Archive

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Those who know the Way of Death
understand the art of balance.
They have discovered that power is found
within the tension between opposites,
just as Life exists between Birth and Death.
They find their balance on the middle path.

Karen Wyatt, MD
The Tao of Death
The Secret to a Rich and Meaningful Life

​

Lao Tzu wrote,
“If you are not afraid of dying,
there is nothing you cannot achieve.”
So our ability to fulfill our purpose and make a difference in the world
also depends upon our willingness to accept impermanence.
Losing our fear of dying
is the greatest task in this lesson of Impermanence
and is hard to accomplish without some extraordinary life event.
Those who have faced life-limiting illness or had a near-death experience
often report that their fear has vanished
after brushing up against death in an undeniable fashion.
Hospice workers and caregivers
who spend time at the bedside of dying patients
also express a diminished fear of death
and an ever-present awareness of the fleeting nature of life,
like “a flash of lightning in a summer cloud.”

 Karen Wyatt, MD
The Journey from Ego to Soul:
How to Transform Your Life When Everything Falls Apart 

I want to remind you
that between life and death
there is no distinction in the Spirit.
There is none.
There is no life or death in the Spirit.
There is only life and death
to the individual personality and its cohabitating body,
but to the Spirit and the Godhead,
​there are no clear distinctions between the two.

Ramtha
The Mystery of Birth and Death:
Redefining the Self  

Most people, it is affirmed,
find the transition and the awakening on the other side
more natural than they had expected,
and they soon become aware
that they are in a real world among real people,
and are as much alive as ever they were on earth.
As one spirit expressed it:
​it was like waking in a strange bedroom when on a holiday.

A.P. Sinnet;  Annie Besant
What Happens After Death   ​

Suppose that medical science
achieves a method of getting rid of the overload of memories and anxieties:
Isn’t this what death accomplishes already?  
The funk about death is the illusion
that you are going to experience everlasting darkness and nothingness
as if being buried alive.
 The “nothingness” after death
is the same as the “nothingness” before you were born,
and because anything that has happened once can happen again
you will happen again as you did before,
​ mercifully freed from the boredom of an overloaded memory.

Alan Watts
The Collected Letters of Alan Watts 

Death is not a sickness or disease;
it is an event
as natural and as healthy as childbirth
or as the falling of leaves in the autumn.
As the “natural childbirth” obstetricians
are training women
to experience the pains of labor as erotic tensions,
there is no reason why the “pangs of death”
should not be reinterpreted
as the ecstasies of liberation
from anxiety
​and overloads of memory and responsibility.

Alan Watts
The Collected Letters of Alan Watts 

Each of the moments of which life consists is dying,
and that moment will never recur.
And yet is not this transitoriness
a reminder that challenges us
to make the best possible use of each moment of our lives?
It certainly is, and hence my imperative:
Live as if you were living for the second time
and had acted as wrongly the first time
as you are about to act now.

 Viktor E. Frankl:
 Man's Search for Meaning

We have created the method of modern dying.
Modern dying takes place in the modern hospital,
where it can be hidden,
cleansed of its organic blight,
and finally packaged for modern burial.
We can now deny
the power not only of death
but of nature itself.
We hide our faces from its face,
but still we spread our fingers just a bit,
​because there is something in us that cannot resist a peek.

Sherwin B. Nuland
How We Die:
 Reflections on Life's Final Chapter 

In Death I rest and am at peace;
In life I toiled and strove.
Is the hardness of the winter stream
Better than the melting of spring?
All pride that the body knew,
Was it not lighter than Dust?
Death has hidden me
In the Eternal Tao,
Where neither leopard nor tiger can harm me,
Lance prick me nor sword wound me . . .

Zhang Heng
The Bones of Master Zhuang

I want you to walk through this entire day as if it’s your last.
Every person you encounter,
imagine it’s your last time in their company.
Everything you do:
drive the car, drink coffee, brush your teeth, walk the dog.
Tell yourself it’s your last time doing these things.
Because it could be true.
It probably isn’t, but it might be.
Do this a little every day and before long
you’ll find that you are living a very different life.
That the cells of your being have shifted,
maybe even expanded
to hold this new, more nuanced, more evolved version of you.
When you wake up in the morning and tell yourself, 
I might die today,
the day takes on an entirely new flavor.
And there is nothing morbid about it.
And there is everything wonderful about it.
You’ll see.

