This site shares Life-affirming meditations
that heal misconception about Death.
Living beautifully and dying beautifully,
Embrace Death as our Birth
into limitless Life Awareness.
Most of the world religions
teach some form of immortality,
but you don't believe them;
if you did
you would not fear the annihilation of death.
It has been said that fear of death
is the basic, primal fear
that generates all other fear,
and is the underlying psychological factor
shaping all of life.
All of this is illusion,
and all based on the essential misconception
that you are an individual,
inseparably associated
with the body that apparently dies.
David Carse
Perfect Brilliant Stillness
The kabalists say that a man is not dead
when his body is entombed.
Death is never sudden;
for, according to Hermes,
nothing goes in nature by violent transitions.
Everything is gradual,
and as it required a long and gradual development
to produce the living human being,
so time is required
to completely withdraw vitality from the carcass.
"Death can no more be an absolute end,
than birth a real beginning.
Birth proves the preexistence of the being,
as death proves immortality,"
says the same French kabalist.
Helena P. Blavatsky
The Veil of Isis
Death is with us throughout our lives
and comes to us all.
It is a source of deep anxiety for many of us.
The challenge for me,
having fought against premature death on a daily basis,
is how to overcome this existential fear of death
and develop an acceptance or even a welcoming mind-set.
In Walking on the Pastures of Wonder,
John O’Donohue notes that
‘Death is the unseen companion,
the unknown companion
who walks every step of the journey with us…’
He goes on to argue that,
in unifying all that has happened in one’s life
and a reunification with all those one has loved,
‘Death in that sense is a time of great homecoming,
and there is no need to be afraid’.
As the Connemara Irish say,
‘Ní feídir dul i bhfholach ar an mbás’ –
you cannot hide from death.
Patrick McGorry
Rosalind Bradley
A Matter of Life and Death
Traveler, your footprints
are the only road, nothing else.
Traveler, there is no road;
you make your own path as you walk.
As you walk, you make your own road,
and when you look back
you see the path
you will never travel again.
Traveler, there is no road
only a ship’s wake on the sea.
Antonio Machado
There is No Road
quoted in:
Rosalind Bradley
A Matter of Life and Death
Thus shall ye of all this fleeting world:
A star at dawn, a bubble in a stream;
A flash of lightning in a summer cloud,
A flickering lamp, a phantom, and a dream.
W.Y. Evans-Wentz
The Diamond Sutra
We would like you to consider
that death of the physical body
does not constitute the death
of the spiritual aspect of being, or the soul.
This essence of our being is who we really are,
and it is not subject to the laws of life and death,
of decay and regeneration,
as it is purely energetic and therefore perpetual.
The energy essence of the body, or the soul,
survives in its natural state outside of the physical body,
and therefore, death of the physical
is allowing that spiritual aspect
to return to its natural state of being.
The return of spirit to the non-physical state
creates a joyful feeling of release
from the bonds of the physical life,
and the spirit rejoices with its freedom
and departure from whatever illness, pain or suffering
it may have been experiencing in the material world.
Tracy Farquhar
Frank Talk: A Book of Channeled Wisdom
It’s common that dying people
are welcomed by their loved ones in spirit
days or hours before their death.
These experiences are known as deathbed visions
or pre-death visions.
Deathbed visions are when loved ones in spirit
visit a dying person days or hours before their death
in order to welcome them back to the spirit world.
In this way, the dying are greeted
by deceased family members and friends (even pets)
to prepare them
for their forthcoming transition from human to spirit
and thereby ease any fears or anxiety
they might have about death.
Usually, when there is communication from spirit to human,
it happens telepathically (by thought)—
from spirit to human and human to spirit—
so no words need to be spoken out loud.
Bob Olson
Answers about the Afterlife:
A Private Investigator's 15-Year Research
Unlocks the Mysteries of Life after Death
When we are on the spiritual path,
we are laying up spiritual consciousness,
and as we leave this plane,
which eventually we do—
not by death, but by transition—
we find ourselves on an ascending scale,
always going up,
further into the light,
further into freedom.
