Welcome to Death Knells

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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

Each night, when I go to sleep, 

I die. 

And the next morning, 

when I wake up, 

 I am reborn.

Mahatma Gandhi

Those who are conscious in their dying

 don’t obsess on money, or houses,

 or occupations, or pleasures, or even peace. 

They speak of love.

Philip Jones

Light on Death

Look, denial is fine. 

It is normal to deny death.

 We are wired that way.

 But just, for a little bit, step outside of denial,

 get your paperwork in order,

 think about the options that face us, 

think about the fact that each of us will, in time, die.

 Talk with the people who are important to you.

 Get your hands around death and dying 

and then, if you wish,

 step right back into denial.

Susan Abel Lieberman

  Death, Dying and Dessert:

 Reflections on Twenty Questions About Dying  

"Now is the time to dig down for questions

, impossible to accept that your powers are so limited, 

and impossible to accept that your own body 

can’t always behave and respond well. 

Life is a mesmerizing mess,

 but if you were a proper Christian 

you’d find a comforting answer

 for the finite and infinite,

 the temporal and spiritual,

 with no grasping insistence that tomorrow, after all, 

will not be just another day.

 Isn’t it all too burdensome,

 this life, 

with so much loss taking its root in the heart,

 as the body goes spinning on 

towards a dreadful cessation.

 As Rita dies, I am a clenched fist,

 and we are soon in the church,

 where our intensity must be contained 

because you must accept 

that for a while you are here,

 and then one day you are not, 

because it’s all part of living. 

Accept, accept, accept. 

Accept even the unacceptable." 

Morrissey

Autobiography

The wave of psychic research that is now sweeping across the world

will wear thin the veil between the visible and the invisible. 

More and more men and women 

will live in two worlds at the same time; 

for the two worlds occupy the same space,

 and their differences 

are differences of consciousness, of vibration,

 the latter including a difference in states of matter.

Elsa Barker

Last Letters From the Living Dead Man

A conscious death

 allows you to utilize the death process 

in a way that transforms what appears to be

 a mere biological disfunction, or accident,

 into a spiritual art form—

the tool for the transformation of consciousness

 that it should be. 

 Conscious dying has effects

 exponentially powerful, benign and beneficial

 to the individual, society and all life.

Anya Foos-Graber

 Deathing

Life is expression. 

It comes to be out of the force of itself,

 and no force stands against it or threatens it. 

Death in your terms certainly seems an end,

 but it is instead 

a translation of life into another form.

Jane Roberts

The Nature of the Psyche: Its Human Expression 

For more than twenty years,

 I’ve been talking to people about death and the end of life,

 from the loss of newborn babies 

to young adults in their prime to elderly parents.

 There have been natural deaths and traumatic deaths—

accidents, overdoses, suicides—

deaths from disease, deaths from old age. 

Yet all of these conversations have had one theme in common:

 a connection felt by the living person to the deceased 

at or around the moment of death.

 These are all healthy, vital people 

who continue to live active lives.

 But for a moment, 

they were linked to another human being

 during a time of ultimate passage.

I started identifying these moments

 as “shared crossings,” 

and what they tell us

 is that none of us is leaving this earth alone.

 Each of us can and will be guided on our journey. 

How can I be certain of that?

 Because more and more,

 those who remain among the living

 have seen it, have felt it,

 and a few have even joined their loved ones

 for part of their journey to the afterlife.

William J. Peters.

At Heaven's Door: 

What Shared Journeys to the Afterlife Teach About Dying Well and Living Better

So many who are dying 

also say 

that they have never felt so alive.

Stephen and Ondrea Levine

 Who Dies?: An Investigation of Conscious Living and Conscious Dying 

Instead of discussing openly how to think about death

 and what we might appropriately choose in our dying

-a painful and difficult subject-

we too frequently and too easily

 transform the issue into the more distanced, comfortable language 

of rights and choices: 

not how or what we ought to choose,

 but that we have a right to choose.

Daniel Callahan

The Troubled Dream of Life

In that moment

 when Life and Death suddenly integrate,

 that Inconceivable Light 

passes before our eyes

 like a shooting star.