Melissa O’Brien
Seen+Unseen
https://melissaannobrien.substack.com/

Yes, I am going to die.
Yep, it might be today.
And if you can get to the place where the next sentence is … 
and I’m OK with that,
then you will find
that you are living in this world more fully alive.
Because when you accept the truth
that one day you won’t be breathing the crisp morning air,
suddenly the morning air is very sweet and precious.
And when you understand
that you don’t get to hold your mom’s hand forever,
then you really notice the feel of it in yours.
And when you get
that your days of eating a good bolognese are numbered,
god that stuff tastes so great.
Kissing!
Don’t even get me started.
Imagine for a moment
the reality that your opportunities to kiss and be kissed
​will end one day.

Melissa O’Brien
Seen+Unseen
https://melissaannobrien.substack.com/

One evening just before falling asleep,
I was startled by the unexpected thought
that one day I too would have to die.
What troubled me then--
as it has done throughout my life--
was not the fear of dying,
but the question of whether the transitory nature of life
might destroy its meaning.
Eventually my struggle brought me to this answer:
In some respects it is death itself
​that makes life meaningful.

Viktor E. Frankl  
Recollections

For us life is a problem,
so death is bound to be a problem.
We are constantly trying to solve it,
and wasting time and energy in solving it.
It is already solved.
It has never been a problem.
It is you who are creating the problem.
Look at the stars, there is no problem;
look at the trees, there is no problem.
Look all around …
If man were not there
everything would be already solved.
​ Where is the problem?

Osho
The Empty Boat:
Encounters with Nothingness

To the outer senses,
a being begins to exist at its birth,
and ceases to exist at its death.
This, however, only appears to be so,
because these senses
​ are unable to apprehend the concealed spirit.
Birth and death
are only, for this spirit, transformations,
just as the unfolding of the flower from the bud
is a transformation enacted before our physical eyes.

Rudolf Steiner.
The Way of Initiation or,
How to Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds 

But many of you don’t want to see reality.
You don’t want to think of death.
People don’t live, most of you, you don’t live,
you’re just keeping the body alive.
That’s not life.
You’re not living until it doesn’t matter a tinker’s damn to you
whether you live or die.
At that point you live.
When you’re ready to lose your life, you live it.
But if you’re protecting your life,
you’re dead.

Anthony de Mello  
Awareness

I’ve often said to people
that the way to really live is to die.
The passport to living
is to imagine yourself in your grave.
Imagine that you’re lying in your coffin.
 What a lovely, lovely meditation.
Do it every day if you have the time.
It’s unbelievable,
​ but you’ll come alive.

Anthony de Mello  
Awareness

You don’t have to understand what happens after death
or even how to die
any more than you need to know how the stars come out
 or how the earth was formed.

Stephen Levine
 Meetings At The Edge

You will know your blissful nature
when you see yourself as formless.
The concept of death will not scare you.
As long as you fear death,
you don’t have full self-knowledge.

Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
I Am Not the Body:
Discovering the Truth Beyond Bondage 

Once we have used up an item, we say it is finished.
We don’t say it is dead.
However, when the vital breath leaves the living body,
we say the person has died.
When the body dies, the vital breath leaves the body.
Does anything else leave the body other than the vital breath?
 No,
the body becomes unconscious
and the vital breath becomes all-pervasive.  
  The vital breath leaves the body
and merges into air and space.
For  the Self,
there is no coming or going.
​ This is a fact of Reality.

Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
I Am Not the Body:
Discovering the Truth Beyond Bondage 

The end of the world for a caterpillar
is a butterfly for the master.
Death is resurrection.
We’re talking not about some resurrection that will happen
but about one that is happening right now.
If you would die to the past,
if you would die to every minute,
you would be the person who is fully alive,
because a fully alive person
is one who is full of death.
We’re always dying to things.
We’re always shedding everything
in order to be fully alive
​ and to be resurrected at every moment.

Anthony de Mello
Awareness 

An enlightened man can laugh even while dying.
Even death is just a laughing matter
because his experience proves that he is above time,
above changes, above forms,
that he is universal,
that he is part of the whole continent of consciousness.
​ Even death is just a coming back home.

Osho
The Beauty of the Human Soul:
Provocations Into Consciousness  

It is my experience that the soul exists after death,
that it transmigrates into other forms of life,
and finally when there is no more to learn,
no question to be answered, no search, no desire –
when that ultimate point of absolute contentment, fulfillment, enlightenment arises – then the soul simply dissolves into existence.
To transmigrate you need to have a desire to live,
a desire to be fulfilled;
​ that’s a basic necessity.

Osho
The Beauty of the Human Soul:
Provocations Into Consciousness  

​

But if you awaken from the illusion
and understand that black implies white,
self implies other,
life implies death (or, rather, death implies life),
you can begin to feel yourself.
You can feel that you’re not just a stranger in the world,
that you’re not something here on probation,
that you’re not fundamentally some sort of fluke,
and you can begin to feel your own existence
as absolutely fundamental.
What you are basically--
deep, deep down and far, far in--
​is simply the fabric and structure of existence itself.