There is really only one freedom in all this world:
the freedom from the belief in good and evil.
When we are free of that,
we are truly free of physical, mental,
moral, and financial limitations.
Joel S. Goldsmith
Realization of Oneness
There is no such thing as Death.
The name is a lie—
the idea an illusion growing from ignorance.
There is no death—
there is nothing but Life.
Life has many phases and forms,
and some of the phases are called “death” by ignorant men.
Nothing really dies—
though everything experiences
a change of form and activity.
Yogi Ramacharaka
The Life Beyond Death
All occultists recognize
in the transformation stages of the caterpillar-chrysalis-butterfly
a picture of the transformation
which awaits every mortal man and woman.
For death to the human being
is no more a termination or cessation
than is the death-sleep of the caterpillar.
In neither case
does life cease for even a single instant—
life persists
while Nature works her changes.
Yogi Ramacharaka
The Life Beyond Death
We must face the fact
that we have to leave this phase of life and enter another.
That phase is the one we know the least about.
But if you face death and lose your fear of it,
you are wholly on the spiritual path,
because you will have realized
that you have no selfhood,
that God is your Selfhood,
that the life you are living is God’s,
that it is God living your life,
and that you are perfectly willing
for God to take it around the world
or even into the next world.
Once you have lost your fear of death,
you are wholly on the spiritual path.
Joel S. Goldsmith
Living By Grace: The Path to Inner Discovery
Dying is not a condition
that you actually go through.
No one has ever died.
There is no death.
God has no pleasure in your dying
and has never arranged for a death.
Therefore, death is an experience
only of corporeal sense,
the sense that tells us
we are physical, mortal, finite.
Death is never an experience
of our own being.
Joel S. Goldsmith
Living By Grace: The Path to Inner Discovery
The fear of death
is one of humanity’s most powerful sources of anxiety.
Few of us experience mortality as directly
as do people who have had near-death experiences.
Yet despite having the frightful experience of nearly dying,
most NDErs do not report an increase in their fear of death,
but rather a decrease in their fear
or a loss of the fear altogether.
This is a consistent finding in a number of previously published studies.
Catherine, who nearly died after surgery, reported:
I had always been terrified of death, of oblivion.
I no longer fear death.
Lauren was felt by the EMS to be dead on arrival after a severe accident.
She wrote:
I am no longer afraid of death.
I know now in my soul that there is so much more after life.
I feel that once I have learned what it is I am supposed to learn
or a task that I must complete,
, that I will be rewarded with a life after death.
Sharla, who nearly died of respiratory arrest, wrote:
The most significant part of the experience
is that there is nothing to fear of death.
Jeffrey Long, M.D.
Paul Perry
Evidence of the Afterlife:
The Science of Near-Death Experiences
Spending time with the person who has died
can be a profound and important experience.
A dead person is still a person.
Anna Lyons, Louise Winter
We all know how this ends.
If, when I die,
you hear the flutterings of wings near you,
ah, it will be my soul
that yearns to take you with me.
Konstantinos Lardas
Mourning Songs of Greek Women
Sleep, you say, is the image of death;
for my part I say
that it is rather the image of life.
Blaise Pascal
Pensees
Death should be known.
Known as a difficult mental, physical, and emotional process,
respected and feared for what it is.
Caitlin Doughty
Smoke Gets In Your Eyes
What will crossing into death feel like?
What does it have to offer,
as I step nearer, as it pulls me in?
Dying is not an experience anyone else can do for me.
While others can journey closely
and with profound devotion and love,
no one else will be able to die for me.
I’m entering that alone,
even as others offer their love
and presence
and deep prayers for healing and peace.
How unexpected that, finding myself at this threshold,
I experience fullness in death
and in many ways
so much loss in living life.
Tallu Schuyler Quinn
What We Wish Were True
For the initiate
the next physical death is an entirely different event
from the death as he knew it formerly.
He experiences death consciously
by laying aside the physical body
as one discards a garment that is worn out
or perhaps rendered useless through a sudden rent.
