Welcome to Life Knells
The Death of Fearing Death
This site shares Life Knells that heal
misconceptions about Death.
Living beautifully and dying beautifully,
Embrace Death
as the Birth of limitless Life awareness.
misconceptions about Death.
Living beautifully and dying beautifully,
Embrace Death
as the Birth of limitless Life awareness.
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
Although one may be afraid of the process of dying,
deep down one very definitely has the feeling,
the intuitive conviction,
that one cannot cease to exist.
This feeling has been misrepresented
as the basis for the theory of rebirth,
but the fact of the matter
is that there exists no actual entity
to be either born
or reborn
or to cease to exist.
Ramesh S. Balsekar: A Net of Jewels
I think women have always death cleaned,
but women’s work is not often in the spotlight,
and should be appreciated more.
When it comes to death cleaning,
in my generation and those older than me,
women tend to clean up after their husbands first,
and then they clean up before they themselves are no more.
While one would usually say “clean up after yourself,”
here we are dealing with the odd situation of cleaning up before . . .
we die
Margareta Magnusson: The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning:
How to Free Yourself and Your Family from a Lifetime of Clutter
I am death cleaning,
or, as we call it in Swedish, döstädning.
Dö is “death” and städning is “cleaning.”
In Swedish it is a term
that means that you remove unnecessary things
and make your home nice and orderly
when you think the time is coming closer
for you to leave the planet.
Margareta Magnusson: The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning:
How to Free Yourself and Your Family from a Lifetime of Clutter
In our earthly sleep condition
we sink down into a kind of plant existence.
Between death and a new birth
we rise up into a superconscious condition,
to a kind of archangel consciousness,
to a consciousness above our normal one.
I have told you that when we are in our normal state of consciousness
we have the hierarchies of higher beings behind us as it were.
In the superconscious state
we virtually move back among them.
We then live within them.
Rudolf Steiner: Guardian Angels:
Connecting with Our Spiritual Guides and Helpers
I’ve come to understand
that Día de Muertos isn’t about romanticizing the past
or about wishing we could bring those who’ve died back to life.
Día de Muertos instead asks us to consider
that we exist in conversation with the people who came before us
and the people who will come after us.
It says the border between life and death --
and every border we encounter in between --
is porous.
It asserts the joyful fluidity of being alive.
John Paul Brammer
Washington Post
Día de Muertos is such an important occasion.
It holds that dying and living are not opposites
but rather two parts of one process,
with just a breath in between.
Through this lens, death isn’t an antagonist,
a horrifying thing we must look away from.
Death is festooned with flowers, candles and brightly colored papel picado
because Día de Muertos wants us
to look squarely at the way things end.
It wants us to accept it, laugh at it and revere it.
The only thing it asks us to not do is ignore it.
John Paul Brammer
Washington Post
In the Sioux tradition,
after the power of puberty ceremonies,
the youth go into the forest and sit in meditation
until they hear their personal death chant.
They then use this chant
every time they get frightened
or approach a death experience during life,
so that when death happens,
they know their way through.
Ram Dass: Walking Each Other Home:
Conversations on Loving and Dying
Now there are classes indeed where the newly dead are instructed.
I used to teach some of these.
Seth
Session 331, Page 331
When someone dies,
feel free to continue the conversation,
but know that you are not speaking to the limited person that you knew.
You are speaking to the essence.
Pat Rodegast: Emmanuel's Book III:
What Is an Angel Doing Here?
Remember,
only that which you can take with you when you leave the body is important.
That means, except meditation, nothing is important.
Except awareness, nothing is important,
because only awareness cannot be taken away by death.
Everything else will be snatched away,
because everything else comes from without.
You will be taking with you
only whatsoever awareness you have attained.
Awareness is your only real wealth.
Osho
You do not die to move away from life but toward it.
Pat Rodegast: Emmanuel's Book III:
What Is an Angel Doing Here?
We talk about the reason she chose euthanasia over suicide.
"If I didn't have those papers,
I wouldn't have been able to go into the Paralympics.
