Welcome to Death Knells

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Our life is no Dream,

 but it may and will perhaps become one —

Novalis

Dying becomes the way to everlasting fruitfulness.

 Here is the most hope-giving aspect of death.

 Our death may be the end of our success, 

our productivity, our fame, or our importance among people, 

but it is not the end of our fruitfulness.

 In fact, the opposite is true: 

the fruitfulness of our lives 

shows itself in its fullness

 only after we have died.

 Henri J. M. Nouwen

Our Greatest Gift: 

A Meditation on Dying and Caring

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

Let’s not go back to life as usual.

 Because for many, when someone we love deeply dies,

 life is not “normal” — 

not yesterday, not today, and not tomorrow. 

Life is forever changed.

  We feel grief because we have deeply loved.

 And while this hurts,

 most of us would not return one moment with that person,

 even if it meant the promise of abated grief. 

Our beloved dead are worth our pain. 

They are worth our tears. 

They are worth remembering.

Joanne Cacciatore 

Grieving is Loving

"We grieve because we have loved.” 

To say grief is pathological or abnormal 

when it lasts beyond an artificially determined time limit, 

or to imply that it is a disease to be treated with drugs,

 is to deny the core of our very being-ness. 

Even animals mourn their dead, Dr. Jo shared, as did J35 — 

an orca whale nicknamed “Tahlequah,”

 who was observed by scientists 

to have carried the body of her dead baby,

 with the help of her pod, 

for seventeen days through the Pacific Ocean. 

Far from being irrational, Dr. Jo says,

 the pain of grief is necessary.

 “I don’t even want to recover from her death,”

 she says about her daughter, Cheyenne. 

“Staying connected to the grief 

helps me to do my work with such a full, compassionate heart,” 

and to live as fully as she can.

Johann Hari

from introduction of

Joanne Cacciatore 

Grieving is Loving

Once you stop clinging to life,

 real life becomes available to you.  

The more you cling to life, 

the more you are clinging to death itself.

  This life is nothing but death—

death camouflaged, covered, hidden.  

Once you accept death, 

this life disappears,

 but another dimension opens.

OSHO

Above All, Don’t Wobble

It is a hard thing to accept,

 that death and decay and everything bad

 leads to everything good,

 but I for one believe it. 

As Emily Dickinson,

 eternally great poet 

and occasionally anxious agoraphobe, said:

 “That it will never come again

 is what makes life so sweet.”

 Matt Haig

 Reasons to Stay Alive

Usually the dying person knows. 

What they need is some help 

in being able to articulate that knowledge.

 But everyone else's distress makes it hard for them to talk–

the dying are in essence being forced 

into a position of having to protect their survivors.

 Once they are able to say 'I am going to die' they become,

 'not the victim of death

 but rather the protagonist in their own dying'.

Elizabeth Fenwick 

 The Art of Dying

The worst kind of solitude when you're dying 

is not being able to say to the people you love

 that you're going to die.

 To feel your death approaching

 and not to be able to talk about it 

or to be able to share with others

 what this leave-taking inspires in you

 often results directly in mental breakdown, 

a kind of delirium,

 or some manifestation of pain 

that at least gives you

 something you are allowed to talk about.

Marie de Hennezel

quoted in

Elizabeth Fenwick 

 The Art of Dying

The weird thing about depression is that,

 even though you might have more suicidal thoughts, 

the fear of death remains the same.

 The only difference

 is that the pain of life has rapidly increased.

 So when you hear about someone killing themselves

 it’s important to know 

that death wasn’t any less scary for them.

 It wasn’t a “choice” in the moral sense. 

To be moralistic about it is to misunderstand.

Matt Haig

 Reasons to Stay Alive

I wanted to be dead.

 No. That’s not quite right. 

I didn’t want to be dead.

 I just didn’t want to be alive. 

Death was something that scared me. 

And death only happens to people who have been living.

 There were infinitely more people

 who had never been alive.