Shinmon Aoki

  Coffinman:  The Journal of a Buddhist Mortician

We are old friends, 

and his passing hence 

has not severed an earthly friendship;

 on the contrary, it has increased it,

 and provided many more opportunities of meeting

 than would have been possible had he remained on earth.

 He constantly expresses his delight

 upon his ability to return to earth 

in a natural, normal, healthy, and pleasant manner,

 and to give some account of his adventures and experiences

 in the spirit world, 

as one who 'being dead (as many would regard him),

 yet speaketh'.

Anthony Borgia

Life in the World Unseen

“The thing to do when you’re impatient,” he proceeded, 

“is to turn to your left and ask advice from your death. 

An immense amount of pettiness is dropped 

if your death makes a gesture to you, 

or if you catch a glimpse of it,

 or if you just have the feeling 

that your companion is there watching you."

Carlos Castaneda

Journey To Ixlan

Upon the arrival of 

The great death,

All concerns for 

The lesser death

Disappear. 

Somebody becomes

No body in particular and

Life goes on without fear.

Wu Hsin

An Interlude in Eternity

I know that without me 

God can no moment live; 

Were I to die, 

then He No longer could survive.

I am as great as God,

And He is small like me;

He cannot be above, 

Nor I below Him be.

Angelus Silesius

Epigrammatic Verses on the Spiritual Life

In principle the infinite is unity, 

but finite unity cannot be manifested without duality. 

In principle the infinite is life and being,

 but finite life and being cannot be manifested 

without death and non-being. 

 From the eternal standpoint 

 oppositions are seen as harmony, 

the dark side ever enhancing the beauty of the light.

 Death renders life more lively; 

darkness makes light stand out more brilliantly; 

separation makes the union of love more intense; 

suffering and evil are the essential media 

of courage and repentance,

 perfecting the splendour of goodness.

The Supreme Identity 

Alan Watts

Nirvana is often mistaken as leaving this world, 

the end of the cycle of birth and death.

 But as interpreted by the Mahayana,

 it is not a departure 

but a transformation.

 Nothing comes, 

nothing goes.

The Lankavatara Sutra 

Jesus prays,

 uncertain of the will of the Father, 

and is afraid of death. 

But once he knows what it is, 

he goes to meet it and offer himself up.

 Let us be going.

 He went forth.

Blaise Pascal

Pensees 

Death is not the opposite of life, 

but a part of it.

Haruki Murakami

No man is an island, 

Entire of itself, 

Every man is a piece of the continent, 

A part of the main.

If a clod be washed away by the sea, 

Europe is the less. 

As well as if a promontory were.

As well as if a manor of thy friend’s

Or of thine own were: 

Any man’s death diminishes me, 

Because I am involved in mankind, 

And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; 

It tolls for thee.

John Donne

I am going to that country

which I have all my life wished to see

William Blake

First, learn about death, 

and then about other things.

Nichiren Daishonin

Kabîr says: 

Dive thou into that Ocean of sweetness:

 thus let all errors of life and of death flee away

Look upon life and death; 

there is no separation between them,

The right hand and the left hand 

are one and the same.

Thus is the worshipper set free from fear; 

thus have

all errors of life and of death left him.

Kabir.

Songs of Kabir 

Death is the personality’s release from the physical plane,

 or we will use the term “the physical field,” 

and that is all.

 To the ego this is a frightening future in prospect. 

To the ego, even sleep seems a slap in the face. 

Recognition in physical life of the whole self

 would do much to negate this death fear,

 since there are rather pleasant psychological experiences

 which are akin to the experience of death, 

and which would prepare the personality for this eventuality.

Jane Roberts

The Early Sessions: Book 1 of The Seth Material 

(“What happens in cases of accidental death, to the spirit?”) 

Death is death.

 (“But people who die accidentally don’t expect death. 

The very ill, or old, or both, might be more or less prepared.”) 

Confusion, but only momentary.

 Shock not as bad as birth.

Jane Roberts

The Early Sessions: Book 1 of The Seth Material 

(“Does a person know immediately when he dies?”)

 Not always. 

(“Why not?”) 

Time to get bearings. Consciousness continues. Confusing.

 (“How long does it take for a person to realize his death, usually?”)

 Gradual realization, by stages of withdrawal and arrival.

 (“How does a person know he is dead at first? 

Is he left alone to find his own way, greeted by others, or what?”) 