I was a very depressed person -
I was thinking about how I was going to kill myself," she explains.
"In England, I hope, and every country,
they will look at euthanasia in another way -
it's not murder, it makes people live longer.
I'm the best example.
It's thanks to those papers that I'm still living.
"All those people who get those papers here in Belgium -
they have a good feeling.
They don't have to die in pain.
They can choose a moment,
and be with the people they want to be with.
With euthanasia you're sure
that you will have a soft, beautiful death."
excerpt from BBC interview with Marieke Vervoort,
Paralympian athlete, who died by euthanasia, October 22, 2019
When it comes to self-imposed death,
to help us out of the maze of terminology and distinctions,
the Protestant moralist Robert Paul Ramsay
has suggested the alternative term agathanasia,
Combining the Greek adjective agathos, meaning good,
and the noun thanatos, meaning death,
this new term is free of the emotional connotations that euthanasia stirs up
and that often preclude intelligent discussion of the issue.
And many misinterpret euthanasia
as someone acting upon someone else.
Ramsay uses this term to refer to a death with dignity.
John Abraham:
How to Get the Death You Want : A Practical and Moral Guide
In 2006 the British publication Observer Music Monthly
named the 50 greatest music books ever written.
Mr. Tosches’ Jerry Lee Lewis biography, “Hellfire,” was No. 1.
He sat for a question-and-answer session in conjunction with the honor.
“At the end of the book, you leave him very much alive,
still roaming the earth, but pretty much facing the abyss,”
the interviewer said of “Hellfire.”
“It’s the way we all live,” Mr. Tosches replied.
“Shallow life, shallow ditch.
Big life, big abyss.”
excerpt from Neil Genzlinger’s Nick Tosche’s NYT Obituary
The spirit of Emmanuel,
who is channeled through Pat Rodegast,
says a human birth is a bit like enrolling in the fourth grade.
We stay just as long as it is necessary
to achieve what we need from that specific grade,
and then we are ready to go on
for further evolution by leaving this plane.
From the soul’s point of view,
death is a gift.
It is grace that quickens your spiritual work on earth.”
Ram Dass. Walking Each Other Home:
Conversations on Loving and Dying
We have a fantasy that we’re going to die in our home like we did 150 years ago,
but that world doesn’t exist anymore.
[Death] may not look like the fantasy we’re still carrying around.
A body gradually loses all of its integrity as we die.
We need to say you might have diarrhea at 3 in the morning.
How is that going to be handled?
And how does that fit into your fantasy?
I like this idea of a mastery of death
meaning that I am at peace in myself.
My dignity and self-worth have nothing to do
with what happens to my body.
Sallie Tisdale,
Author of
Advice for Future Corpses (and Those Who Love Them):
A Practical Perspective on Death and Dying,
in conversation with Sydney Worth: yes! Magazine
Because your entire life
—and the life of humanity--
is based on consciousness,
you too are unlimited.
You can stop buying into all the stories about birth, death,
and everything in between.
Knowing that you are unlimited
means that no story can limit your possibilities.
Deepak Chopra:
Metahuman
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.’
Self-Love: The Original Dream:
Shri Nisargadatta Maharaj’s Direct Pointers To Reality
Grace, calm, a patient acceptance of what’s to come:
These are all qualities that can be cultivated,
and when they are,
death is a test we will not fail.
Our fault is not that we fear death
but that we don’t respect it as a miracle.
The most profound subjects--
love, truth, compassion, birth and death--
are equal.
They belong to our destiny but also to our present life.
Deepak Chopra:
Life After Death
The individual in associating death and decay with evil,
conceives God as "being" and "life",
as opposed to "non-being" and "death".
This totally ignores the basic fact
that pure being and pure non-being are both conceptual myths.
But as soon as the inner identity of these inseparable correlatives
is felt with total conviction,
so is the identity between the individual and nature.
Then death is accepted as part of living,
a return to that unknown inwardness
out of which the individual was born as an intrinsic part of nature.
Ramesh S. Balsekar. Final Truth:
A Guide to Ultimate Understanding
You must avoid a common popular blunder about reincarnation.