 I wanted to be one of those people. 

That old classic wish.

 Matt Haig

 Reasons to Stay Alive

According to Nietzsche,

 there are two forms of health: 

the futile type 

that tries to keep death at bay as long as possible,

 and the affirming type 

that embraces life,

 even its deficiencies and excesses.

John J. Kaag 

Hiking with Nietzsche 

The dying process, 

with its numerous losses,

 can become a powerful opportunity

 to let go of the ego’s hold on our identity

 and finally discover our true nature as spirit.

 The ego’s lifelong striving to defend itself 

from all attacks on its value is over. 

We can relax into spirit. 

We can find refuge, strength, and empowerment 

in our identity as immortal soul.

Philip Jones 

Light on Death: The Spiritual Art of Dying

Losing the World, Gaining immortality

 Realization of the immortal self is not always easy,
even with the urgency of our physical decline.
The dying process appears to be a paradox.
We lose many of the things that have defined our life:
health, beauty, strength, influence,
and the ability to travel and enjoy our wealth.
Yet we have an opportunity to gain the greatest treasure of all:
our true immortal identity.
According to the Vedic sages,
this paradox arises because of the common human confusion
over our true identity.
Are we an ego that continually has to defend its possessions, wealth,
family, image, status and the like?
Or are we a soul
that is defined by its intrinsic worth as immortal, wise, and joyful?
It does not take much wisdom to realize
that the latter option is preferable.
Yet our culture promotes the former conception of self,
blinded as it is by a fascination
​ for the fleeting promises of material life.

Philip Jones
Light on Death: The Spiritual Art of Dying

Real death is not a source of terror
for the ordinary, intelligent, sensitive being.
It is living death which is the great nightmare.
Living death means the interruption of the current of life,
the forestalling of a natural death process.
It is a negative way of recognizing
that the world is really nothing but a great womb,
the place where everything is brought to life.

Henry Miller 
The Wisdom of the Heart

It is not that the artist  is incapable of living.
On the contrary,
his zest for life is so powerful,
so voracious
that it forces him to kill himself
over and over.
He dies many times
​in order to live innumerable lives.

Henry Miller 
The Wisdom of the Heart 

We must continually bear firmly in mind that man,
so long as he lives within his physical body,
directs his thoughts to that sphere
which he has to experience after death and before rebirth.
We direct our thoughts to that sphere,
not in order to satisfy mere curiosity,
but because we have always been able to convince ourselves
that in turning our thought to that other world,
we are able to make a contribution to this world,
by ennobling and invigorating the conceptions
needed for our acting, thinking, feeling, etc.
We must hold firmly to the thought
that many of life's secrets can only be solved
if we have the courage to approach what may be called
​the riddle of death.

Rudolf Steiner

It is good to live with people,
it is good to be in the world while you are living,
but when one is getting nearer to death
it is good to move into total aloneness,
so that you move towards the original source
in your absolute purity and loneliness,
uncontaminated by the world.

OSHO
Absolute Tao

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 

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

“When you identify as a soul,
you don’t fear death,
because the soul doesn’t die.
I identify as a soul now.
I’m not afraid.”

Ram Dass 
Walking Each Other Home: 
Conversations on Loving and Dying 

HEAVEN

 To a disciple who was obsessed with the thought of life after death 
the Master said, “Why waste a single moment thinking of the hereafter?”
 “But is it possible not to?”
 “Yes.”
 “How?”
 “By living in heaven here and now.”
 “And where is this heaven?”
 “In the here and now.”

Anthony De Mello 
One Minute Wisdom 

DREAMS
​
“When will I be Enlightened?”
“When you see,” the Master said.
“See what?”
“Trees and flowers and moon and stars.”
“But I see these every day.”
“No. What you see is paper trees, paper flowers, paper moons and paper stars.
For you live not in reality but in your words and thoughts.”
And for good measure, he added gently,
“You live a paper life, alas, and will die a paper death.”