Alan Watts
Out of Your Mind 

Being is what was present at your birth
and will also be present at your death.
​ How are you different from it?

Roy Melvyn
Life Never Dies

The hour of departure has arrived,
and we go our ways--
I to die,
and you to live.
Which is better
​God only knows.

Plato
 The Apology 

...be of good cheer about death,
and know of a certainty,
that no evil can happen to a good man,
either in life or after death.
He and his are not neglected by the gods;
nor has my own approaching end
happened by mere chance.
But I see clearly that the time had arrived
when it was better for me to die
​and be released from trouble..

Plato
The Apology 

For the fear of death
is indeed the pretence of wisdom,
and not real wisdom,
being a pretence of knowing the unknown;
and no one knows whether death,
which men in their fear
apprehend to be the greatest evil,
may not be the greatest good.

Plato
The Apology

If there is a meaning in life at all,
then there must be a meaning in suffering.
Suffering is an ineradicable part of life,
even as fate and death.
Without suffering and death
​ human life cannot be complete.

Viktor E. Frankl
Man's Search for Meaning 

Breath offers us an opportunity
to study our relationship with endings in an intimate way.
Breathing is a living process,
constantly changing and moving in cycles--
inhale, pause, exhale, pause .
Every breath has a beginning, middle, and end.
Every breath goes through a process
of birth, growth, and death.
​Breathing is a microcosm of life itself.

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

No one alive really understands death.
But as one woman who was close to death once told me,
“I see the exit signs much clearer than you do.”
In a way, nothing can prepare you for death.
Yet everything that you have done in your life,
everything that has been done to you,
​ and what you have learned from it all can help.

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

The Tibetans say we leave this life
as easily as a hair is pulled from butter.
The Upanishads talk about death
as a ripe mango or a fig loosened from its branch,
​falling naturally and easily.

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

That which brought you here takes you home.

Roy Melvyn  
Myths of Enlightenment and the End of Becoming

Everything is born of Pure Awareness,
and the knower of the Self knows
their infinite, boundless nature
and that there is no death.
 Every living being has confidence in its body,
but the one who has faith in Self
will be untouched by death.
Your fear of death
​is due to your body identity.

Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
I Am Not the Body: Discovering the Truth Beyond Bondage  

As long as there is consciousness in the body,
it requires regular food.  
The mind and intellect depend on the food essence,
which deteriorates slowly over time,
until finally, the beingness disappears.
And when the beingness disappears,
it may look like what is called death,
but that person does not know of their death.
It is also true that one is not aware of the body’s birth;
only after some time
does the awareness of having been born come about,
​ which then prompts the person
to own his or her timebound existence.

Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
I Am Not the Body:
Discovering the Truth Beyond Bondage 

Old age is when you realize
you can’t do what you used to do.
I know more about being older now
and I feel compelled to write about it.
Partly because there aren’t very many old people in fiction,
and they are just as interesting as younger people.
And also, I think a writer who is still writing in her mid-eighties,
like José Saramago or me—even if I’m only writing poetry--
has a certain duty to report from the front.
We are bearing witness to a place most people haven’t been.

Ursula K. Le Guin
The Last Interview 

In the future,
human beings, the older they get,
will need to take in spiritual impulses
if they want to be able to grow younger and younger
and really develop their inner life.
If they do so,
they may have grey hair and wrinkles and all kinds of infirmities,
but they will get younger and younger,
for their souls are taking in impulses
which they will take with them through the gate of death.
People who relate only to the body cannot grow younger,
for their souls will share in everything the body experiences.
Of course, it will not be possible to change the habit of going grey,
but it is possible for a grey head to gain a young soul
from the wellsprings of spiritual life.

  Rudolf Steiner

Today men think:
When a human being has passed through the Gate of Death,
his activity ceases so far as the physical world is concerned.
But it is not so, in reality.
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 just that our eyes have ceased to see them.
​They are there, nevertheless. 

Rudolf Steiner
The Dead Are With Us

The uncanny authority of the psychedelic experience
might help explain why so many cancer patients
reported that their fear of death had lifted or at least abated:
they had stared directly at death
and come to know something about it,
in a kind of dress rehearsal.
“A high-dose psychedelic experience is death practice,”
says Katherine MacLean, the former Hopkins psychologist.
“You’re losing everything you know to be real,
letting go of your ego and your body,
and that process can feel like dying.”
And yet the experience brings the comforting news
that there is something on the other side of that death--
whether it is the “great plane of consciousness”
or one’s ashes underground being taken up by the roots of trees--
and some abiding, disembodied intelligence to somehow know it.
“Now I am aware that there is a whole other ‘reality,’”
one NYU volunteer told a researcher a few months after her journey.
“Compared to other people, it is like I know another language.”