The popular idea is that Titus Balbus is reborn again as John Smith,
a man with the same personality, character, attainments
as he had in his former life-
with the sole difference that he wears coat and trousers instead of a toga
and speaks in cockney English instead of popular Latin.
That is not the case.
What would he the earthly use of repeating the same personality or character
a million times from the beginning of time till its end'?
The soul comes into birth for experience, for growth,
for evolution till it can bring the Divine into Matter.
It is the central being that incarnates, not the outer personality -
the personality is simply a mould that it creates
for its figures of experience in that one life.
In another birth it will create for itself a different personality,
different capacities, ties, a different life and career.
If a former personality, a former capacity is brought fully forward,
it will not be to repeat what was already done,
but to cast the same capacity into new forms and new shapes
and fuse it into a new harmony of the being
which will not be a reproduction of what was before.
Sri Aurobindo
The Mother. Psychic Being
The body is made up of the five elements.
When you are not the elements,
how can you be the body?
Due to ignorance
you consider death of the body as your death;
but you are that which separates and leaves the body.
You have no death.
Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj :
Nothing Is Everything
As the caterpillar,
getting to the end of the straw,
takes itself away after finding a resting-place in advance,
so the Soul leaving this body,
and finding another place in advance,
takes himself off from his original abode.
As the goldsmith taking little by little of the gold
expands it into a new form,
so, indeed, does this Soul,
leaving this body,
make a new and happy abode for himself.
Brhadaranyakopanishad
Karen: My question is what happens at death. What is death?
Ramesh: What happens is that that which existed before the birth
continues to exist after the death of a body-mind object.
An object is created.
An object is destroyed.
Ramesh S. Balsekar:
Confusion No More: For the Spiritual Seeker
The Buddha once said--
“This existence of ours is as transient as autumn clouds.
To watch the birth and death of beings
is like looking at the movements of a dance.
A lifetime is like a flash of lightning in the sky,
rushing by like a torrent down a steep mountain.”
Deepak Chopra:
Metahuman
At death, one goes back to where one came from –
Home.
Ramesh Balsekar:
The End Of Duality
Something dies before you die.
What you are can’t die,
but the idea of yourself is destined to die.
There is absolutely nothing that will take the place
of really stopping and dying before you die.
This is not a physical death I’m talking about.
This is a death of who you think you are,
of your past and your future.
All of that exists only in imagination.
Adyashanti:
Falling into Grace
The happiness of the drop is to die in the river.
Sufi Saying
He did not seem to be asking me to let go,
or to let him go;
in fact, when I came anywhere near trying
to renounce the whole thing as absurd and getting on with my life,
I would be almost literally buoyed up
by the lightness of his presence within me
and a strong sense of ongoing partnership.
Far from a tragic view of love,
this seemed to be much more a comedy,
in the classic sense of lightness and harmony
and a joyous ending brought about through mutual understanding.
And this, of course, is what Dante also called
his walk with a beloved beyond the grave,
a “divine comedy.”
Cynthia Bourgeault:
Love is Stronger than Death
a book about her post-mortem relationship with her monastic love, Rafe
Neither love nor hate;
neither ambition nor illusion;
neither pride nor the least tinge of jealousy;
no good, spiritual or temporal; no desire; no liberation;--
I am none of these,
I am all Bliss, the Bliss of All Eternal Consciousness.
Holiness or unholiness;
happiness or misery;
incantation or holy pilgrimage;
scripture or sacrifice;
none of these belong to me;
not even the enjoyed, the enjoyer, or the sense of enjoyment;
I am all Bliss,
the Bliss of All Eternal Consciousness.
Death I fear not;
caste I respect not;
father, mother, nay even birth, I know not;
relatives; friends I recognize not;
teacher and pupil I own not;--
I am all Bliss,
the Bliss of All Eternal Consciousness.
Shankaracharya
No being ever lives of Air, or Food, or Vitality,
but all beings live of the thing that transcends them--
of the thing in which they live.
