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

In his interview with Ernest Becker on his deathbed,

Sam Keen asked him how he thought about himself as he was dying.

Becker said this: “Well, I suppose the most immediate thing I feel

is relieved of the burden of responsibility for my own life,

putting it back where it belongs,

to whoever, whatever hatched me.

I think this is the most immediate thing I feel,

a great sense of relief and trust

that eggs are not hatched in vain.”

All the unavoidable anxiety we have felt throughout life

about being responsible or making things happen

or caring for the ones we love is let go —

given over to God

or whomever we regard as the source of being.

We have our life as a gift.

We are able to let go of that gift —

put our life back where it came from —

if we trust that our life has not been in vain —

that it had meaning.

Karen Speerstra, Herbert Anderson

The Divine Art of Dying: How to Live Well While Dying

In The Denial of Death,

Ernest Becker regarded the struggle we have

with being finite as the human problem.

Becker maintained that there is a natural and inevitable urge

to resist being fenced in;

we deny death and rail against our limits.

“The prison of one’s character,” Becker observed,

“is painstakingly built to deny one thing and one thing alone:

one’s creatureliness.”

Avoiding signs of an illness,

resisting a trip to the doctor when one does not feel well,

seeking to make ourselves seem powerful

even at the expense of others,

or engaging in heroic efforts to prolong life

when we are irreversibly or gravely ill

are all signs of our anxiety in the face of our human finitude.

Sometimes the negative behavior

that comes from the inability to tolerate finitude

exaggerates our suffering.

Beginnings and endings shape us and give us character.

Even so, it takes courage to face finality.

Karen Speerstra, Herbert Anderson

The Divine Art of Dying: How to Live Well While Dying

It’s not an easy process.

A lot of times this transition

from the old style to the new style of being can be miserable.

You get to a place where nothing makes sense anymore,

and you go through a dark night of the soul.

And then, just at the last moment

when you think all the lights are going to go out,

you’ll make a connection that keeps you going.

At that point, things start making sense.

Then all of a sudden

you know how to connect with the world automatically—h

ow to feel it, rather than think about it.

And when you start feeling that connection,

you start opening up.

And when you start opening up,

you really begin awakening the heart.

And then your world is no longer like you thought it was before.

Ken Eagle Feather

quoted in:

Hillary S. Webb

Traveling Between the Worlds: Conversations with Contemporary Shamans

You have to blast yourself out of complacency

and realize that you are going to die.

I don’t care if you believe in reincarnation or not—

you are going to die.

Then you take that power and decide

how you are going to use your death to bring yourself to life.

This is what don Juan taught as “Using Death as Your Advisor.”

You ask yourself,

“If I am going to die today, what is it that I want to be doing?”

At that point, you start examining everything all over again

, and all of a sudden going out and partying, getting high,

getting drunk, doesn’t make it anymore.

That’s not worth dying for.

As soon as you start asking yourself, “What do I have to do?”

you allow yourself to become quiet.

As soon as you allow yourself to become quiet,

you start hearing outrageous things.

Good stuff!

Crazy stuff!

Stuff that awakens your heart

and makes you feel connected with the world.

Ken Eagle Feather

quoted in:

Hillary S. Webb

Traveling Between the Worlds: Conversations with Contemporary Shamans

The individual who now insists,

“I am this body, I am Mr. So and So,”

will someday throw off the shackles of ignorance

and rise into the knowledge of his true Being.

This is the real resurrection—

when we can rise out of the grave of ignorance and materialism.

Life does not hold much joy for us

if we are constantly fearful, driven by selfish desires,

and constantly overwhelmed by physical consciousness.

Real joy comes when we have a new and bigger vision.

For one who has gained that,

the gulf between life here and hereafter is destroyed.

Swami Paramananda

When I came to in my body it was dreadful, so dreadful….

The experience had been so beautiful

that I didn’t want to come back.

I had wanted to stay there…

and yet I came back.

From that moment it was a real struggle

to live my life inside my body,

with all the limitations I experienced at the time….