Thus his physical death is of special importance
only for those living with him,
whose perception is still restricted
to the world of the senses.
For them the student dies;
but for himself
nothing of importance is changed
in his whole environment.
The entire supersensible world
stood open to him before his death,
and it is this same world
that now confronts him after death.
Rudolf Steiner
Knowledge of the Higher Worlds
We are all going to die.
One might as well die before his death.
It’s the only way to become immortal.
Nevit Ergin
Masters of Wisdom of Central Asia:
Teachings from the Sufi Path of Liberation
The thing you lost at your birth,
you will find at your death.
Waves appear,
disappear in the sea,
are neither born nor die.
Death and birth are the same.
Hasan Lutfi Shushud
The Sufi Path of Annihilation
Death is the poem of the universe.
Human beings are asleep;
they only wake up at death
Hasan Lutfi Shushud
The Sufi Path of Annihilation
After the ego is gone
one finds that the self no longer exists,
and one has died what Zen calls
the Great Death, Daishi.
With that death, though,
we have at last become free.
In Zen literature, this state is described in this way,
The blue mountains, from the beginning,
do not move;
The white clouds, of themselves,
come and go.
Like the blue mountains, nothing can move us;
we cannot be startled or frightened.
In this state, what is there to fear?
Like the white clouds
we can come and go as we please.
In such a condition,
what is there to hinder us?
This is the substance of the Hagakure,
William Scott Wilson
Yamamoto Tsunetomo
Hagakure: The Book of the Samurai
In meditation,
if our senses and passions are coming steadily under control,
the ego dies a little every day.
Whenever we forget ourselves,
even for a moment,
the shadowy, separate self is gone.
Those are moments of immortality right on earth.
Stretch them out,
still the mind,
and that false self is no more.
In this very life the jiva will have died;
how can it die again?
In dying to ourselves,
all mystics say,
we are born to eternal life.
Eknath Easwaran
Essence of the Upanishads
Death really is a kind of sleep,
and not at all in a poetic sense.
The purpose of both is strikingly similar:
“R and R,” rest and recuperation.
“As a tethered bird,” the Upanishads say,
“grows tired of flying about in vain
and settles down at last on its own perch,
so the mind, tired of wandering hither and thither,
settles down to rest in the Self in dreamless sleep.”
It is the same in death.
Eknath Easwaran
Essence of the Upanishads
The Way of the Samurai is found in death. . . .
If by setting one’s heart right every morning and evening,
one is able to live as though his body were already dead,
he gains freedom in the Way.
His whole life will be without blame,
and he will succeed in his calling.
Yamamoto Tsunetomo
Hagakure: The Book of the Samurai
Zen teaches us that we should live
as though not only our bodies but our egos were already dead.
In one Zen story, a monk happily reports to his master
that he has finally thrown out his ego,
and wonders what to do next.
The priest answers wryly, “Throw that out, too.”
After the ego is gone
one finds that the self no longer exists,
and one has died what Zen calls the Great Death, Daishi.
With that death, though,
we have at last become free.
William Scott Wilson
Hagakure: The Book of the Samurai
Life never dies.
At death, only forms die.
Life that was in-formed
then takes another form.
So what are you afraid of?
You are independent of everything.
However, you'll never see yourself as independent of everything
until you release your grip on everything.
Take that first step.
You won't fall;
you'll float.
Roy Melvyn
Life Never Dies
As we travel with a dying loved one through his or her last days,
we clearly see the stages of detachment
through which we will need to pass
in our own life before being prepared to die.
In other words,
we learn to die well
so that we can then live well,
free from the fear of inevitable material losses.
The Vedic aphorism to “die before you die”
also addresses the wisdom
of gradually dying
to the ego and its trappings
in order to fully live.
Philip Jones
Light on Death: The Spiritual Art of Dying
In the Vedic tradition,
our entire earthly life came to be seen
as a pilgrimage through this temporary world
to the immortal land of our soul,
the spiritual world of infinite freedom and love.