I shall explain to thee, once more, the eternal, esoteric Spirit;
I shall tell thee, oh Gautama!
what becomes of the soul who knows not Spirit after death.
Some of these return into the womb of woman for further incarnation,
others assimilate themselves with immovable things,
all in accord with the acts they have done,
the Idea they have lived.
Kathopanishad
Our attitude towards those who passed through the threshold of death
must be the same as towards those who still live here on earth.
Indeed, we should not hesitate, to say:
Those who still live in the physical body are handicapped in many ways,
so that they cannot live a full spiritual life,
they cannot live it to the full.
How many handicaps can be observed
in people during their physical life on earth,
when it is a question of recognising the truly great tasks of evolution
— and still more,
when it is a question of FULFILLING THEM!
We may rely far more on the dead.
Rudolf Steiner
The death of a tree neither spills blood nor smells bad.
Instead, trees may be nibbled on for years by insects,
and after they die,
through the agency of beetles, fungi, and bacteria,
they slowly and unobtrusively disintegrate into the soil,
a recycling that makes the rest of life possible and is life as well.
The process occurs on a vast scale;
were it not for the tree undertakers,
the forest would in a few years become an impenetrable tangle of dead wood,
soon stopping all plant growth.
Bernd Heinrich:
Life Everlasting: The Animal Way of Death
I regard death as changing into other kinds of life.
Death is, among other things,
also a wild celebration of renewal,
with our substance hosting the party.
In the wild, animals lie where they die,
thus placing them into the scavenger loop.
The upshot is that the highly concentrated animal nutrients
get spread over the land,
by the exodus of flies, beetles, etc.
Burial, on the other hand,
seals you in a hole.
To deprive the natural world of human nutrient,
given a population of 6.5 billion,
is to starve the Earth...
Bernd Heinrich:
Life Everlasting: The Animal Way of Death
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
Life we look upon as the One Form of Existence,
manifesting in what is called Matter;
or what, incorrectly separating them,
we name Spirit, Soul and Matter in man.
Matter is the Vehicle for the manifestation of Soul on this plane of existence,
and Soul is the Vehicle on a higher plane
for the manifestation of Spirit,
and these three are a Trinity synthesized by Life,
which pervades them all.
H.P. Blavatsky:
The Secret Doctrine
The body is made for the soul;
the soul is not made for, and is not the product of, the body....
The source of all vital movement is the soul,
which builds up the machine of the body,
and maintains it for a time against external influences....
The immediate cause of death is not disease,
but the direct action of the soul,
which leaves the bodily machine,
either because it has become unworkable through some serious lesion
or because it does not choose to work it any longer.
Bernard Hollander, M.D.
In Search of the Soul
One of the first books published in 1474
by William Caxton, England’s first printer,
was a manual of how to die.
It remained a bestseller for two centuries.
It was not until after the Reformation
that European death became macabre,
and Francis Bacon was the first to suggest
that doctors might hold death at bay.
Earlier Arab and Jewish doctors
had thought it blasphemous
for doctors to attempt to interfere with death.
For Paracelsus,
death was “a return to the womb.”
John Abraham: How to Get the Death You Want :
A Practical and Moral Guide
Those who beg to be consumed by the fire,
the sublime fire of divine love,
not only never die,
they are resuscitated.
That is the meaning of ‘Unless you die you will not live.’
We must die, but how?
Not with a knife or gun of course.
Jesus was not talking about physical death
but of dying unto the personality,
the lower world of desire and vices,
so that we might come to life on the higher plane,
that of the individuality.
That is when the individuality is nourished.
Omraam Mikhaël Aivanhov:
Man's Two Natures, Human and Divine
It is thanks to death
that a human being awakens to a new life.
Omraam Mikhaël Aivanhov:
Cosmic Balance; the Secret of Polarity
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
Since impermanence is an intrinsic characteristic of everything in existence,
life is really a series of small opportunities
to rehearse the process of dying.
In a sense, every breath represents a “little death”
and can be used as training ground in the work to accept impermanence.