But later I realized

that this experience was in fact a blessing,

for now I know that the mind and body are separate

and that there’s life after death.

Pim van Lommel

Consciousness Beyond Life: The Science of the Near-Death Experience

Maybe our physical death

is just sort of a ‘milestone’ for a particular lifetime —

and then we go into a transition stage.

We go ‘on vacation’ between lives.

This is what I think happens.

This is what I have some recollections of.

We go on vacation.

Some in our culture may want to call it “Heaven.”

You can call it whatever.

Any label works.

The folks who are ‘minding the store on the other side’

don’t care what we call it,

and they will use whatever term we like

to make us feel comfortable,

because I think it’s just a comfort zone

to hang out in, so to speak.

And then we can choose to stay there or not.

We can come back into physical form

in another lifetime if we want.

Kelvin H. Chin

Overcoming the Fear of Death: Through Each of the 4 Main Belief Systems

Even if we don’t achieve immortality in our lifetime,

the war against death is still likely to be

the flagship project of the coming century.

When you take into account our belief in the sanctity of human life,

add the dynamics of the scientific establishment,

and top it all with the needs of the capitalist economy,

a relentless war against death seems to be inevitable.

Our ideological commitment to human life

will never allow us simply to accept human death.

As long as people die of something,

we will strive to overcome it.

Yuval Noah Harari

Homo Deus

In the twenty-first century humans are likely

to make a serious bid for immortality.

Struggling against old age and death

will merely carry on the time-honoured fight

against famine and disease,

and manifest the supreme value of contemporary culture:

the worth of human life.

Modern science and modern culture

have an entirely different take on life and death.

They don’t think of death as a metaphysical mystery,

and they certainly don’t view death

as the source of life’s meaning.

Rather, for modern people

death is a technical problem that we can and should solve.

Yuval Noah Harari

Homo Deus

The dying process, with its numerous losses,

can become a powerful opportunity

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

and finally discover our true nature as spirit.

The ego’s lifelong striving

to defend itself from all attacks on its value

is over.

We can relax into spirit.

We can find refuge, strength, and empowerment

in our identity as immortal soul.

Philip Jones

Light on Death: The Spiritual Art of Dying

We need to honour the dying experience

and nurture it by paying it full attention, kindness and love,

emptying our minds

and really concentrating on what is unfolding.

As we do this, we naturally become softer,

more compassionate, peaceful, loving and kinder

and able to really reach out to the person who is dying

with an open and loving heart.

Intimacy is sacred –

a secret trust –

a soulful commitment.

Don’t go in with your own baggage,

just observe the mystery of the other person.

People ask me if I experience fear or sorrow while I work –

none of that manifests when I’m with the dying person.

It’s their time, not mine.

Any burden or sorrow or wounds of your own disappear.

You hold the person and keep vigil

while they quietly, almost invisibly,

shimmer an indescribable membrane of light.

Shauna Ray

quoted in:

Felicity Warner

A Safe Journey Home: The simple guide to achieving a peaceful death

“I would like to think that when my time is ready,

I’ll know, and I’ll be glad to go.

I have an expiration date, and I want to honor that.”

Talking to Derianna about death and dying

became as commonplace as talking about the weather.

She had spent more than half her life

breaking down the taboos and barriers

that kept people from engaging meaningfully with their own mortality.

As a hospice nurse and later as a volunteer,

Derianna had shepherded hundreds of people

over the threshold between life and death.

And it was assisted deaths specifically

that left an indelible impression on her.

“I got to see a window into the other side.

I could watch patients let go and be at peace

and know they were free from suffering, free from angst.

The first time I watched an assisted death,

I thought, Oh my God, it’s just like a good birth.

It felt just like a good birth.”

Her exposure therapy worked:

in the autumn of her life, she had made friends with death.

“I have no fear now, no fear whatsoever,” she told me,

“In fact, I look forward to it.”

Anita Hannig

The Day I Die: The Untold Story of Assisted Dying in America

Everybody is afraid of death

for the simple reason that we have not tasted of life yet.

