You would know the secret of death.
But how shall you find it unless you seek it in the heart of life?
The owl whose night-bound eyes are blind unto the day cannot unveil the mystery of light.
If you would indeed behold the spirit of death, open your heart wide unto the body of life.
For life and death are one, even as the river and the sea are one.
In the depths of your hopes and desires lies your silent knowledge of the beyond;
And like seeds dreaming beneath the snow your heart dreams of spring.
Trust the dreams, for in them is hidden the gate to eternity.
Your fear of death is but the trembling of the shepherd when he stands before the king whose hand is to be laid upon him to honour.
Is the shepherd not joyful beneath his trembling, that he shall wear the mark of the kind?
Yet is he not more mindful of his trembling?
For what is it to die but to stand naked in the wind and to melt into the sun?
And what is it to cease breathing, but to free the breath from its restless tides, that it may rise and expand and seek God unencumbered?
Only when you drink from the river of silence shall you indeed sing.
And when you have reached the mountain top, then you shall begin to climb.
And when the earth shall claim your limbs, then shall you truly dance.
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Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet
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Ask yourself these two questions: Do I remember at every moment that I am dying, and that everyone and everything else is, and so treat all beings at all times with compassion? Has my understanding of death and impermanence become so keen and so urgent that I am devoting every second to the pursuit of enlightenment? If you can answer "yes" to both of these, then you really understand impermanence.
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Sogyal Rinpoche, Glimpse after Glimpse
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Life has no opposite, for it is God. Life and death seem to be opposites because you have decided death ends life. Forgive the world, and you will understand that everything that God created cannot have an end, and nothing He did not create is real. In this one sentence is our course explained.
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A Course in Miracles
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What is death? Ask yourself the question. But in my own way, in an answer that is no answer, I answer you. For I am death. I am myself, as you are yourself. I am a small flower on a planet you do not know, and I am myself. I am a mist over a time that you cannot understand, and I am myself. I am a god that is not yet created, and yet I am myself as you are yourself, and as you are portions of thoughts that you have not yet thought.
You stand on the chasms of yourselves and the pinnacles of yourselves. You are death and you are life. And I am death and I am life. I am a butterfly in a world that is not yet born in your terms, and yet I am myself in this room.
I am Ruburt and I am Jane, and I am a stone in the backyard and yet I am myself, apart from all of those other realities, for those realities are also themselves and apart from mine.
The earth speaks through the grasses, and the grasses flourish, and the birds come, and the snow flies: that is death and that is life.
You sense here the energy of your being, and it is death and it is life, for the two are united. You will never know, in your terms again, the self that you are now and yet it will never end and you will always remember it. Yet in other terms there is a history to your being. In your terms you can look backward toward reincarnational lives, but they are not you.
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I am life and I am death. Now when death can talk about death, that is your answer. Only the living are so mute. Think of your definitions. In certain terms, you are all dead and have been for centuries. In other terms, you are not yet born and centuries will come before you walk upon the surface of the earth. Yet you are alive, and your take it for granted that I am dead; and so, what a delightful game we play!
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So you are alive and dead at once, and there is no difference. You are, again, as alive or dead now as you will ever be.
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"Seth," through Jane Roberts, Psychic Politics
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To die alone is a tragedy exceeded only by the ultimate darkness -- to remain forever silent. That is exactly your fate when your gravestone is speechless. Instead, why not leave an epitaph for your visitors to ponder? Plan now -- reverberate forever.
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Lance Hardie, Light Notes from a Dark Room
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