Each complete breath,
consisting of an inhalation and an exhalation,
enacts the balance between fullness and emptiness,
which is a characteristic of the present moment.
The end of exhalation,
when the lungs are completely empty,
resembles the moment of death
when the breath is “given up.”
Karen Wyatt: What Really Matters:
7 Lessons for Living from the Stories of the Dying
Let the soul speak for itself,
and you will find that its song will ring forth
clearly, strongly, and gloriously:
“There is no Death; there is no Death;
there is no Death; there is naught but Life,
and that Life is Life Everlasting!”
Such is the song of the soul.
Listen for it in the Silence,
for there alone can its vibrations reach your eager ears.
It is the Song of Life ever denying Death.
There is no Death--
there is naught but Life
Everlasting,
forever,
and forever,
and forever.
William Walker Atkinson:
The Life Beyond Death
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
When we disregard the paranormal events that surround the deathbed,
] we also miss a great deal of essential information
about the death process and the afterlife itself,
as well as messages about what the dying need,
what they want for us, and, sometimes,
what day or hour they will draw their final breath.
Nearing-death awareness seems to arise
when people make peace with death.
It is most noticeable in those
whose bodies are gradually shutting down.
In situations where mortality is sudden,
victims of accidents, crimes, and war
are still lovingly assisted.
Julia Assante: The Last Frontier:
Exploring the Afterlife and Transforming Our Fear of Death
It is a necessary and proper thing
that all of us learn about dying and about death,
about all of the before and the after,
well before the time of being tested and told comes.
We can learn before our gamble for more time
is foreclosed upon by the passing of time.
Stephen Jenkinson
How we care for the dying people in our midst,
and how we die when it is our turn:
these together are the proving ground,
the cradle and the grave both,
for every conviction we have about justice and mercy,
about the meaning of life,
about what love should look like
and what it should do.
They are the sum of every political instinct we have,
every dream of community we’ve nursed along
and every faith we’ve been willing to have in a better day.
They are where every fascination about the Other World and the Big Story live,
and they are where the midnight fear of Nothing comes to call.
Stephen Jenkinson
MORE RANGE
We are friends with the one who kills us,
who gives us to the ocean waves.
We love this death. Only ignorance would say,
Put it off a while, day after tomorrow.
Do not avoid the knife.
This friend only seems fierce,
bringing your soul more range,
perching your falcon on a cliff of the wind.
Jesus on his cross, Hallaj on his--
those absurd killings hold a secret.
Cautious cynics know what they are doing
every moment and why.
Submit to love without thinking,
as the sun this morning rose recklessly
extinguishing our star-candle minds.
Coleman Barks: Rumi: The Big Red Book
There are apparently vistas of amazing worlds ahead of us
which only open up to our understanding in measure
as we develop our minds and our aspiration to meet them.
We must realise that life on the Physical Plane
is but a fraction of the whole
and that the Sage or Yogi of both East and West
is endeavouring to train his mind
to a state of continued unbroken consciousness
throughout waking, sleeping, death,
and onwards to the next incarnation upon this earth.
In this way does a man finally become a god.
Vera Stanley Alder:
The Finding of the Third Eye
Let us now consider what is said to happen
when Death has snapped the Silver Cord,
and the person is finally separated from his physical body.
We are told that often it may take a little while
for the individual to realise that he is ‘dead’.
But for some time prior to this
he has been building in the astral stuff
the kind of Heaven or after-life to which he aspires.
Of course, thousands build a Heaven
with golden streets and angels playing on harps.
These numberless living ‘thought-forms’
cohere by the law of attraction into one great whole,
so that the conventional ‘Heaven’ is actually there awaiting its owners.
Those who expect, because of their guilt,
hell-fire and goblins,
have created that charming reception for themselves also!
The miser will probably have made for his use
a heaven full of nothing but gold pieces.
The Eastern pasha will certainly get his Paradise of Houris.
The disbeliever in after-life will have created for himself
a horrible blank abyss.
We are told, then,
that people remain imprisoned in their self-constructed Paradises
until they become so weary of the limitations of their own desires
that they are gradually freed from them,
and the mind is able to expand and aspire to fresh ideals.