Greeted by acquaintances from other lives.

Jane Roberts

The Early Sessions: Book 1 of The Seth Material 

There‘s no one way of dying well. 

 However, there are some things 

we might want to consider if that is our goal. 

    Living a good death

 begins the moment we accept our mortality

 as part of who we are.  

We’ve had to integrate 

other aspects of who we are into our daily lives –

 our gender, racial background, 

and cultural heritage, to name a few.  

Why not our mortality?

Richard Wagner

The Amateur's Guide to Death and Dying: Enhancing the End of Life 

Death has completely lost its sting for me.

 If I were to die, I couldn’t be happier. 

I would only be sad that I wouldn’t be as accessible

 to my kids and for any pain that my leaving

 might cause my family and friends. 

But, other than that, for me personally,

 I would love it.

 That being said, I don’t mind life either

 In fact, it keeps getting better. 

I have an awesome life

 and I wouldn’t trade places with anyone.

 But I have no attachment to it whatsoever.

 I recognize that it’s not real,

 it’s just a dream.

 I’m happy to play the game,

 but when it’s time to go, 

I’m there!

Jon Gabriel 

How to Change Your Universe

When you’re in a deep state of meditation,

 you no longer feel trapped ‘inside’ your body

 or trapped in the illusory world of your mind and material senses. 

You begin to feel like this place of bliss 

is exactly where you go when you die. 

Because to me the only difference between life and death 

is that in life you’re trapped in a pretend world,

 a make-believe world, 

a dream you usually can’t get out of.

 When you’re in a deep meditation 

you are out of that world, 

you are free 

and I’m pretty sure that’s exactly what death feels like.

Jon Gabriel 

How to Change Your Universe

Birth is much more of a shock than death.

  Sometimes when you die 

you do not realize it,

 but birth almost always implies 

a sharp and sudden recognition.

So there is no need to fear death.

 And I who have died more times than I care to tell,

speak these words to tell you so.

Seth   

My identity, what we call small identity—

like my label, my name, my nationality, my religion—

doesn’t survive bodily death.

  These are small identities. 

 If I am a member of the universe 

and a member of the earth community,

 and I am part and parcel of the life force,

 that is my identity. 

 It is my true identity 

or my primary identity. 

 My secondary identities are that I am an Indian. 

 I am a certain age. 

 I was born in the Jain religion, et cetera. 

 All these are secondary identities.  

We need not be afraid of losing secondary identities.

Satish Kumar

That I might know that man lives after death,

 it has been granted me to speak and converse

 with several persons with whom I had been acquainted 

during their life in the body,

 and this not merely for a day or a week, but for months, 

and in some instances for nearly a year,

 as I had been used to do here on earth.

  They were greatly surprised that they themselves,

 during their life in the body, 

had lived, and that many others still live, 

in such a state of unbelief concerning a future life, 

when nevertheless there intervenes 

but the space of a few days 

between the decease of the body 

and their entrance into another world—-

for death is a continuation of life.

  

Swedenborg

 Arcana Coelestia

We are immortal beings 

who have extended our conscious awareness 

throughout the entire breadth of our multidimensional universe. 

We are courageous explorers 

who have chosen to learn and evolve 

through the use of temporary vehicles of consciousness. 

Each life experience is orchestrated by us 

for our continuing education.

 We learn and grow at our own pace 

through total immersion of our consciousness 

in many different thought-responsive environments. 

This remarkable system of spiritual evolution

 is extremely demanding but also exceedingly effective,

 because all of us, without exception,

 will eventually graduate 

from the vast training grounds of form.

William Buhlman

Facing your own death is so important. 

Here is the thing: 

if you haven’t confronted your own death, 

how on earth can you help 

a friend or family member face theirs?  

You can’t!

The more real you can be with your own death, 

the more of a genuine help you can be 

for a friend or family member that is dying. 

The degree to which you can accept your own death 

is the same degree you will embrace and live your own life.

Stephen Lloyd Garrett

 When Death Speaks:  Listen, Learn, and Love 

Regardless of the state of their physical bodies,

 there was never any pain felt 

while floating in this observer position 

separated from their bodies.

 Even those who were struck by lightning or hit by a train, 

 had no sensation other than weightlessness,

 freedom from the confines of their dense physical body,

 and a deep sense of inner peace. 