Caregiving a soul nearing death
means journeying with our dying friend or family member
through the final stage of their earthly pilgrimage.
Our sacrifice of love in joining our loved one’s final journey
has benefits to our life experience as well.
Philip Jones
Light on Death: The Spiritual Art of Dying
Once there is a deep acceptance of death,
then life will happen to you in enormous proportions.
It is only because you tried to keep death away,
life has also stayed away from you.
This is why almost every yogi
spent a significant amount of time in the cremation ground
at some point or the other in his life.
Sadhguru
Death: An Inside Story
Many things that you have imagined about yourself
will all get burned in the cremation ground
if you sit there and keep watching what happens.
When you are watching the bodies burn,
you should not think about it.
Simply look at it;
just look at it and look at it and look at it.
After some time, you will see,
it is just you.
It is not any different.
It is your own body.
Once you can replace that body with yours
and still sit there,
there is a deep acceptance of death.
This is not a psychological process.
When your very body perceives
the fragility of its existence,
there is a very profound relief and acceptance.
Sadhguru
Death: An Inside Story
What every man,
whether he has patience or not,
has always expected
is, of course, death.
But he knows this only when death comes …,
when it is too late to be able to enjoy it.
E. M. Cioran
The Trouble with Being Born
This is the death we have to undergo,
to go beyond the rational understanding,
beyond the imagination and the senses,
into the primeval darkness,
where God, the divine mystery itself,
is hidden
It is a return to the womb,…
to the original darkness
from which we came.
But now that darkness is filled with light,
it is revealed as God.
The senses, the imagination and reason by itself
cannot pierce through that darkness,
but when we die to ourselves,
to the limitation of our mind
which casts its shadow on the light
then the darkness is revealed as light,
the soul discovers itself
in the radiance of a pure intuition;
it attains to self knowledge
. Bede Griffiths
The Marriage of East and West
WHAT IF YOU COULD DECIDE,
at the end of your life,
exactly when and where your death would happen?
What if, instead of dying alone,
in the middle of the night,
in a hospital bed,
you could be at home at a time of your choosing?
You could decide
who would be in the room with you,
holding your hand or embracing you
as you left this Earth.
And what if a doctor could help ensure
that your death was comfortable, peaceful, and dignified?
What if you could plan
a final conversation with everyone you love?
You might never look at death the same way again.
Stefanie Green
This Is Assisted Dying:
A Doctor's Story of Empowering Patients at the End of Life
I tremble to say there’s good in death,
that there’s a death positive narrative,
because I’ve looked in the eyes of the grieving mother
and I’ve seen the heartbreak of the stricken widow,
but I’ve also seen something more in death,
something good.
Death’s hands aren’t all bony and cold.
Caleb Wilde
Confessions of a Funeral Director
“It’s dark because you’re trying too hard,” said Susila.
“Dark because you want it to be light.
Remember what you used to tell me when I was a little girl.
‘Lightly, child, lightly.
You’ve got to learn to do everything lightly.
Think lightly, act lightly, feel lightly.
Yes, feel lightly, even though you’re feeling deeply.
Just lightly let things happen and lightly cope with them.’
I was so preposterously serious in those days,
such a humorless little prig.
Lightly, lightly—it was the best advice ever given me.
Well, now I’m going to say the same thing to you, Lakshmi . . .
Lightly, my darling, lightly.
Even when it comes to dying.
Nothing ponderous, or portentous, or emphatic.
No rhetoric, no tremolos, no self-conscious persona
putting on its celebrated imitation of Christ or Goethe or Little Nell.
And, of course, no theology, no metaphysics.
Just the fact of dying and the fact of the Clear Light.
So throw away all your baggage and go forward.
There are quicksands all about you,
sucking at your feet, trying to suck you down
into fear and self-pity and despair.
That’s why you must walk so lightly.
Lightly, my darling.
On tiptoes; and no luggage, not even a sponge bag. '
Completely unencumbered.”
Aldous Huxley
Island
Even if God brings death,
there is nothing to be afraid of.