Michael Pollan
How to Change Your Mind 

The habits of our lives
have a powerful momentum
that propels us toward the moment of our death.
The obvious question arises:
​ What habits do we want to create? 

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

Prior to the appearance of any object,
Consciousness is as it is.
This is the condition of unmanifest Consciousness
prior to our first experience in the womb,
during deep sleep
and during the numerous moments
between the disappearance of one object
and the appearance of the next.
There is nothing to suggest
that this will not be the experience of Consciousness
after the last appearance of the body at death.
Consciousness is not located in time or space.
It is pregnant with the entire universe,
​including time and space.

Rupert Spira
The Transparency of Things 

The ancient seers of the Upanishads have a beautiful prayer.
It is one of the most beautiful prayers ever uttered:
"Mrityorma amritam gamay
oh my lord, lead me from death to deathlessness.”

I would not say
“Lead me from death to deathlessness”
because death does not exist;
I would say
 “Lead me from deathlessness to more deathlessness,
​ from life to more abundant life."

Osho
Last in the Evening 

The moment you are absolutely empty
and you don’t see anything inside of you,
suddenly all becomes light.
Suddenly thousands of flowers open in your being.
You become full of fragrance and music,
a music that has not been heard before,
a fragrance that is not of the earth.
And you are liberated in that experience,
liberated from life,
liberated from death,
liberated from time itself.
​You become part of the eternal flow of existence.

Osho
First in the Morning 

There is no need to be afraid.
You can lose only that which has to be lost.
And it is good to lose it soon,
because the longer it stays,
the stronger it becomes.
And one does not know anything about tomorrow.
Don’t die before realizing your authentic being.
Only those few people are fortunate
who have lived with authentic being,
and who have died with authentic being--
because they know that life is eternal,
​ and death is a fiction.

Osho
Destiny, Freedom, and the Soul 

From what we’ve seen at the end of life,
the saying that “there are no atheists in foxholes” isn’t quite true.
There are plenty of faithless and undecided
who find peace close to death.
And plenty of faithful who do not.
The difference seems to be
in how practiced a person is
​in bumping up against what he can’t necessarily command or comprehend.

BJ Miller,  Shoshana Berger  
A Beginner's Guide to the End:
Practical Advice for Living Life and Facing Death 

Birth is the entry to phenomenality.
Death is the exit from phenomenality.
All that requires insight is:
Who is born and who dies?
Or better stated:
​What is born and what dies?

Wu  Hsin
 An Interlude in Eternity 

Keep in mind
that staying conscious right up to the time of death
usually isn’t possible,
no matter how determined you are.
Common occurrences,
such as kidney or liver failure, delirium, or infection,
will alter your consciousness no matter what you do.
And severe pain can be more disorienting than pain meds;
in other words, withholding medications
might be exactly the wrong thing to do
if a conscious death is your goal.
Unless you’re an absolute purist,
a better goal is ultimately a relative one:
a more conscious death
​ or as conscious a death as possible.

BJ Miller,  Shoshana Berger  
A Beginner's Guide to the End:
Practical Advice for Living Life and Facing Death 

There is nothing wrong with you for dying.
But you’d never know it from the way we talk about death.
We actually call it a failure:
Her health is failing.
He failed treatment.
If you believe what you read,
the entire enterprise of aging is optional.
Eat kale, drink red wine, walk 10,000 steps every day.
If we can’t beat death,
then clearly our character or will or faith isn’t strong enough.
And what about all those fighting words?
Beating death,
defying aging,
the war on cancer:
all battles we’re sure to lose.
Next to birth, death is one of our most profound experiences--
shouldn’t we talk about it, prepare for it,
​use what it can teach us about how to live?

BJ Miller,  Shoshana Berger  
A Beginner's Guide to the End:
Practical Advice for Living Life and Facing Death 

We cannot arouse in ourselves this feeling of gratitude
if having lost them, we wish them back in life;
we should be thankful we did have them with us
quite irrespective of the fact that we have them no longer.
Thus if we have not this feeling of gratitude
with regard to the beings whom we wish to approach,
they do not find us;
or, at any rate, they cannot speak to us.
The very feelings we so frequently have towards our nearest dead
​are a hindrance to their speaking to us.