Most people who have experienced these near-death experiences 

admit that they felt so absolutely wonderful while out of their body 

that they did not want to return to it.

 That’s how blissful it feels 

to leave our bodies and exist in spiritual form.

Bob  Olson

 Answers about the Afterlife: 

A Private Investigator's 15-Year Research Unlocks the Mysteries of Life after Death 

Takuan was unaffected by his fame and popularity, 

and at the approach of death he instructed his disciples, 

“Bury my body in the mountain behind the temple, 

cover it with dirt, and go home.

 Read no sutras, hold no ceremony.

 Receive no gifts from either monk or laity.

 Let the monks wear their robes, eat their meals,

 and carry on as on normal days.”

 Asked for a final poem as he lay dying,

 he wrote the Chinese character for “dream”

 ( 夢 ), 

threw away the brush, 

and passed away.

 William Scott Wilson 

 The One Taste of Truth: Zen and the Art of Drinking Tea 

Verily death is the bridge that unites friend to friend.

Muhammad

Death and the Physical Body

I don’t understand why, if this is a dream, death is necessary.

In a word, it is not. 

Does that surprise you? 

It is only your acceptance of it

 which makes it apparently so. 

Should you at this moment absolutely discard 

the very firm belief that you hold that says,

 “I was born; I will die, there is a beginning;

 there is an end, there are transitions,” 

you would no longer experience death.

 The meaning of that which you believe

 is transferred into those things you experience within your physical life. 

If there is no longer meaning to beginning and end, 

to birth and death, 

how could you possibly experience it? 

You see infinite life as being a process

 of going between the physical and discarnate state. 

If you saw infinite life 

as being a continuous flow

 without the need for interruption, 

then that would be the way you would experience it. 

Too simple?

 If you truly had no problem with this,

 you would never die.

Tom Carpenter

  Dialogue on Awakening

There is no man so fortunate 

that there shall not be by him when he is dying 

some who are pleased 

with what is going to happen.

Marcus Aurelius 

Make fun of death. 

We are as dead as it gets,

 and we are fully aware of this joyous experience. 

We are with you every time you allow it. 

We are in every singing bird and in every joyful child.

 We are part of every delicious pulsing in your environment. 

We are not dead, 

and neither will you ever be! 

You will just get up, one day, 

and get out of the movie.

Abraham

Death has been dissected,

 cut to bits by a series of little steps,

 which finally make it impossible to know 

which step was the real death, 

the one in which consciousness  was lost,

 or the one in which breathing stopped.

 All these little silent deaths 

have replaced the great dramatic act of death, 

and no one any longer

 has the strength or patience t

o wait over a period of weeks

 for a moment which has lost a part of its meaning.

Philippe Aries

 Western Attitudes Toward Death

We all speak a common language, 

the language of love. 

And in loving life,

 we must also find a space in us

 to desire a death that comes at the right time. 

A death that is without suffering or pain or anxiety.

 A death that is comfortable, meaningful,

 and dare I say, beautiful. 

After writing this book,

 my commitment to saving lives is stronger than ever,

 but so is my commitment to advocating 

for a dignified death free of suffering, 

a death we all are due, 

not a moment too soon

 or a moment too late. 

Blair Bigham

 Death Interrupted 

Two hundred years ago, 

when nearly everyone died in their living room or their bed,

 they fulfilled “the most important role of their lives: 

they showed other people how to die.” 

When death was a common thing to witness,

 it was thus somewhat normalized. 

  throughout your life, siblings, uncles, aunts, 

friends, and others around you would die, 

and when they did, 

there was a good chance you’d be there when it happened. 

There was a fear of death,

 but no denial that it would come.

Blair Bigham

 Death Interrupted 

Technology can prevent death from coming too soon, but it can also delay its timely arrival. With the power granted by advanced technology to cheat death, doctors must also have the wisdom to know when and how to wield it, because death will come for all of us. How to achieve a timely death isn’t really taught in medical schools or spoken about in hospital hallways, and it has become a critical gap in our culture.

Blair Bigham 

Death Interrupted 

You can always decide, you can ALWAYS decide

 to not incarnate again.  