It is he who is bringing death,
so there must be a reason in it,
there must be a hidden secret in it,
there must be a teaching in it.
He’s opening a door.
The man who trusts,
the man who is religious
is thrilled even at the gate of death—
he can give a lion’s roar.
Even dying—because he knows nothing dies—
at the very moment of death he can say,
“This is it!”
Because each moment,
this is it.
It may be life,
it may be death;
it may be success,
it may be failure;
it may be happiness,
it may be unhappiness.
Each moment …
this is it.
Osho
Trust
If, at the time of death, death inquires of you,
“Would you like to live your life,
the same life that you have lived, one time more?”
What do you think your answer is going to be?
I don’t think that any intelligent man
would be ready to live this whole tragedy again –
exactly the same wife, the same husband;
exactly the same drama, the same dialogues.
Only a man who has really lived intensively and totally
and who has not been lukewarm and tepid,
who has burned his life’s torch at both ends together,
will be ready to go through life again
because he knows he can change everything that has been.
He can find new spaces,
he can find new mountains to climb,
he can find new stars to reach,
he can trust in himself.
He knows his courage
and he knows that to live dangerously
is the only way to live.
Osho.
In Love with Life:
Reflections on Friedrich Nietzsche's Thus Spake Zarathustra
When it comes your time to die
Be not like those whose hearts
Are filled with the fear of death,
So that when their time comes,
They weep and pray for more time
To live their lives over again
In a different way.
Sing your Death Song
And die like a hero going home.
Chief Tecumseh
These are the only three things
that can be major incidents of your life:
birth, love and death.
Birth you cannot control –
your own birth; nobody asks you,
you just find yourself one day born.
And the same happens with death –
it does not ask you either,
“Are you ready? I am coming tomorrow.”
No advance notice; just suddenly it comes,
and you are dead.
Only love
is the freedom standing between these two.
Osho
In Love with Life:
Reflections on Friedrich Nietzsche's Thus Spake Zarathustra
“The Master came at his right time Into the world.
When his time was up,
He left it again.
He who awaits his time, who submits
When his work is done,
In his life, there is no room
For sorrow or for rejoicing.
Here is how the ancients said all this
In four words:
‘God cuts the thread.’ "
Thomas Merton
The Way of Chuang Tzu
Saint Thérèse on being asked shortly before her death
what was the ‘Little Way’ she was so eager to teach others, replied:
‘It is the way of spiritual childhood,
the way of trust and absolute surrender.
I want to point out to souls
the means that I have always found so completely successful,
to tell them there is only one thing to do here below -
to offer Our Lord the flowers of little sacrifices
and win him by our caresses.
That is how I have won him,
and that is why I shall be made so welcome.’
Thérèse Lisieux
The Little Way of St Therese of Lisieux
For all we know
We may never meet again
Before we go
Make this moment live again
We won't say goodbye
Until the last minute
I'll hold out my hand
And my heart will be in it
For all we know
This might only be a dream
We come and we go Like the ripples,
like the ripples in the stream
So baby, love me, love me tonight
Tomorrow was made for some
Oh, but tomorrow
But tomorrow may never, never come
For all we know
Yes, tomorrow may never, never come
J.Fred Coots, Sam M. Lewis
Lyrics from For All We Know
The concept of a good death
can put unbearable pressure on dying people and caregivers,
and can take us away from death’s mystery
and the richness of not knowing.
Our expectations of how someone should die
can give rise to subtle or direct coerciveness.
No one wants to be judged for how well she dies!
Joan Halifax
quoted in:
Andrew Holecek
Preparing to Die:
Practical Advice and Spiritual Wisdom
from the Tibetan Buddhist Tradition
For caregivers, be careful not to “should”
on the dying person or yourself.
Do not feel that things should go a particular way,
or that you should be feeling a certain emotion.
Bring the confidence born from preparation,
then let the situation, and the dying person, guide you.
In this delicate dance
the dying person leads.
Your job is to be aware of their needs,
not to impose your own.