 Rudolf Steiner
Earthly Death and Cosmic Life 

It is necessary that we take into our consciousness
something of the feeling of gratitude
for all that reveals itself to us.
If there is none of this feeling within us,
if we are not able to thank the world
for enabling us to live,
for enriching our life continually with new impressions,
if we cannot deepen our soul
by often realising that our life is absolutely a gift,
the dead do not find a common air with us;
for they can only speak with us
through this feeling of gratitude;
otherwise there is a wall
​between us and them.

 Rudolf Steiner
 Earthly Death and Cosmic Life 

If to enjoy even an enjoyable present
we must have the assurance of a happy future,
we are “crying for the moon.”
We have no such assurance.
The best predictions are still matters
of probability rather than certainty,
and to the best of our knowledge
every one of us is going to suffer and die.
If, then, we cannot live happily
without an assured future,
we are certainly not adapted
to living in a finite world where,
despite the best plans,
accidents will happen,
​ and where death comes at the end.

Alan Watts
The Wisdom of Insecurity

The life represented by the thraldom of the senses
the Pythagoreans conceived
to be spiritual death
while they regarded death to the sense-world
as spiritual life.

 Manly P. Hall
The Secret Teachings of All Ages  

When once the rational consciousness of man
rolls away the stone and comes forth from its sepulcher,
it dies no more;
for to this second or philosophic birth there is no dissolution.
By this should not be inferred physical immortality,
but rather that the philosopher has learned
that his physical body is no more his true Self
than the physical earth is his true world.
In the realization that he and his body are dissimilar –
that though the form must perish the life will not fail –
he achieves conscious immortality.
This was the immortality to which Socrates referred when he said:
“Anytus and Melitus may indeed put me to death,
but they cannot injure me.”
To the wise,
​physical existence is but the outer room of the hall of life.

 Manly P. Hall
 The Secret Teachings of All Ages  

When the ‘I’ does not exist,
how can there be anything called birth or death?
When seeing that oneself is the Absolute Reality,
there is no place for such things as virtues or vices.
Virtues and vices, and the sufferings of death
do not exist in That which is attributeless.
When one’s Self is That which is without attributes,
how can birth and death exist?
One feels bound by body-consciousness
because of the identification with the body.
By the power of discrimination
one is freed from this body-identification.
This is what is called
​the attainment of the state of Liberation.

 Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
I Am Not the Body: Discovering the Truth Beyond Bondage  

The transitory ‘I am’ knowledge is not just your existence,
but the existence of the whole world.
Your world is birthed in the ‘I am’ knowledge,
without which, the world would not arise.
What is it, then, that dies?
Beingness is time bound;
it had a beginning (your so-called birth)
and will at some point end (your so-called death).
Since your first birthday,
​you have been keeping count of your life.

 Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
I Am Not the Body: Discovering the Truth Beyond Bondage  

I have said souls do have the freedom
to choose when, where, and who they want to be in their physical lives.
Certain souls spend less time in the spirit world
in order to accelerate development,
while others are very reluctant to leave.
There is no question
but what our guides exert great influence in this matter.
Just as we were given an intake interview
in the orientation phase right after death,
there are preparatory exit interviews by spiritual advisors
​to determine our readiness for rebirth.

Michael Newton
Journey of Souls: Case Studies of Life Between Lives 

Grief is for those who stay behind.
The Soul that is freed of the body
delights in the Sound and Light,
​ and in the fullness of being.

Harold Klemp
  ECK Wisdom on Life after Death  

I want to remind you
that between life and death
there is no distinction in the Spirit.
There is none.
There is no life or death in the Spirit.
There is only life and death
to the individual personality and its cohabitating body,
but to the Spirit and the Godhead,
​ there are no clear distinctions between the two.

Ramtha
The Mystery of Birth and Death: Redefining the Self  

Death is the point at which knowledge fails,
and when knowledge fails, mind fails.
And when mind fails,
there is a possibility of truth penetrating you.

Osho

You are Soul--
an eternal, individual spark of God,
who can never die.  
 Death is a doorway,
a transition into the inner worlds.
Births and deaths mark the journey of Soul.
The translation, or movement,
from one stage of experience to another
is but a further step on Soul’s journey home to God.
The great fear behind all fears
is the fear of death.
Death is such an absolute term.
It means that’s the end of everything.
That’s how people think of death.
But if we look at the spiritual matter
of the death of the physical body,
we in Eckankar prefer the term translation;
we say someone has translated.

Harold Kemp
ECK Wisdom on Life after Death  

Every man is related to the dead,
as shown by clairvoyant consciousness.
When the young—children or juveniles--
pass through the gate of death,
it is seen that the connection between the living and the dead
is different from that of older people,
those dying in the twilight of their life.
There is a decisive difference.
When we lose children,
when the young are apparently taken from us,
they do not really leave us at all,
but remain with us.
This is seen by clairvoyant consciousness
by the fact that the messages we receive on awakening
are forceful and vivid when the dead concerned
died as children or young people.
The connection between those remaining behind and the dead
is then such that we can only say
that a child or young person is not lost at all;
​he really remains present.