You could allow the life you are living right now to be,

 in a sense, linearly speaking, the last life you will have. 

 You do not necessarily have to be what you might call

 “the most spiritually awakened being on Earth” 

in order to allow yourself to realize 

that you may wish to explore and grow 

and learn in other dimensions, 

and in non-physicality as well.

  But you do not ever “have to” incarnate.  

Never. 

Bashar: 

Quest for Truth 

I have always found 

that the people who have quite genuinely died to themselves 

make no claims of any kind to their own part in the process .

 They think of themselves as lazy and lucky .

 If they did anything at all ,

 it was so simple that anyone else could do the same — 

for all that they have done

 is to recognize a universal fact of life , 

something as true of the weak and foolish

 as of the wise and strong .

 They would even say that in this respect 

there is some advantage in being weak and foolish , 

for the possession of a strong will and a clever head 

makes some things very difficult to see .

Alan W. Watts

Become What You Are

I have heard from others 

who are disturbed by the way Ramana Maharishi died, 

but when the physical karma is exhausted 

and the prana begins to withdraw from the body, 

something has to go first. 

Whether the body exits 

through cancer, kidney failure, 

heart disease, or a stroke, 

it really doesn’t matter to spirit.

Deepak Chopra

   Ask Deepak About Death and Dying 

I saw the death phobia that permeates our time

 brought to bear upon dying people

 in the name of caring for them.

 And I saw that as a culture 

we have a withered psychology 

of coping and accepting 

where we might once have had a mythology

 and a poetry of purposed, meaningful dying. 

This poverty was the constant companion and chimera

 of almost every dying person I worked with. 

I discovered that few wanted to die well, 

fewer still, wisely.

 Most didn’t want to die at all,

 and they spent their dying time 

refusing to do so.

Stephen Jenkinson

Die Wise: A Manifesto for Sanity and Soul  

A conscious death 

allows you to utilize the death process in a way

 that transforms what appears to be

 a mere biological dysfunction, or accident, 

into a spiritual art form—

the tool for the transformation of consciousness that it should be. 

 Conscious dying has effects 

exponentially powerful, benign 

and beneficial to the individual, 

society and all life.

Anya Foos-Graber

  Deathing

You need not bring your dream to a definite conclusion,

 or make it noble, or happy, or beautiful;

  all you need is 

to realize that you are dreaming.

Nisargadatta Maharaj

Pretend for a moment that you are a child,

 and I am trying to undertake the particular chore

 of explaining to you what your most developed adult self will be like - 

and in my explanation, 

I say that this adult self is to some extent part of you, 

an outgrowth, or projection of what you are. 

And the child says

 "But what will happen to me? 

Must I die to become this other self?

 I do not want to change.

 How can I ever be this adult self,

 when it is not what I am now, 

without dying as what I am.

Jane Roberts

Seth Speaks

Whatsoever I wanted to paint,

 I have painted.

 Now, just to exist is pointless.

 I have given that which I came to give; 

now I can go back to the original source. 

There is no need to live in the body anymore. 

I have contributed.

Osho

Living On Your Own Terms

That transitional experience 

will go on and on and on 

until the ascension above all sense of this world. 

Then, there will be no more reincarnation

 because there will be no place 

into which to be reborn.

Joel S. Goldsmith

Leave Your Nets

Today people think: 

 when a human being has  passed through the  gate of death, 

his activity ceases

 as far as the physical world is concerned. 

 But indeed it is not so!  

There is a living and perpetual intercourse

 between the so-called dead and the so-called living. 

 Those who have passed  through the gate of death 

have not  ceased to be present; 

 it is only that  our eyes 

have ceased to see them. 

 They are there in very truth.

Rudolph  Steiner:

The Dead Are With Us

You are afraid to die? 

Buddha says: “You cannot die, 

because in the first place, you are not.” 

How can you die? 

 Look into your being, go deep into it. 

See, who is there to die – 

and you will not find any ego there. 

Then there is no possibility of death.

 Only the idea of ego creates the fear of death.

 When there is no ego there is no death. 

You are utter silence, deathlessness, eternity – 

not as you, but as an open sky, 

uncontaminated by any idea of “I,” of self 

– unbounded, undefined. 

Then there is no fear.