The man who knows what life is never afraid of death;

he welcomes death.

Whenever death comes he hugs death,

he embraces death,

he welcomes death,

he receives death as a guest.

To the man who has not known what life is,

death is an enemy;

and to the man who knows what life is,

death is the ultimate crescendo of life.

Osho,

Walking in Zen, Sitting in Zen, Talk #12

I died a mineral, and became a plant.

I died a plant and rose an animal.

I died an animal and I was man.

Why should I fear? When was I less by dying?

Yet once more I shall die as man, to soar

With the blessed angels; but even from angelhood

I must pass on. All except God perishes.

When I have sacrificed my angel soul,

I shall become that which no mind ever conceived.

O, let me not exist! for Non-Existence proclaims,

”To Him we shall return.”

Rumi

quoted from:

Aldous Huxley

The Perennial Philosophy: An Interpretation of the Great Mystics, East and West

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 they die!

Andrew Holecek

Preparing To Die

It’s a mad world

and when you become slightly detached

it seems even more mad than usual.

The aeroplane brings death;

the radio brings death;

the machine gun brings death;

the tinned goods bring death;

the tractor brings death;

the priest brings death;

the schools bring death;

the laws bring death;

the electricity brings death;

the plumbing brings death;

the phonograph brings death;

the knives and forks bring death;

the books bring death;

our very breath brings death,

our very language, our very thought,

our money, our love,

our charity, our sanitation, our joy.

No matter whether we are friends or enemies,

no matter whether we call ourselves

Jap, Turk, Russian, French, English, German or American,

wherever we go,

wherever we cast our shadow,

wherever we breathe,

we poison and destroy.

Hooray! shouted the Greek.

I too yell Hooray!

Hooray for civilization!

Hooray!

We will kill you all,

everybody, everywhere.

Hooray for Death!

Hooray! Hooray!

Henry Miller

Into the Heart of Life: Henry Miller at One Hundred

If you fight death,

refusing to consider an illness fatal,

delighting when someone minimizes your illness

and hating when someone says it is serious,

fussing with doctors,

making impossible prayers and vows,

thinking in a confused manner,

making no final statement

even though your illness gradually worsens,

this is like the death of a dog or cat.

To spoil your one and only last hour like this

is a slovenly way to die,

resulting from failure to keep death in mind at all times.

Hating to hear when someone dies,

feeling that you will be in this world forever,

being deeply desirous and greedy for life—

if you go onto a battlefield with such a cowardly attitude,

there is no way you can die a splendid death

in the cause of loyalty and duty.

This is why those who cultivate warriorship

refer even to dying in bed of sickness

as the“once-in-a-lifetime major event.”

Thomas Cleary

Code of the Samurai

In developing awareness of death,

you need to think about how unpredictable it is.

This is expressed by a popular saying:

“Tomorrow or the next life, you never know which will come first.”

We all know death will come one day.

The problem is that we always think

it will be some time in the future.

We are always busy with our worldly affairs.

Therefore, it is essential to meditate on death’s unpredictability.

Traditional texts explain

that the life-span of the people of this world is uncertain,

particularly in this degenerate age.

Death does not follow any rule or order.

Anyone can die any time,

whether they are old or young,

rich or poor, sickly or well.

Nothing can be taken for granted in relation to death.

The Dalai Lama

The Joy of Living and Dying in Peace

The teachings fundamentally become you.

This is what you take with you when you die,

because it’s fundamentally lodged in your subtle body,

In terms of benefit for others,

for someone who’s really done the deep inner work

of full embodiment and incorporation,

your mere presence can be transformative.

Remember the Dalai Lama’s Tibetan name “Kundan”

literally means “Presence.”

And so this becomes of tremendous benefit

if you’re working around end-of-life,

hospice, palliative care situations,

or being at the side of someone who’s transitioning,

because your mere presence,

without saying a word,

can be a benefit.

Andrew Holecek

Preparing To Die Online Course

Week Six Live Session