Do not force them into your version of a good death.
I once saw a cartoon
of a man lying on his death bed, looking concerned.
A few people were standing around the bed,
and the caption above the worried man said,
“How’s my dying?”
Andrew Holecek
Preparing to Die:
Practical Advice and Spiritual Wisdom
from the Tibetan Buddhist Tradition
After death,
your awareness will be vibrating
at a different frequency than it is now,
and that entails a new world of abilities,
new knowledge, and new concerns.
However, if your soul growth dictates
that you need the familiar faces of loved ones around you
to feel secure on this new stage,
then that familiarity is something you will easily create.
Consciousness is a field of all possibilities, after all,
and whatever is required in that afterlife state
is as easily manifested as it is in a dream.
Deepak Chopra
Ask Deepak About Death and Dying
You have always associated the words 'darkness', 'death', 'devil' with evil.
But if you want to know life,
there is no other way to know it
except by fully coming to terms with and accepting death.
Only that person who is willing to die can live.
If you do not want to die
you should not live.
It is as simple as that.
So they are not really separate.
The separation has come out of ignorance.
The separation has come
because first of all
you have separated yourself from life.
Sadhguru
Don't Polish Your Ignorance...It May Shine
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
Many people who lose a loved one
feel as if they will never see or hear from that person again
and feel that this life in the physical is everything we have.
While the loss of life on earth
is most assuredly something that produces real grief,
the passing must be seen in perspective.
There is a vast amount of evidence, both anecdotal and scientific,
clearly displaying that our life continues beyond the physical,
just not where we can see it with our human eyes.
As this mountain of evidence grows,
so too does the number of people
who realize that life after physical death is real.
According to the International Association for Near-Death Studies,
well over 5 percent of the global population—
over 400 million people—
have had a near-death experience (NDE).
As these people return from their experiences
and describe what they have seen (which often defies logical explanation),
we are coming to understand
what happens after the physical body dies.
The transition called “death”
is really just a metamorphosis
whereby our “being” evolves into another state
with our consciousness intact.
Our loved ones are still with us in another form;
we just can’t see them.
Chris Lippincott
Spirits Beside Us:
Gain Healing and Comfort from Loved Ones in the Afterlife
KRISHNAMURTI: They have said that life has no meaning,
and therefore we must give life a significance.
Death has no meaning,
and therefore it must have another significance.
This is what man has done throughout the centuries, sir.
We are saying quite the contrary—
that one cannot find the fullness of life,
the depth of life
if there is fear,
and to end fear
is also to understand death.
QUESTION: How can one put oneself voluntarily in contact with the state of death?
KRISHNAMURTI: You can’t put yourself in contact with death.
You put the question wrongly.
Look, you are afraid of death,
and as long as you are afraid of anything,
there is no contact with that thing.
J. Krishnamurti
The Beauty of Death
To understand and be free of anything,
one must come into contact with it.
As we were saying the other day,
one has an image about death,
and that image, created by thought,
brings fear of death.
In the same way one has an image
of this emptiness, of this loneliness,
and that image prevents a direct contact
with the fact of loneliness.
If you would look at a flower,
look at it.
You can only look at it
if there is no image of that flower in your mind,
if you don’t name it,
if thought is not operating
when you are looking at the flower—
thought as knowledge
of the species or the color of that flower.
Then you are directly, immediately
in contact with that thing.
When there is such contact,
there is no observer.
The observer is the image-maker
who prevents coming into direct contact with a fact,
with a flower,
with death,
or with that thing
which we call loneliness.
J. Krishnamurti
The Beauty of Death
While he has not revealed the time of his own departure,
Sadhguru has often said
he intends to make sure he chooses the time and date.
“I’ll hang on as long as see thirsty eyes around me.
The moment I don’t see those anymore, I will leave.
And I will walk to my grave.
Nobody will have to carry me there.
I promise you that.
If you have sufficient mastery,
if you’re able to leave your body consciously,
you should leave when everything is well.
I’m not in a hurry.
But I will leave when I’m well.