Osho

Next Time You Feel Suicidal:

instead, live and celebrate your life in your own way 

You grieve for those that should not be grieved for.

The wise grieve neither for the living nor the dead.

Never at any time was I not.

Nor thou, nor these princes of men.

Nor will we ever cease to be hereafter.

For the unreal has no being 

And the real never ceases to be.

Bhagavad Gita

Now more than any other time in human history, 

humans are presented with this choice:

 Do we want quality of life or quantity of life? 

 Do we want to extend life through artificial means, 

or do we forego medical aid

 and die on our own terms? 

 We are being asked to make decisions

 that were previously “left up to God.”

  We are, as we grow and expand our knowledge of the human body,

 determining more and more of our fate. 

 And as medicine has created “miracle” after “miracle” 

there has to be a point when we say,

 “I’m tired of the miracles.

  I’m ready to die.”

Caleb Wilde

 Confessions of a Funeral Director

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.

Yamamoto Tsunetomo

 Hagakure: The Book of the Samurai 

You can be of great assistance to an individual

 if they have chosen to become non-physical, 

to allow them to become non-physical with dignity,

 with joy and effortlessness,

 with love, with ecstasy, with ease…

to allow them to know, 

to allow them to remember 

that it is only the idea of stepping from one room to another room

 in the same house. 

 That is all that death is.

 They have made their choices. 

Allow them to do so with dignity.

Bashar

 Quest for Truth

We know intuitively and by being with dying people

 that there is generally a twofold process 

which takes place during the dying experience: 

a letting go of the world, family, friends, hopes, and dreams; 

and an embracing of something infinite within ourselves (soul, essence)

 and greater than ourselves (God, Ultimate Reality). 

The dying process tends to initiate

 a natural detachment from the finite 

and a movement toward the Infinite.

Philip Jones

Light On Death

The individual, of his own accord,

 without suggestion but through direct experience,

 begins to know, rather than believe, 

that he does survive physical death.

 It doesn’t make any difference

 what he does during his physical life, 

what he believes; 

he will go on after his physical body dies. 

Survival beyond physical death 

is not a belief system,

but a simple fact 

as natural as being born.

Robert Monroe

 Far Journeys 

Learn about yourself. 

 Your consciousness will give you 

the appropriate answers to immortality.  

There is no definition of what constitutes a good death.  

To die at a young age in ancient Greece

 was considered a blessing. 

 Today it is looked upon as a tragedy.

  Conscious dying is, in my opinion, 

the best death.

Dr. Bruce Goldberg:

 Peaceful Transition:  The Art of Conscious Dying & the Liberation of the Soul

Even if death were to fall upon you today like lightning,

you must be ready to die without sadness and regret,

without any residue of clinging for what is left behind.

Remaining in the recognition of the absolute view,

you should leave this life life an eagle

soaring up into the blue sky.

Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche

I was nursing my friend 

who had definite views that there was no afterlife. 

In her last couple of hours 

she became very peaceful 

and arose from her unconsciousness periodically,

 saying clearly and happily

 such phrases as 'I will know soon', 

'Come on, get on with it then, I am ready to go now', 

and 'It is so beautiful'. 

She would immediately lapse back into unconsciousness

 after uttering these phrases.

 She was very obviously content,

 happy and at peace.

 It was a wonderful experience

 for her partner and me. 

Elizabeth Fenwick

The Art of Dying

Think...and think...while you are alive.

What you call "salvation" belongs to the time before death.

If you don't break your ropes while you're alive,

do you think your ghost will do it after?

The idea that the soul will rejoin with the ecstatic

just because the body is rotten- that is all fantasy.

What is found now is found then. 

If you find nothing now, you will simply end up

with an apartment in the City of Death.

If you make love with the divine now,

 in the next  life you will have 

the face of satisfied desire.

 Kabir 

I've learned that people will forget

 what you said, 

people will forget

 what you did, 

but people will never forget

 how you made them feel

 Maya Angelou

Shared through Victor and Wendy Zammit's AFTERLIFE REPORT

www.victorzammit.com

Always remember, you are like a seed. 

When the seeds are totally buried 

the new crop comes up. 

Until the grains of wheat die in the earth, 

they cannot yield a new crop. 

The periphery is finite,

 but deep within you are infinite possibilities. 