Eventually the ego is free to pass through these lower astral realms,
known as Purgatory,
purged finally of petty wishes and conceptions,
and enjoy the higher states of Paradise
to which it has learnt to orient itself.
Vera Stanley Alder:
The Finding of the Third Eye
Truth, then, is that only which is immaterial
and not enclosed within a corporeal envelope,
that which is colorless and formless,
exempt from change and alteration;
that which is ETERNAL.
All of that which perishes is a lie.
The things of earth are but appearances and imitations of truth;
they are what the picture is to reality.
The things of earth are not the TRUTH! . . .
Death, for some persons,
is an evil which strikes them with profound terror.
This is ignorance. . . .
Death is the destruction of the body;
the being in it dies not. . . .
The material body loses its form,
which is disintegrated in course of time;
the senses which animated it return to their source
and resume their functions;
but they gradually lose their passions and their desires,
and the spirit ascends to heaven to become a HARMONY.
Hermes Trismegistus
Every soul who arrives in these or other realms of the spirit world
completely untutored about life here,
is concerned with one thing and one thing only:
what is to happen next?
Just that.
Because we are inhabitants of the spirit world
we have not become grand rhetoricians,
who speak only in long eloquent periods
upon matters of the highest spiritual consideration.
Deo gratias that we do not.
We are normal, rational people,
who speak and act in a normal, rational manner.
Anthony Borgia:
More About Life in the World Unseen
It may be complained
that anyone making ‘the awful change’ from life to death
and from death to eternal life—‘supernatural’ life--
would have grave things to think about and discuss .
With a long experience of transitions upon which to draw,
commencing with my own,
I know this beyond peradventure:
when the last earthly breath has been drawn,
and life has begun in the spirit world,
there is never the slightest inclination,
at that vital moment,
to think in terms of learned theological disquisitions
or indulge in any ‘pious platitudes’.
Anthony Borgia:
More About Life in the World Unseen
Every thought you have held about death
has been in error.
Every construction you have built in the name of death
has been built on false foundation.
It is only, let me repeat, only,
when you replace the word death with life
on every account that you speak and think of it,
that its secret will begin to unfold to you,
its magnificence,
its hidden beauty.
Karen Peebles: The Bridge Between Worlds
(Conversations with her deceased uncle)
You loved the friend when he was visible,
and you loved him so deeply
that you started feeling, through your love, the invisibleness of him.
Then death takes the body.
Now in that gross element, body is no more there to hinder.
Now love can flow totally.
You may even feel thankful to death.
You were already discovering the spiritual dimension of your beloved, lover, friend,
and now death has taken the last obstacle.
Now you can see through and through.
Death has given you an opportunity
to see whether you really loved or not,
because if love's eyes cannot penetrate that much
so that you can see that which is not body,
that which is beyond matter,
that which is invisible,
then it is not love.
Then those eyes may be of something else,
but not of love.
Love always reveals the God in the other;
that's the definition of love.
If it reveals the God in the other
only then it is love, otherwise it is not.
You will be crying and weeping and mourning,
and will you be thinking that you are weeping for the friend who has gone?
No, you are weeping for yourself,
you are crying for yourself.
Osho
Question - Yesterday I heard that my friend had died.
Yet as I wept,
I found myself giving thanks for the sweetness of life.
Is there a place for mourning?
Osho - If you have loved somebody, really loved,
and you didn't miss an opportunity to love,
then there is no place for mourning
because then there is no repentance.
Osho
When one dies,
it does not mean the end of life.
It is a latent stage of life.
Don Mariano Ico
This is the beauty of Tantra:
it joins together the opposites,
the contraries, the contradictories.
If you go to the cremation ground
you will feel sad;
it will be difficult for you to be joyous.
It will be very difficult for you to sing and dance
where people are being burned,
and where people are crying and weeping,
and every day death and death,
day and night, death.
How will you rejoice?
But if you cannot rejoice there,
then all that you think is your joy is just make-believe.
