peak physical abilities,
regardless of the age when the physical peak was reached.
Others choose instead
to take the form they had at the particular point
when the greatest mental or emotional heights were achieved,
​regardless of the beauty or age that characterized the form.

Jane Roberts  
Seth Speaks:
The Eternal Validity of the Soul 





All of my deaths would have been adventures
had I realized what I know now.
On the one hand you take life too seriously,
and on the other,
you do not take playful existence seriously enough.


Jane Roberts
 Seth Speaks:
The Eternal Validity of the Soul 



There is no separate, indivisible, specific point of death.
Life is a state of becoming,
and death is a part of this process of becoming.
You are alive now,
a consciousness knowing itself,
sparkling with cognition amid a debris of dead and dying cells;
alive while the atoms and molecules of your body die and are reborn.
You are alive, therefore, in the midst of small deaths;
portions of your own image crumble away moment by moment
and are replaced, and you scarcely give the matter a thought.
So you are to some extent now alive
in the midst of the death of yourself --
alive despite, and yet because of,
the multitudinous deaths and rebirths that occur
​within your body in physical terms.

Jane Roberts
 Seth Speaks:
The Eternal Validity of the Soul 








Death makes no sort of difference
in a man’s moral and mental nature,
and the change of state
caused by passing from one world to another
takes away his physical body,
​but leaves the man as he was.

Annie. Besant:
The Ancient Wisdom 







If one really loves another,
he wants that other one to be happy and harmonious.
If, through so-called death,
an individual chooses to accept
a better opportunity for future expression-
f there be the slightest spark of Love,
one should have no grief nor desire
to hold that loved one in a state of incapacity
​ when he might go on to greater Ease and Freedom.

Godfre Ray King
The Best of Godfre Ray King  



​
The sense of separation
is merely one of the mistakes of the personal self
because it does not understand the nature of Consciousness.
Where the Consciousness is,
there the individual is functioning,
for the individual is his Consciousness. 
When one thinks of a loved one who has passed on,
he is really with that loved one in his Higher Mental Body
the moment his Consciousness is upon the other person.
If the Western World could understand this Truth,
it would lift the chains which cause such useless suffering.
Such grief is all due to the fact that the personality--
especially in the feeling--
accepts the body as being the individual
instead of knowing the body is only a garment
​which the individual wears.

Godfre Ray King
 The Magic Presence  









‘Grief for the death of a loved one is selfishness
and but retards the greater good the loved one should be enjoying.
Grief from a sense of loss
is really rebellion against the Action of a Law
that has seen fit to give another
greater opportunity for rest and growth,
because nothing in the Universe goes backward,
and all—no matter what the temporary appearance--
is moving forward
​ to greater and greater Joy and Perfection.

Godfre Ray King  
The Magic Presence  





The dying ultimately face the task of letting go
as they confront the end of life
and seek greater understanding of their suffering.
Lao-tzu writes in the Tao Te Ching :
“The Master … knows that he is going to die,
and he has nothing left to hold on to:
no illusions in his mind,
​no resistances in his body.”

 Karen M. Wyatt:
7 Lessons for Living from the Dying  








‘So-called death
is but an opportunity for rest
and re-attunement of the faculties of the personal consciousness.
This is to free them
from the turmoil and discords of Earth
long enough to receive an Inflow of Light and Strength
which will enable the outer activity of the mind
to take up the work of physical experience again.
Physical embodiment is for the purpose of preparing,
perfecting, and illumining a body
whose vibratory action can be raised
to blend with the Body of the “Mighty I AM Presence.”
We call It “The Magic Presence.”
​Beloved Jesus referred to It as the Seamless Garment.

Godfre Ray King
The Magic Presence  








Surely you don’t think the man happier
who died on the last day of the games,
than he who died in the middle?
By no less an interval than that
does each of us precede the next to die.
Death makes its way through all;
the killer follows on the heels of his victim.
We get most anxious
over the thing that is least important.
What does it matter
how long you dodge the thing you cannot escape?
​Farewell.

Seneca
 How to Die 










If in reality
we are not what we have come to believe we are
and it is possible to shift to a state of being
that is stable and at ease in life,
then it behooves us to make this shift
the most important goal of our life as a human being.
Dying is an important transformation,
and the only real death
is the death of the illusion
of being a separate, long-lasting entity,
​living in a body.

 David Parrish:
DYING TO LIVE: THE END OF FEAR:
A Direct Approach To Freedom
From Psychological And Emotional Suffering  






Darkness is a reversal of the light.
In the light, there is no darkness at all.
In like manner, man is a reversal of the Self.
When one functions as the Self,
there is no man at all.
Thus, to do away altogether with fear, pain, sin, disease and death
which are evidenced in the man-position,
one must revert to his true and original state.
The perfect Self, however,
remains the perfect Self,
​ and there is no other.

Lillian DeWaters
The Great Answer  







In the context of the teachings for Self-Realization,
death is the end of the illusion of being a person.
This death is not real
because the person never truly existed in the first place.
Death then, is the end of ignorance,
because in order to maintain the existence of a person
it is necessary to ignore the reality of who we really are.
When this death occurs,
nothing “happens”
because it is merely the death
​of what did not exist.