I live quite a spectacular life within myself
even if it’s not visible to most people.
And the way I die will be visibly spectacular—
like a signature.”
Arundhathi Subramaniam
SADHGURU
More than a Life
“Would you say, don Juan,
that death is the only real enemy we have?”
I asked him a moment later.
“No,” he said with conviction.
“Death is not an enemy,
although it appears to be.
Death is not our destroyer,
although we think it is.
” “What is it, then, if not our destroyer?” I asked.
“Sorcerers say death is the only worthy opponent we have,” he replied.
“Death is our challenger.
We are born to take that challenge,
average men or sorcerers.
Sorcerers know about it;
average men do not.”
“I personally would say, don Juan,
life, not death, is the challenge.”
“Life is the process
by means of which death challenges us,” he said.
“Death is the active force.
Life is the arena.
And in that arena
there are only two contenders at any time:
oneself and death.”
Carlos Castaneda
Power of Silence
“You must agree, don Juan,
not thinking about death
certainly protects us from worrying about it.”
“Yes, it serves that purpose,” he conceded.
“But that purpose is an unworthy one for average men
and a travesty for sorcerers.
Without a clear view of death,
there is no order, no sobriety,
no beauty.
Sorcerers struggle to gain this crucial insight
in order to help them realize at the deepest possible level
that they have no assurance whatsoever
their lives will continue beyond the moment.
That realization gives sorcerers
the courage to be patient and yet take action,
courage to be acquiescent without being stupid.”
“The idea of death
is the only thing that can give sorcerers courage.
Strange, isn’t it?
It gives sorcerers the courage
to be cunning without being conceited,
and above all
it gives them courage
to be ruthless without being self-important.”
Carlos Castaneda
Power of Silence
“The idea of death therefore
is of monumental importance in the life of a sorcerer,” don Juan continued.
“I have shown you innumerable things about death
to convince you that the knowledge of our impending and unavoidable end
is what gives us sobriety.
Our most costly mistake as average men
is indulging in a sense of immortality.
It is as though we believe
that if we don’t think about death
we can protect ourselves from it.”
Carlos Castaneda
Power of Silence
We have various ways and means of facing death—
rationalizing it, escaping from it,
belief, dogma, hope, and all the rest of it.
But we have never really understood it;
we have never felt what it means to die.
Unless we understand this phenomenon
psychologically, not physiologically,
we can never understand
this sense of a new action
born out of total silence.
Do you understand?
That is why one has to die to everything one knows—
which is consciousness,
which is the past,
which is the accumulated result of time.
Because it is only in death,
in total death,
that there is something new,
that there is a total silence
in which a different kind of life can be led.
J. Krishnamurti
The Collected Works of J. Krishnamurti:
Volume 16: The Beauty of Death
If the soul remains but in a disembodied condition,
then it can have had no original dependence
on a body for its existence;
it must have subsisted
as an unembodied spirit before birth
even as it persists
in its disembodied spiritual entity after death.
Sri Aurobindo
The Essential Aurobindo
If the soul was created to animate the body,
if it depended on the body
for its coming into existence,
it can have no reason or basis for existence
after the disappearance of the body.
It is naturally to be supposed
that the breath or power given for the animation of the body
would return at its final dissolution to its Maker.
If, on the contrary,
it still persists as an immortal embodied being
, there must be a subtle or psychic body in which it continues,
and it is fairly certain that this psychic body and its inhabitant
must be pre-existent to the material vehicle:
it is irrational to suppose
that they were created originally
to inhabit that brief and perishable form;
an immortal being cannot be the outcome
of so ephemeral an incident in creation.
Sri Aurobindo
The Essential Aurobindo
As one near death experiencer said to me:
It’s like suddenly finding the love of your life
and the next morning finding out
that person has moved to Mars.
They still exist,
they still love you and you still love them -
but they are far away
and you don’t know how to reconnect.
For me it was like nothing in this world
could compare to the beauty of “there.”
Everything back here seemed dull and almost dead.