If you can rejoice there,
then joy has really happened to you.
Now it is unconditional.
Now it doesn’t make any difference
whether death happens or life,
whether somebody is born
or somebody is dying.
Osho. The Tantra Experience:
Evolution through Love
You are no longer concerned with where you fall,
your manner of death, the pain.
You no longer care, don’t feel the need to.
This is only the end of a night,
the last of your nights,
the culmination of your entire life.
Ending in this perfect fall.
All of it, everything, has been a flash.
You don’t understand it,
but it’s beautiful...
Nukila Amal: The Original Dream
There is death in life,
and it astonishes me that we pretend to ignore this:
death, whose unforgiving presence we experience
with each change we survive
because we must learn to die slowly
. We must learn to die:
That is all of life.
To prepare gradually the masterpiece of a proud and supreme death,
of a death where chance plays no part,
of a well-made, beatific, and enthusiastic death
of the kind the saints knew to shape.
Of a long-ripened death
that effaces its hateful name
and is nothing but a gesture that returns those laws
to the anonymous universe which have been recognized and rescued
over the course of an intensely accomplished life.
It is this idea of death
which has developed inside of me since childhood
from one painful experience to the next,
and which compels me to humbly endure the small death,
so that I may become worthy
of the one which wants us to be great.
Rainer Maria Rilke: The Dark Interval
Death is not waiting for us at the end of a long road
Death is always with us,
in the marrow of every passing moment.
She is the secret teacher hiding in plain sight.
She helps us to discover what matters most.
And the good news is we don’t have to wait until the end of our lives
to realize the wisdom that death has to offer.
Reflecting on death can have a profound and positive impact
not just on how we die,
but on how we live.
Frank Ostaseki: The Five Invitations:
Discovering What Death Can Teach Us About Living Fully
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 Ostaseki: The Five Invitations:
Discovering What Death Can Teach Us About Living Fully
Death,
especially the most completely felt and experienced death,
has never remained an obstacle to life for a surviving individual,
because its innermost essence
is not contrary to us (as one may occasionally suspect),
but it is more knowing about life
than we are in our most vital moments.
I always think that such a great weight,
with its tremendous pressure,
somehow has the task of forcing us into a deeper, more intimate layer of life
so that we may grow out of it
all the more vibrant and fertile.
Rainer Maria Rilke:
The Dark Interval
Take it that you have died today,
and your life’s story is ended;
and henceforward regard what future time may be given you
as an uncovenanted surplus,
and live it out in harmony with nature.
Marcus Aurelius
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.
Joel S. Goldsmith:
Collected Essays
You may hear of someone's death,
but he has not died to himself,
as it was appointed that all men would die only once.
We died when we left our heavenly home
to come down and assume the limitations of the flesh.
Your death is over.
When you go through the gate called death,
you don't die,
but instantly emanate a young, unaccountably new body.
Most of those who go through the gate do not even know it.
They simply take their young body for granted,
just as they do everything here.
Neville Goddard:
Let Us Go Into The Silence
Disease is a purificatory process,
carried out in order to produce a purer expression,
life aroma, influence and soul usefulness.
When this is the case, a cure is possible.
Disease can be a gradual and slow process of dying
and of thus releasing the soul.
A cure then will not be possible,
though palliative and ameliorative measures are needed
and should most certainly be used.
The length of the life can be prolonged,
but a permanent and final cure is out of the question.
This the average mental healer fails to realise.
They make a horror out of death,
whereas death is a beneficent friend.
Alice A. Bailey:
Esoteric Healing
Various cultists and healers usually take the position
that it is of major importance that the physical vehicle be rendered free from disease
and clutched away from the processes of death.
It might, however, be desirable (and it often is)
that the disease be permitted to do its work
and death open the door to the escape of the soul from imprisonment.
The time comes inevitably to all incarnated beings
when the soul demands liberation from the body and from form life,
and nature has her own wise ways of doing this.
Disease and death must be recognisedas liberating factors
when they come as the result of right timing by the soul.