 Rudolf Steiner
Earthly Death and Cosmic Life 

It is quite possible
to remain in connection, after death,
with people who one was close to during life,
but only through an emotional affinity which one had with them then.
An intense connection is formed as a result of such affinity.
After death one lives together with the living;
but also with those who have already died
with whom one had a connection during life.
This is how one must imagine the life after death,
which continues in this way for years.
It is a life in which the soul
chiefly lives through everything which it wills and desires
and longs for in connection with its felt and willed memories
​ of the life that is past.

 Rudolf Steiner
Life Beyond Death 

Whilst we wait in this Olympus of gods,
we think of nature as an appendix to the soul.
We ascend into their region,
and know that these are the thoughts of the Supreme Being.
"These are they who were set up from everlasting,
from the beginning,
or ever the earth was.
When he prepared the heavens, they were there;
when he established the clouds above,
when he strengthened the fountains of the deep.
Then they were by him,
as one brought up with him.
Of them took he counsel.”

All men are capable
of being raised by piety or by passion, into their region.
And no man touches these divine natures,
without becoming, in some degree, himself divine.
Like a new soul, they renew the body.
We become physically nimble and lightsome;
we tread on air;
life is no longer irksome,
and we think it will never be so.
No man fears age or misfortune or death,
in their serene company,
​for he is transported out of the district of change.

 Ralph Waldo Emerson
  Idealism

There is an overwhelming impact
of seeing people we thought we would never meet again
after they died on Earth.
  A curious phenomenon about the spirit world
is that important people in our lives are always able to greet us,
even though they may already be living in another life in a new body.

Michael Newton
  Journey of Souls: Case Studies of Life Between Lives

​
Deeply unsettled by Mum’s struggle,
I had a phone conversation
with a friend who is a palliative care doctor,
which helped me understand
that the palliative medicines couldn’t just settle Mum into easy breathing.
As Pam had said,
the struggle was requisite in a case like Mum’s.
She was in the death canal,
as she had once been in the birth canal.
In a follow-up text I wrote,
“She’s not necessarily suffering, right?
Looks like suffering, but perhaps not on a conscious level for her.”
She replied,
“Not necessarily suffering.
Just the machinery having a hard time
as it’s slowing down.
Not her self.
Just her body.”
Just her body.
Not her self.
​That was incredibly helpful.

Alison Jean Lester
Absolutely Delicious: A Chronicle of Extraordinary Dying

Given the opportunity,
dying deserves to be lived with the same style
one has chosen to live all the rest of the journey.
Death comes after life;
dying is part of it.  

 Thomas Hornbein
quoted in:

Alison Jean Lester
Absolutely Delicious: A Chronicle of Extraordinary Dying

The Reality of Life is Life itself,
whose beginning is not in the womb,
and whose ending is not in the grave.
For the years that pass
are naught but a moment in eternal life;
and the world of matter and all in it
is but a dream
compared to the awakening
​ which we call the terror of Death.

Kahlil Gibran
  The Words of the Master

It cannot be emphasized too strongly
that every individual has the right to his own life
and the right to his own death;
he has the right to be healthy
and he has just as much right to be sick;
he has as much right to seek his health through materia medica
as any other person has to seek his through God.
The medically minded person
does not relish having truth thrust down his throat
by his metaphysical friends
any more than does the one
who seeks his health and harmony through spiritual wisdom or truth
like to have his friends or members of his family interfering with him
​ and attempting to dissuade him from his course.

Joel S. Goldsmith
 The Art of Spiritual Healing 

Every birth and every death
is the entry and exit of consciousness
as it moves throughout this magnificent energy creation.
Each dimension serves a specific purpose,
providing us with unique training opportunities.
It is a fool-proof system for the evolution of consciousness.
Since we are immortal,
the time and number of training experiences
required to complete our education is irrelevant.
​Graduation is assured for all.

William  Buhlman, Susan Buhlman
Higher Self Now!:
Accelerating Your Spiritual Evolution

Fully recognize
that only your state of consciousness accompanies you at death.
It is the only valuable and lasting asset in your entire life.
All of your physical possessions
are nothing but a fleeting pile of dust.
What objects and events are you attached to?
Currently where do you focus most of your daily attention?
What can you do today to enhance your awareness?
​ Contemplate a potential change in your priorities.

