The Library
Even stars must die one day, more violently and dramatically than most human beings, for even they come under the law that whatever had a beginning must also have an ending.
6.9.1.7Listen The innermost being of man, his mysterious Overself, links him with God. It does not change with time nor die with the years. It is eternal.
6.9.1.14Listen This dismal fact is the mark on all things, and creatures: that they pass away, have a transient existence, and in this absolute sense lack reality. They appear for awhile, seem substantial and eventful, but are in truth prolonged mirages. If this were all the story it would be melancholy enough. But it is not. That whence they came, to which they go back, does not pass away. That is the Real, that is the Consciousness which gave the universe, of which we are a part, its existence. Out of that stems this little flower in each life which is the best, highest self. If we search for it and discover it, we recover our origin, return to our source, and as such do not pass away. Yes, the forms are lost in the end but the being within them is not.
6.9.1.19Listen Dying into annihilation is one thing but dying into another form of consciousness is quite different. It is the latter which happens at the passing away of the life-force from the body.
6.9.1.21Listen We ought to be glad that we do not live forever. It is a frightening thought. If there were no death we would go on and on and on, captives in the body, having tried all experiences which promised much but in the end yielded nothing. No, it is good that in the end we are released from the physical tomb, as Plato called it, and will be able to enjoy a period of dignified rest until we plunge back again into the next re-embodiment.
6.9.1.23Listen What man undergoes in his physical life seems so real, so lasting, and so intimate--yet it is only a brief episode in the immensely larger span of his cosmic cycle.
6.9.1.25Listen The inner work of philosophy results in liberation from the fear of death--whether the death which comes naturally through old age or that which comes violently through war.
6.9.1.32Listen So long as man listens to his little ego alone, and lets the voice of the Overself remain unheard and unknown, so long will all his cunning and his caution avail him little in the end when the body has to be left and the mind must return to its own proper sphere.
6.9.1.35Listen A time comes when the prudent person, feeling intuitively or knowing medically that he has entered the last months or years of his life, ought to prepare himself for death. Clearly an increasing withdrawal from worldly life is called for. Its activities, desires, attachments, and pleasures must give way more and more to repentance, worship, prayer, asceticism, and spiritual recollectedness. It is time to come home.
6.9.1.37Listen We who find ourselves in old age with brittle bones and shrunken flesh, with wrinkled face and greyed hair, may find this a depressing experience. But like every other situation in life there is another way to look at it--perhaps in compensation for what we suffer. And that is to sum up the lessons of a lifetime and prepare ourselves for the next incarnation so that we shall better perform the necessary work on ourselves when that comes.
6.9.1.44Listen Life is a preparation for death, just as death is a preparation for re-entry into life.
6.9.1.47Listen There is a part of himself which cannot die, cannot pass into annihilation. But it is very deep down. The sage encounters it before bodily death and learns to establish his consciousness therein. The others encounter it during some phase in the after-death state.
6.9.1.49Listen When the decreed time comes the body is discarded but the mind remains. It passes through varied experiences and finally sleeps them off. After a while it awakes deeply refreshed. Then the old propensities slowly revive and it returns to this world, putting on a new body in new surroundings.
6.9.1.51Since the Overself is outside time it is also outside events. Nothing happens in it or to it.
6.9.1.53Listen With death, consciousness takes on a new condition but does not pass into mere emptiness, is not crumbled away with the fleshly brain into dust. No! It survives because it is the real being of a man.
6.9.1.57Listen ... It is not annihilation that we ought to fear, for that will not happen, but rather the evil in our own self, and the pain that follows in the train of that evil as a shadow follows a man in the sunlight.
6.9.1.58,Listen Whoever has been freed from the demands of his earthly self, and from the desires of his ignorant self, does not need to return here after passing into the disembodied state.
6.9.1.60Listen Life between incarnations consists of a dream-like state followed by a period resembling deep sleep. There is, however, no remembrance of one's former birth upon emerging from this state.
6.9.1.61Listen The difference between life as we ordinarily know it and as it appears between incarnations is that here we have an apparent mixture of two worlds, the mental and the phenomenal, whereas there only the former exists.
6.9.1.62Listen We pass through the dream and deep sleep states after death just as we do before it.
6.9.1.63Listen With the understanding of life in the body comes the knowledge of what life is without the body, that is, death. Both are existences in Mind, which is their reality.
6.9.1.64Listen Concealed behind the passing dream of life there is a world of lasting reality. All men awaken at the moment of death but only a few men are able to resist falling at once into the astral dream. These are the few who sought to die to their lower selves whilst they were still alive. These are the mystics who enter reality.
6.9.1.66Listen Every unfulfilled desire acts as an attractive force to draw us back to earth again after every death.
