The Search For Enlightenment

Having thought long and hard about death and the process of dying, I have been privileged to read some very wise words from some very wise people over the last few days. By now you will be well aware of my own thoughts and feelings on the subject, but I would like to share some of the thoughts of others:

Death – the last sleep?
No, it is the final awakening.
~ Walter Scott ~

The fear of death follows from the fear of life.
A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time.
~ Mark Twain ~

Some people are so afraid to die
that they never begin to live.
~ Henry Van Dyke ~

Only those who have dared to let go
can dare to re-enter.
~ Meister Eckhart ~

Of course you don’t die.
Nobody dies.
Death doesn’t exist.
You only reach a new level of vision,
a new realm of consciousness,
a new unknown world.
~ Henry Miller ~

A man’s ethical behaviour should be based effectually on
sympathy, education, and social ties –
no religious basis is necessary.
Man would indeed be in a poor way
if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death.
~ Albert Einstein ~

To fear death
is nothing other than to think oneself wise when one is not.
For it is to think one knows what one does not know.
No one knows whether death may not even turn out to be
the greatest blessings of human beings.
And yet people fear it as if they knew for certain it is the greatest evil.
~ Socrates ~

We are ignorant of the Beyond
because this ignorance is the condition of our own life.
Just as ice cannot know fire except by melting and vanishing.
~ Jules Renard ~

The bitterest tears shed over graves
are for words left unsaid and deeds left undone.
~ Harriet Beecher Stowe ~

I believe there are two sides to the phenomenon known as death,
this side where we live, and the other side where we shall continue to live.
Eternity does not start with death.
We are in eternity now.
~ Norman Vincent Peale ~

As a well spent day brings happy sleep,
so life well used brings happy death.
~ Leonardo DaVinci ~

And finally the piece I read at my own father’s funeral …

Death is nothing at all,
I have only slipped away into the next room.
Whatever we were to each, that we are still.
Call me by my old familiar name.
Speak to me in the easy way which you always used.
Laugh as we always laughed
at the little jokes we enjoyed together.
Play, smile, think of me. Pray for me.
Let my name be the household word it always was.
Let it be spoken without effort.
Life means all that it ever meant.
It is the same as it ever was;
there is absolutely unbroken continuity.
Why should I be out of your mind
because I am out of your sight?
I am but waiting for you, for an interval,
somewhere very near just around the corner…
All is well. Nothing is past, nothing is lost.
One brief moment and all will be as it was before,
only better, infinitely happier
and forever we will be one together.
~ Henry Scott Holland ~