The energy and the beauty and the feeling of “there”
was beyond anything you can express,
and coming back here was almost painful.
You know it’s still there, it hasn’t gone away,
you just don’t know how to get back there.
I think this life would be easier
for those who have had near death experiences
if they knew they could revisit at will
or even occasionally travel back “there.”
But to be cut off from it - for some - can be very difficult.
The lucky ones
are those who can take the “there” with them,
and not pine for it.
But to use that experience
to make this world like that world.
Richard Martini
It's A Wonderful Afterlife Volume One:
Further Adventures in the Flipside
The problem with the concept of reincarnation
is that it creates the false impression
that a distinct “you” keeps coming back over and over.
That is not the case.
When “you” die,
you are no longer “you.”
That term “you” ceases to have any meaning.
“You” reemerge into the great light
and your identity is no longer relevant.
That is why
we don’t have much use for names here.
It’s better to look at it like this:
Something returns to continue
the process of evolution
that it began in previous lives
but that something is an extension of God,
not “you.”
Todd Michael:
The Evolution Angel:
An Emergency Physician's Lessons with Death and the Divine
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
In the Bardo of this life,
we may be very earnest
in our contemplation of mind’s ultimate nature,
and try with great effort
to gain some experience of it through meditation.
At the time of death, however,
this very experience arises effortlessly.
When we finally reach the point
of the dissolution of all dualistic appearances,
we experience a moment of complete awareness,
a moment of vivid clarity.
It is like a shift in the weather,
when the sky clears up;
the dense covering of clouds is gone,
and suddenly we see the vast sky.
At this moment,
mind arrives directly at its own ground.
It is just like coming home.
Dzogchen Ponlop
Mind Beyond Death
I praise what is truly alive,
what longs to be burned to death.
And so long as you haven’t experienced this:
to die and so to grow,
you are only a troubled guest
on the dark earth.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
The Holy Longing
Viewing ourselves in present time,
rather than the past or future,
is a difficult task for our Western minds,
But the dying are pushed to that perspective
when the future is abruptly taken from them
and this moment, here and now,
becomes the only thing that still exists.
To learn the wisdom of the dying,
we are asked to study
the art of dwelling in the present moment
in order to further our spiritual growth
and advance our consciousness in the world.
Karen Wyatt
What Really Matters
Remember that there is no tyranny as great
as the tyranny of success,
and the greatest success story
is that we are healthy and alive.
But health is just the slowest way to die.
This success breeds the most insidious of tyrannies:
the illusion of immortality.
We read about death in the paper,
hear it on the news,
and see it all around us.
We are swimming in an ocean of death
and still do not acknowledge it.
Andrew Holecek
The Power and the Pain
Transforming Spiritual Hardship Into Joy
The Indian master Atisha says
that if you don’t contemplate death in the morning,
the morning is wasted;
if you don’t contemplate death in the afternoon,
the afternoon is wasted;
and if you don’t contemplate death in the evening,
the evening is wasted.
Andrew Holecek
The Power and the Pain
Transforming Spiritual Hardship Into Joy
Whether we live on one side of the veil or on the other
is of no importance
except to those few people
who temporarily will miss our physical presence.
But very soon,
when that sense of absence is healed,
nothing is changed,
no one has lost anything,
no one has been hurt,
for in God,
life and death are the same.
They are mortal appearances,
human illusions.
To understand that both are of the same substance,
the fabric of nothingness,
and that there is no difference
between life and death
brings about an understanding
of the meaning of immortality.
Joel S. Goldsmith
A Parenthesis in Eternity
I like to refer to near death events
as “near life experiences.”
The experience is one where people feel
that they suddenly understand the meaning of life.
They feel they can suddenly understand
the purpose of their existence,
they say that they can see the connectedness
between all people and things.
And when they return
to a world where the rest of the people
can’t or don’t see that –
it can feel like being stuck in mud.
Richard Martini
It's A Wonderful Afterlife Volume One:
Further Adventures in the Flipside
Henri J. M. Nouwen, Robert Durback
Beyond the Mirror
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