6.9.1.69Listen Our troubles are but transitory, whereas our spiritual hopes survive the incarnations and bridge the gaps between births.
6.9.1.73Listen This dream-like progress after death is not valueless. It acts as a reminder during each pre-birth of the true purpose of life.
6.9.1.75Listen So hard are the lessons which earth-life forces us to learn, so hard its sufferings, that it is only fair to say that the bliss to which we shall emerge after leaving it, or even now in mystic states, is not less in any way.
6.9.1.77Listen How short a time does an animal need for the rest period between its births by contrast with that needed between human births! In its case just months, in the human case, more years than it lived on earth.
6.9.1.79Listen We leave the body with the first death and the ego with the second death. But this is not the end. In the Overself we find our final being.
6.9.1.82Listen When the end of life comes, and a man goes out of it like a candle in the wind, what then happens depends upon his character, his prevailing consciousness, his preparedness, and his last thoughts.
6.9.1.83Listen I have witnessed some advanced souls going through the process of passing to another sphere of consciousness, the process we call death, who spread mental sunshine around so that the bereaved ones gathered at the bedside felt it as a consoling counterbalance to their natural human grief. The truth made some kind of impression upon them that this universal event in Nature can actually be a change to brighter, happier, and freer existence.
6.9.1.84Listen The anonymous young airman who wrote to his mother just before he was killed in battle: “I have no fear of death; only a queer elation,” possessed something more than mere courage. For the time at least he had passed over from self-identification with the body to self-identification with the mind.
6.9.1.85Listen The aspirant whose efforts to attain inner freedom and union with the Overself while living seem to have been thwarted by fate or circumstances, may yet find them rewarded with success while dying. Then, at the very moment when consciousness is passing from the body, it will pass into the Overself.
6.9.1.86If there is any loss of consciousness during the change called death, it is only a brief one, as brief or briefer than a night's sleep. Many of the departed do not even know at the time what has really happened to them and still believe themselves to be physically alive. For they find themselves apparently able to see others and hear voices and touch things just as before. Yet all these experiences are entirely immaterial, and take place within a conscious mind that has no fleshly brain.
6.9.1.88Listen Death is the great revealer. In that vivid but dreamlike experience which follows it, each man is shown what he has really done with his earth-life, what he should have done with it, and what he failed to do with it.
6.9.1.92Listen Just when life is ebbing fast away, when death is vividly in attendance, the long-sought but little found state of enlightenment may arise and accompany the event.
6.9.1.94The process of dying may become a fulfilment of long years of aspiration for the quester…
6.9.1.95,Listen There is a particular moment while a person is dying when the Overself takes over the entire process, just as it does when he is falling asleep. But if he clings involuntarily and through inveterate habit to his smaller nature, then he is only partly taken over; the remainder is imprisoned in his littleness.
6.9.1.96Listen Deep into the centre of his being does a man’s mind withdraw as he passes out of this life, if his karma or his aspiration, his stage of development are not obstructive.
6.9.1.99Listen I have seen upon the face of certain dying or just-deceased persons, an expression of joyous inner calm that reassures the sensitive onlooker not only about their inner condition at the time but also about death's aftermath.
6.9.1.102Listen The tremendous event of dying and leaving the body does not interrupt his quest.
6.9.1.106Listen It is paradoxical that the moment of his death should automatically bring to life again all of a man's past. He has to repeat it all over again, this time from a different point of view, for the selfish, coloured, and distorting operation of the ego is absent. Now he sees it from an impersonal and uncoloured point of view. In other words, he sees the real facts for what they truly are, which means that he sees himself for what he really is…
6.9.1.113,Listen It would be wrong to say that the pictorial review of life experience when dying is merely a mental transference from oneself … to those persons with whom one has been in contact during the life just passed, as the pictures unveil before him. What really happens is a transference from the false ego to the true Self, from the personal to the impersonal. It is a realization of the true meaning of each episode of the life from a higher point of view.
6.9.1.114Listen All possessions are left behind when a man makes his exit from this world. Every physical belonging, however prized, and even every human association, however beloved, are taken abruptly from him by death. This is the universal and eternal law which was, is, and ever shall be. There is no way to cheat or defeat it. Nevertheless there are some persons who, in a single particular only, escape this total severance. Those are the ones who sought and found, during their earthly life, the inspiration of a dead master or the association with a living one. His mental picture will vividly arise in their last moments on earth, to guide them safely into the first phase of post-mortem existence, to explain and reassure them about the unfamiliar new conditions.
6.9.1.115Listen We may deplore our foolish behaviour in life, our stupid errors or our fleshly weaknesses, but in those moments of dying we have the chance to die in wisdom and in peace. Yes, it is a chance given to us, but we have to take it by keeping our sight fixed on the highest that we know.