Just as a seed needs to give up its seed-hood

 to grow into a plant, 

unless we are ready to lose ourselves completely 

we cannot grow anew. 

The art of wise living 

is the art of dying. 

Dada J P Vaswani 

You have no philosophical problem with sleep

 and yet you seem to have a philosophical problem with death.

And it is not because of what you know about death—

it is because of what you think happens to life 

when you die. 

 What you fear is the objectlessness 

that death seems to promise.

 It is ignorance that makes you fear death—

a lack of knowledge, a lack of experience. 

Why should you fear death 

any more than you fear sleep?  

Why are you so afraid

 of the loss of objects?

  Why are you afraid 

of the Very Condition you are in? 

Adi Da Samraj

 Easy Death 

"You have entered this reality because you are ready to awaken.” 

She pauses and makes eye contact with each of us. 

“You suffer from deep amnesia. 

You have forgotten what you are,

 your purpose, where you come from,

 and where you are going.

 You have wandered for many lifetimes

 in the outer worlds."

William Buhlman

Adventures in the Afterlife

Death approaches naturally, calmly, 

long before we experience 

whatever appears to take us away.

  I  remember the first signs,

 the strongest  that  waking from sleep 

felt like a return from another dimension of Life. 

  Before,  I felt a distinct difference

 between my waking and sleeping consciousness. 

That difference has slowly blended

 into an experiential continuity. 

I know now that I am as active and aware while sleeping

 as I am while awake.

    And because of this continuity, 

I feel the continuity of Life with Death.  

   I am always alive. 

 I am always dead. 

FloatingWorlds

The act of dying 

is like falling asleep, 

the effect of dying

 is to forget all about being one particular person,

 and the sequel to dying 

is the gradual laying down of new memories

 in a new brain,

 which will define another particular person. 

What is crucial is that, 

from the subjective point of view, 

although one set of memories (and life circumstances)

 is completely replaced by another, 

and one brain by another,

 there is no cessation of experience, 

of consciousness, of being. 

One story ends and,

 in the wink of an eye as felt from within,

 another story begins.

David Darling

Zen Physics, The Science of Death, the Logic of Reincarnation 

To most people, death remains a hidden secret, 

as eroticized as it is feared. 

We are irresistibly attracted 

by the very anxieties we find most terrifying;

 we are drawn to them by a primitive excitement 

that arises from flirtation with danger. 

Moths and flames,

 mankind and death—

there is little difference.

Sherwin B. Nuland

 How We Die: Reflections on Life's Final Chapter

Life and Death,

 holding one another closely

swaying eternally

 to the music of the Universe. 

Karen Wyatt:  

 What Really Matters: 7 Lessons for Living from the Stories of the Dying

The first thing I would like to tell you about death 

is that there is n lie than death. 

 And yet, death appears to be true. 

 It not only appears to be true, 

but even seems like the cardinal truth of life. 

 We have even structured our lives 

out of our fear of death.

  The fear of death 

has created society, the nation, family and friends. 

 The fear of death

 has caused us to chase money 

and has made us ambitious of higher positions.

  And the biggest surprise 

is that our gods and our temples 

have been raised out of the fear of death. 

 And nothing is more false than death. 

 That is why whatever system of life we have created,

 believing death to be true, 

has become false. 

Osho 

What does it mean to die?

What doe mean to die? 

To give up everything. 

Death cuts you off with a very, very, very sharp razor 

from your attachments, from your gods, 

from your superstitions,

 from your desire for comfort next life and so on.

 I am going to find out what death means 

because it is as important as living.

 So how can I find out,

 actually, not theoretically, 

what it means to die?

 I actually want to find out, 

as you want to find out. 

I am speaking for you, so don't go to sleep.

 What does it mean to die? 

Put that question to yourself. 

While we are young, or when we are very old, 

this question is always there.

 It means to be totally free, 

to be totally unattached 

to everything that man has put together,

 or what you have put together

 totally free. 

No attachments, no gods, 

no future, no past. 

You don't see the beauty of it, the greatness of it, 

the extraordinary strength of it 

while living to be dying. 

You understand what that means?

 While you are living, 

every moment you are dying, 

so that throughout life

 you are not attached to anything. 

That is what death means.

 Krishnamurti

The Future is Now