William  Buhlman, Susan Buhlman
Higher Self Now!:
Accelerating Your Spiritual Evolution

Dr. N: Will you please describe to me the exact sensation you feel at the time of death?
 S: Like ... a force ... of some kind ...
pushing me up out of my body. 
Dr. N: Pushing you? Out where?
 S: I'm ejected out the top of my head.
 Dr. N: And what was pushed out?
 S: Well-me! 
Dr. N: Describe what "me" means.
What does the thing that is you look like going out of the head of your body?
S: (pause) Like a ... pinpoint of light ... radiating …
Dr. N: How do you radiate light?
 S: From ... my energy. I look sort of transparent white ... my soul …
Dr. N: And does this energy light stay the same after leaving your body?
 S: (pause) I seem to grow a little ... as I move around. 
Dr. N: If your light expands, then what do you look like now?
 S: A ... wispy ... string ... hanging …
Dr. N: And what does the process of moving out of your body actually feel like to you? 
S: Well, it's as if I shed my skin ... peeling a banana.
I just lose my body in one swoosh! 
Dr. N: Is the feeling unpleasant? 
S: Oh no! It's wonderful to feel so free with no more pain,
but ... I am ... disoriented ...
​I didn't expect to die ...

Michael Newton
Journey of Souls: Case Studies of Life Between Lives

Ancestors, friends, and colleagues want me to tell you
that even though physical death has intervened,
forgiveness can still be given and received.
Most importantly,
they want me to show you that love and life continue,
that they’re still part of the family
and witnessing both important events and little moments,
and that we will all meet again in good time.
They are always delighted when a physical loved one comes calling,
and are eager to share their perspective on their time in the physical world.
As more than one spirit has cheerfully told me:
​“It will all make sense when you’re dead!”

Priscilla Keresey
It Will All Make Sense When You're Dead:
Messages From Our Loved Ones in the Spirit World 

Although opportunities for Realization arise in many different situations,
attaining it “in this life” is (as you no doubt know) not so easy.
The primary obstacle is that we are constantly distracted
by innumerable self-centered thoughts, feelings, sensations,
desires, aversions, attachments, etc.―
all of which seem rooted in Nature, herself.
And this is precisely why death presents such a “golden opportunity”
for attaining what was so hard to attain in life.
As the death process unfolds, everything will be reversed.
Nature (as the Tibetans say) will actually be cooperating with your practice
by progressively removing each and every distraction from your mind,
until finally there will be nothing left
but Consciousness Itself.
All you really have to do is wait
​ for this Pure Consciousness to appear,
and then Recognize it for what it is.
Death will take care of the rest!

Joel Norwood
Through Death’s Gate: A Guide to Selfless Dying

When a man knows God,
he is free:
his sorrows have an end,
and birth and death are no more.
When in inner union
he is beyond the world of the body,
then the third world,
the world of the spirit is found,
where the power of the All is,
and man has all:
for he is one with the ONE. 

Upanishads

Ruby overcame the despondency of pessimism and morbid introspection.
In time, death forgot her because she forgot death.
Thoughts of death were dispersed
when she considered the richness that is life.
In one of her letters,
I found her translation of a quote from Tagore.
“When I gaze at the infinity that is you,
and lose myself in its beauty and vastness,
Death and pain have no meaning,
they are insignificant.
“But when I turn away from you and centre on myself,
Death looms large and pain overwhelms me.”

 Sherwin B. Nuland
 The Art of Aging 

WELLER: You carried on very admirably after the passing of Maggie in 2003.
You were married for fifty-six years,
but you were writing just days afterward.
How were you able to do that? 

BRADBURY: Work is the only answer.
You have to stay busy.
If you dwell on sad things they can destroy you.
The problem with death is it’s so damned permanent.
I remember at my father’s funeral fifty years ago,
my mother saying the most terrible words I’ve ever heard--
looking down at my father and saying,
“I’ll never see him again. I’ll never see him again.”
Such terrible words!
The truth can be so horrible and so immense at times
that you must stand up to it and say,
“I will not surrender.
​I will carry on and stay busy.”

Ray Bradbury, Sam Weller
Ray Bradbury: The Last Interview: And other Conversations 

Many people don’t realize until they are on their deathbed
and everything external falls away
that no thing ever had anything to do with who they are.
In the proximity of death,
the whole concept of ownership stands revealed
as ultimately meaningless.
In the last moments of their life,
they then also realize
that while they were looking throughout their lives
for a more complete sense of self,
what they were really looking for,
their Being,
had actually always already been there,
but had been largely obscured
by their identification with things,
which ultimately means
​ identification with their mind.