Alice A. Bailey:
Esoteric Healing
From one angle, disease is a process of liberation,
and the enemy of that which is static and crystallised.
Think not, from what I say,
that therefore disease should be welcomed,
and that the process of death should be cherished.
Were that the case,
one would cultivate disease and put a premium on suicide.
Fortunately for humanity,
the whole tendency of life is against disease,
and the reaction of the form life upon the thought of man fosters the fear of death.
This has been rightly so,
for the instinct of self-preservation and the preservation of form integrity
is a vital principle in matter,
and the tendency to self-perpetuation of the life within the form
is one of our greatest God-given capacities and will persist.
But in the human family this must eventually give place
to the use of death as the organised, freeing process
in order to conserve force and give to the soul
a better instrument of manifestation.
For this liberty of action,
mankind as a whole is not yet ready.
The disciples and aspirants of the world should now, however,
begin to grasp these newer principles of existence.
Alice A. Bailey: Esoteric Healing
One should really consider the matter of what death means,
not when one is ill or unbalanced,
or very close to it,
but when one is living with vitality,
with health and energy,
knowing the organism must necessarily wear out some day.
In dealing with this question, one must consider it,
not from the point of immortality,
but from the point of view of eternity
– that which is timeless –
and that is Now.
Ramesh Balsekar:
The Only Way to Live
Because so few of us are exposed to dying as a normal life passage,
we are both captivated and tyrannized by death.
We are either terrified into silence and avoidance,
or we flee into a sentimental narrative of the “good death,”
a purely spiritual experience where all is forgiven, the heavens open,
and the secretions, smells, exhaustion, and messiness disappear.
But a death, like a birth, weds the animal to the soulful.
Perhaps a more realistic hope for caregivers,
and for ourselves when we are dying,
is for a “good-enough death,”
where we keep the dying as comfortable and pain free as possible,
and leave room for the beautiful and the transcendent,
which may or may not occur.
Katy Butler: The Art of Dying Well:
A Practical Guide to a Good End of Life
I personally believe that death is part of God’s (or Nature’s) plan,
and that a loving God never intended
to force people to suffer at the hands of advanced technologies
that cannot restore them.
Yes, the Bible recounts miraculous healings,
but its miracles are grounded in faith,
not in man-made inventions with a potential for both good and evil.
It’s hard to morally justify putting people through regimens
that cause them suffering when they can neither understand
the purpose of the pain inflicted, nor meaningfully assent to it.
We must normalize saying “no”:
depriving a demented person of a natural death may seem loving,
but it is rarely kind.
The suffering of caregivers also deserves moral weight.
If your doctor is not on the same page,
find another more attuned to your values.
Katy Butler: The Art of Dying Well:
A Practical Guide to a Good End of Life
Ask a cloud:
“What is your date of birth?
Before you were born, where were you?”
Looking deeply,
you do not see a real date of birth
and you do not see a real date of death for the cloud.
All that happens is that the cloud transforms into rain or snow.
There is no real death
because there is always a continuation.
A cloud continues in the ocean,
the river and the heat of the sun,
and the rain continues the cloud.
If we are afraid of death
it is because we have not understood
that things do not really die.
Thich Nhat Hanh:
No Death, No Fear
Since before time you have been free.
Birth and death are only doors through which we pass,
sacred thresholds on our journey.
Birth and death are a game of hide-and-seek.
You have never been born and you can never die.
Our greatest pain
is caused by our notions of coming and going.
Thich Nhat Hanh:
No Death, No Fear
Is this heaven?” Billy asked his grandfather.
“Billy, there are many different heavens.
More than anyone can imagine.
I’ve learned that life is just beginning at death.
The choices available are beyond our imagination.
The physical world is but a tiny part of the many worlds we live within.”
William and Susan Buhlman:
Beyond the Astral: Metaphysical Short Stories
https://www.amazon.com/Beyond-Astral-Metaphysical-Short-Stories-ebook/dp/B07TK1T49K/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=beyond+the+astral&qid=1563456074&s=electronics&sr=8-1
At death,
one goes back to where one came from
– Home.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