6.9.1.120Listen Death can open out higher possibilities to the man who leaves this existence in faith, who trusts the Overself and commits himself to its leading without clinging to the body which is being left.
6.9.1.121It is better to pass out of the physical body in possession of consciousness rather than in a state of drugged anesthesia. This applies more particularly to spiritual aspirants. But where there is great pain, local anesthesia may be unobjectionable.
6.9.1.122Listen Only in those last few days or hours or minutes do most men find out the truth that as one kind of life leaves both them and their flesh, another opens up to them.
6.9.1.123Listen When he lies almost dying he may receive verification of the belief that a dying votary will see his god or guru or saviour come to take or guide his soul to the higher world.
6.9.1.125Listen Drowning persons who were saved and survived have told of the feeling of time slipping backward and their whole lifetime being replayed. This is an experience which is not theirs alone; it happens to all who pass through the portal of death.
6.9.1.126Listen The student has learned that the death of the body is extrinsic to the consciousness, which lives on unchanged in itself. But when death claims the body of someone he loves, his faith will be put to test. At such a time, he must remember that the loved one has actually evolved to a more highly developed phase of life.
6.9.1.133Listen … The loved one has now gone on to a sphere of existence where happiness, bliss, comfort, and rest can be found as can only be imagined but not found here. He may be assured that the loved one is really in a better world where only the beautiful side of life can penetrate and where ugly and base things can never find lodgement. He may help best at such a moment by an occasional loving remembrance during the peak point of meditation …
6.9.1.137,Listen He who has had the good fortune to have a loving companion in marriage should not rail at Destiny when this helpmate is taken away. The same karma which brought the two together has also severed the relationship. But this is only temporary. There is really no loss, as mind speaks to mind in silent moments. Love and companionship of high quality will act as an attractive force to bring them together again somewhere, sometime. Many feel this in the inner understanding.
6.9.1.141Listen Cremation is a definite and emphatic challenge. If one really believes that the soul of man is his real self, or even if one believes that the thinking power of man is his real self, then there can be no objection to it, but, on the contrary, complete approval of it. The method of burying dead bodies is fit only for one who believes that this thinking power is a product of the body’s brain, that is, for a materialist.
6.9.1.143Listen I recommend the process of cremation to dispose of the body of a deceased person. An interval of three days should take place between the death and the actual cremation, because that is the transition period which makes complete the passing out of the spirit.
6.9.1.144Listen … A rational funeral would be a completely private one. A rational funeral service would be one held to memorialize the memory of the deceased, and held not in the presence but in the absence of the corpse. A rational disposal would be cremation, not burial. The psychic and spiritual health of a community demands the abolition of graveyards.
6.9.1.145,Listen The death of the body does not mean the death of the mind …
6.9.1.154,Listen There are the visible living people and the invisible living ones. None are ever lost to existence or destroyed in consciousness, but only their bodies.
6.9.1.176Listen This lesson, that a man is not his body, will be learnt in modern times through his reasoning intelligence as it was learnt in former times through his believing feelings.
6.9.1.179Listen There are two kinds of immortality (so long as the lower self dominates consciousness): first, the ”endless” evolution of the ego, gradually developing through all its many manifestations; and, secondly, the true immortality of the everlasting, unchanging Real Self--or Overself--which forever underlies and sustains the former.
6.9.1.181,... The inequalities and injustices, which trouble many, are all balanced sooner or later by the law of recompense (karma). Each person receives in return precisely what he or she gives out; thus there is justice in the world, despite appearances to the contrary...
6.9.1.181,Listen Every person maintains his or her individuality during and after the perishing of the body-thought …
6.9.1.181,Listen ... We must understand that heaven and hell are deep inside the heart and not places to which we go…
6.9.1.182,Listen The personal man will survive death but he will not be immortal. The I which outlives the fleshly body will itself one day be outlived by the deeper I which man has yet to find.
6.9.1.183Listen If death is the price of dwelling in this space-time world, then a spaceless and timeless world where there is no “here” and no “there,” no “then” and no “now,” no change from one stage to another, would also be an immortal one …
6.9.1.184,Listen The man who has studied these teachings does not believe that death can bring him to an end even though it must bring his body to an end. It is both a logical and biological truth for him that his inner personality will survive, his mind will continue its existence.
6.9.1.185Listen The life that is in us goes at death into the life that is in the universe. It is as secure there as it was in us. It is not lost. Thereafter it reappears in another form, another body.
6.9.1.187Listen
23 Jan 2017
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6 May 2019
26 Aug 2016
2 May 2018
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31 May 2023
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19 Dec 2023
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2 Nov 2013
27 Jun 2018
12 Jan 2011
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19 Jun 2024
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29 May 2016
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3 Dec 2017
31 May 2017
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