 Eckhart Tolle
Oneness with All Life

Los Angeles funeral director Caitlin Doughty
once mentioned in an interview
that the denial of death is a “luxury” of living in a First World nation.
She went on to say that had we been born in India
we would view death as a natural part of life,
as a result of witnessing it on a daily basis:
from beggars dying on the streets
to family members dying in the home
to crematory pyres floating continuously along the Ganges River.
But we in Western society
have not had this lifelong exposure to death
and must intentionally educate ourselves
​ to overcome our intrinsic death-phobia.

Karen Wyatt, MD

What is the fear of death?
What harm has death ever caused anyone?
One has never heard of death harming anyone.
It is quite possible
that life has caused great damage in some cases,
but death causing any damage?
It has never been heard of.

Osho
Falling in Love With Darkness 

I will not relinquish old age
if it leaves my better part intact.
But if it begins to shake my mind,
if it destroys its faculties one by one,
if it leaves me not life but breath,
I will depart from the putrid or tottering edifice.
I will not escape by death from disease
so long as it may be healed,
and leaves my mind unimpaired.
I will not raise my hand against myself
on account of pain,
for so to die is to be conquered.
But I know that if I must suffer
without hope of relief,
I will depart,
not through fear of the pain itself,
​but because it prevents all for which I would live.

Seneca 

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 

Everyone wants to know the details of dying,
though few are willing to say so.
Whether to anticipate the events of our own final illness
or better to comprehend
what is happening to a mortally stricken loved one--
or more likely
out of that id-borne fascination with death we all share--
​we are lured by thoughts of life’s ending.

Sherwin B. Nuland
How We Die: Reflections on Life's Final Chapter 

All our boundaries are drawn by our death;
we are defined by our death.
The moment we lose our boundaries,
we lose our death too.
Then we are eternal,
then we are infinite.

Osho
 Last in the Evening 

The moment you have learned the knack of meditation
you are a new being.
It is a new birth, the real birth,
because in that very moment
you know you are neither the body nor the mind,
you are pure consciousness.
In that very moment,
you know that this pure consciousness was before birth,
and is going to remain after death.
It is immortal.
This is the discovery of immortality.
And to discover immortality is to discover godliness,
to discover immortality is to discover eternity.

Osho
 Last in the Evening 

The necessity of nature’s final victory
was expected and accepted in generations before our own.
Doctors were far more willing to recognize the signs of defeat
​ and far less arrogant about denying them.

Sherwin Nuland
How We Die 

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

The very practice
of pinpointing the time of physical birth at conception itself errs.
There is no point at which you can say in basic terms 
that an individual is alive,
 though you do find it more practical
to accept certain points of life and death.
It is true that you emerge into space and time
at a certain point in your perception.
​Your consciousness has been itself long before, however.

Jane Roberts
The “Unknown” Reality,
Volume Two (A Seth Book) 

You can’t take away death,
but you can be there in love and comfort
as the dying person goes through the changes that lead to death.
Sit close enough so that they feel your oneness.
You are serving each other
by helping each other let go of fear.
Alone it is a daunting task;
together you enter something bigger than yourself.
​Love is more powerful than fear.

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

Dying is the most important thing you do in your life.
It’s the great frontier for every one of us.
And loving is the art of living as a preparation for dying.
Allowing ourselves to dissolve into the ocean of love
is not just about leaving this body;
it is also the route
to Oneness and unity with our own inner being, the soul,
while we are still here.
If you know how to live and to love,
you know how to die.

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

I loved my friends.
I loved my life
and I decided to love my death.
Throughout my end-of-life journey,
people marvelled at how comfortable I was with dying,
but I did not leave without sadness. 
 It’s hard to say goodbye.
Until we meet again,
I leave you with a simple message:
Be kind … because you can.

Audrey Parker
1961-2018
More from Audrey

I knew that if I made peace with my death
and made living well my new path in what was left of my life,
I would have a fabulous end-of-life experience.
I have always liked to do things well
and to the best of my ability,
so I took my death on as a project.
All I wanted was to have a fabulous end-of-life experience
on my terms and to die in style.
After all, death is natural
and can be a beautiful thing
​ if we allow it to be.

Audrey Parker
1961-2018
More from Audrey

Why is it that we believe
that our first breath is so much more important than our last?
I think society has it backwards.
When I received my unexpected diagnosis of terminal breast cancer,
I thought a lot about my two most important breaths;
I just knew I had to be true to myself
and give as much reverence to my last breath
as was given to my first.

Audrey Parker
1961-2018
More from Audrey

What if you are already dead
and you are viewing this moment,
how would you live this moment?
That is a cardinal rule for masters.
How would this moment be
​ lived forever and ever and ever?

Ramtha
Defining the Master