David Parrish:
DYING TO LIVE: THE END OF FEAR:
A Direct Approach To Freedom
From Psychological And Emotional Suffering 




I live without inhabiting myself 
In such a way that I am dying
 So that I do not die.

 St John of the Cross 








Dying is the most important thing you can do in this life.
The death I am referring to is not the death of the body,
but a death that will free you
to live a life of happiness and fulfillment.
It is the death of who you take yourself to be:
the psychological identity or personality
that most people consider to be who they are.  

This is a death
that paradoxically allows for real life and fulfillment.
The truth is that who you take your self to be is not real,
has no inherent existence,
and is only a psychological construct;
therefore, its death is not your death.
Its death is an easy death and a good death
because it reveals the truth of who you are:
the Self,
or timeless and ever-present Awareness
​ that is your true nature.

David Parrish:
 DYING TO LIVE:
THE END OF FEAR 











A Sage has said,
‘I have seen my own death while I am fully alive.
Is it not a great gain?
The concept of being a man or a woman is no more.
​One has remained only a witness.’

Nisargadatta Maharaj
Self-Love, The Original Dream 




I sleep with life and death in the same bed.
I think about the death of the human race.
The long strange trip of the naked ape.
Not to be light on it, but everybody’s life is so transient.
Every human being, no matter how strong or mighty,
is frail when it comes to death.
I think about it in general terms,
not in a personal way.

Bob Dylan
 New York Times interview









Yogananda describes self-realization
as the dissolution of the sense of a self as a separate ego personality
into a blissful, ecstatic, boundless oneness
that is free from death.
Instantly I knew
this is what I had been looking for!

Cheryl Simone
Midnights with the Mystic 







For tzaddikim, we don’t [use the term] “death” at all;
[we only speak of] “a departure” from this lowly world
and a rising up to the world-to-come.
The soul departs from the body,
the spirit from the material.

Benjamin Mintz
Deathbed Wisdom of the Hasidic Masters:
The Book of Departure and Caring for People at the End of Life 







Nothing exists;
 everything appears to exist. 
The existence is like sunlight. 
It vanishes, but does not die. 
Things appear and disappear.
 There is no destruction.

Nisargadatta Maharaj
Nothing Is Everything





You have spent your whole life
worrying about and trying to become something--
something that affirms and confirms your life and your individuality,
before the external world—not to mention Death!--
puts an abrupt end to the whole endeavor and proves you wrong.
You failed to notice that this experience you call living
is in reality your reaction to the process of dying!--
and that what you conceive and imagine as the process of dying
and what you fear as death is in reality
the process of discovering the only thing about you,
or connected with you,
​that is alive!

Bob  Cergol
 Beyond Mind, Beyond Death  




You will agree that life is immortal.
 You will agree that your life is eternal. 
That means you are agreeing 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, you know, couldn’t end; 
consciousness couldn’t stop at the grave

Joel S. Goldsmith 
Consciousness In Transition 







You are unlimited potential.  
When you limit yourself to a conditional form, 
 You limit your potential.
The Energy enters a form without its permission and  
Likewise departs without permission.
What is death? 
 What had been dead before it became enlivened,
Returns to dead. 
 Yet, you continue.
Stripped of name and form, 
 What are you?  
​You need not ponder anything else.

Wu Hsin
Mindless Understanding  









“The issue of our death is never pressed far enough.
Death is the only wise adviser that we have.
Whenever you feel, as you always do,
that everything is going wrong
and you're about to be annihilated,
turn to your death and ask if that is so.
Your death will tell you that you're wrong;
that nothing really matters outside its touch.
Your death will tell you,
​‘I haven't touched you yet.’”

Carlos Castaneda
Journey to Ixtlan






When you have let go of the body, the personal self, and the world, 
you will know that you are Eternal.
 You may think that this is accomplished through death,
 but nothing is accomplished through death,
 because death is nothing. 
Life is of the Mind of God, and in the Mind of God.
 The body does not contain you who are Life,
 and it neither lives nor dies. 
 Death is an attempt by your split mind 
to undo its conflict
by not deciding to be Whole again,
 and this will not work

Message Of A Course In Miracles 




Just noticing the process of our opening and closing 
can breed such deep compassion for ourselves.
 A lot of this fear and good old insecurity 
comes from a lack of trust in the process.
 What is happening now is not random.
It is all unfolding perfectly.
You don’t have to understand what happens after death 
or even how to die 
any more than you need to know how the stars come out 
or how the earth was formed 
to see the perfection of this process. 
 Just as one thought leads perfectly into another
 into the next, into the next, 
so one day does, and one year does, and one lifetime does.
 We are creation constantly in the act of becoming.
 We are evolution itself
 unfolding from moment to moment. 
This process which includes love and loss, life and death,
 is our perfect evolution.
 It is not other than who you really are

 Stephen Levine 
Meetings at the Edge:
 Dialogues with the Grieving and the Dying, the Healing and the Healed









Life and death are a package deal.
You cannot pull them apart.
In Japanese Zen,
the term shoji translates as “birth-death.”
There is no separation between life and death
other than a small hyphen,
a thin line that connects the two.
We cannot be truly alive
without maintaining an awareness of death. 

 Frank Otaseki: 
The Five Invitations:
Discovering What Death Can Teach Us About Living Fully 




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