Anthony De Mello 
One Minute Wisdom 

If agony and death could not be escaped,
perhaps instead it was possible to embrace them,
even joyfully.
Tragedy, according to Nietzsche, had its benefits:
it proved that suffering could be more than mere suffering;
in its bitter rawness,
pain could still be directed, well-ordered,
and even beautiful and sublime.

John J. Kaag
Hiking with Nietzsche

Now to see the truth of all this,
a young mind is essential,
a mind that is not merely functioning in the field of time.
The young mind dies to everything.
Can you see the truth of that immediately,
feel the truth of it instantly?
You may not see the whole extraordinary significance of it,
the immense subtlety,
the beauty of that dying,
the richness of it,
but even to listen to it sows the seed,
and the significance of these words takes root--
not only at the superficial, conscious level,
​ but right through all the unconscious.

Jiddu Krishnamurti 
The Book of Life

Have you ever tried dying
to a pleasure voluntarily, not forcibly?
Ordinarily when you die you don’t want to;
death comes and takes you away;
it is not a voluntary act, except in suicide.
But have you ever tried dying voluntarily, easily,
felt that sense of the abandonment of pleasure?

If you experiment with dying to little things—that is good enough.
Just to die to little pleasures—with ease,
with comfort, with a smile—is enough,
for then you will see that your mind is capable
of dying to many things, dying to all memories.
Machines are taking over the functions of memory—the computers--
but the human mind is something more
than a merely mechanical habit of association and memory.
But it cannot be that something else
​ if it does not die to everything it knows.

Jiddu Krishnamurti
The Book of Life

The body dies and the brain dies,
but the mind lives on after death
and it feels as though it is still alive.
The brain needs sugar and oxygen to survive,
but the mind does not.
After death,
it takes time before the mind finally notices it is dead.
The function of the mind is to dream.
Even in a sleeping dream,
you feel as if you have a body and you can talk,
and sometimes you notice that you are dreaming.
Your reason will try to wake you up.
Reason ceases to function at death,
and therefore nothing tells you
​that you are dead.

Mary Carroll Nelson
Beyond Fear: A Toltec Guide to Freedom and Joy -
The Teachings of Don Miguel Ruiz

We are beyond life and death,
beyond space and beyond time.
We are all immortal,
​and we exist throughout eternity.

Brian Weiss
Messages from the Masters:
Tapping into the Power of Love

As my voyager’s attention
becomes free of occlusion and identification
with the human biological machine,
I will see the Clear Light of the void
manifesting as the face of the beloved,
the unveiled vision of reality.
This is what is meant by the expression
​ “death comes as a lover.”

John C. Lilly, E. J. Gold, Claudio Naranjo
American Book of the Dead 

Question:
How long is the period between death and rebirth?
I have heard different times,
everything ranging from immediate,
to fifty years, up to ten thousand.
Answer:
There is no set formula.
It will vary from one individual to another,
depending on one’s soul’s particular circumstances and needs.
The other point is that our linear conception of time
does not have a standard conversion
to the states of experience after death.
Time is different in different states of consciousness,
so whatever the measurement of time
from an embodied perspective,
it will be a different experience of time
​ from the soul’s disembodied point of view.

Deepak Chopra
Ask Deepak About Death and Dying

The knowledge
that we traverse the whole scale of being,
from the center to the poles of nature,
and have some stake in every possibility,
lends that sublime luster to death,
which philosophy and religion
have too outwardly and literally striven to express
in the popular doctrine of the immortality of the soul.
The reality is more excellent than the report.
Here is no ruin, no discontinuity, no spent ball.
​The divine circulations never rest nor linger.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Nature

WHAT WILL YOU GIVE?

What will you give
When death knocks at your door?
The fullness of my life--
The sweet wine of autumn days and summer nights,
My little hoard gleaned through the years,
And hours rich with living.
These will be my gift.
When death knocks at my door.

Tagore