DEATH
Perhaps one of the reasons why death is so commonly associated with a
feeling of fear is because we give so little thought to it. Most people
seem never to think of the subject at all until death invades the home
and threatens some member of the family. Then terror fills the mind and
all but paralyzes the reasoning faculties.
Such fear of death, so widespread in Occidental civilization, is
eloquent testimony to the materialism of our times. It is doubt about
the future that causes fear of death. Only when we have a scientific
basis for the hope of immortality will the awful fear of death
disappear. It is feared because it seems like annihilation. If people
really believed in a heavenly existence beyond the physical life they
could not possibly be filled with terror at the prospect of entering it.
If a man's religion has not given him a genuine confidence in a future
life, and made it as much of a reality to him as this life is, it has
failed to do what we have a right to demand of religion. If it does not
enable him to look upon the face of his dead without a doubt, or a fear,
there is something wrong, either with his religion or with his
comprehension of it. What possible reason is there for fearing death? A
thing that is universal, that comes to all, can not be pernicious. To
regard death as a disastrous thing would be an indictment of the sanity
of nature.
Death is merely the close of a particular cycle of experience. It is the
annihilation of nothing but the physical body, in its aspect of an
instrument of activity and a vehicle of the consciousness upon the
physical plane. The atoms of the body, drawn together in the human form
for temporary use, are, in death, released from the cohesive force of a
living organism and will return whence they came.
In reality there is no such thing as death, unless it be strictly
applied to the form, regarded as a temporary vehicle of consciousness.
As for the consciousness, there is no death. There is life in a physical
form and life out of it, but no such thing as the death, or cessation,
of the individual intelligence. What we name "death" is but a change in
the orderly evolution of life, and it is only because the phenomenon is
viewed from the physical plane that such a term can be applied to it.
From this plane it is death, or departure. But looked at from the astral
world it is birth, or arrival. What we call birth is the beginning of
the expression of the soul through a material body on the physical
plane. It is an arrival. But from the astral viewpoint it is a departure
and therefore is as logically a "death" there as departure from a
physical body is here. So death and departure from one plane is simply
birth, or arrival, upon another, although it is not, of course, birth
as we know it.
Every process in nature has a part to play in evolution and therefore
death is as necessary as life and as beneficial as birth. Death is the
destroyer of the useless. There is a time when each human being should
die--that is to say, a time when the physical body has fulfilled its
mission and completely accomplished the purpose for which it exists. To
continue life in a physical body beyond that point is to waste energy
and lose time in the evolutionary journey. Under the action of what we
call "diseases" the body becomes inefficient, or through the gradual
breaking down of old age the senses grow dim and uncertain. The
consciousness can no longer be keenly expressed through its impaired
machine and it is decidedly to the advantage of the ego to withdraw from
it. The soul is in the position of an artisan obliged to work with
broken and rusted tools. Good results are no longer possible. It is then
that death comes, beneficently destroying the worn out instrument and
releasing the consciousness from its too-often painful situation and
permitting its escape into a field of unobstructed activity.
Death is painless. The breaking down of the body under the ravages of
disease may cause pain, but that belongs to physical life, not death.
Distress may also be caused by groundless fear of death. But the dying
person who does not know that death is upon him has no terror, and no
pain, and sinks quietly to sleep. Very little observation will convince
one that the distress about a death-bed is invariably on the part of
surviving friends, not on the part of the dying. Those who are left
behind remain within the limitations of the physical senses, and they
are therefore separated from the so-called dead man, but he is not
separated from them. It is because of that separation that the terror of
death exists for them.
But in that very fact is to be seen the great evolutionary value of
death. The separation it causes intensifies love as nothing else could
do. It is only when our friend is gone that we begin to appreciate his
real value and comprehend how large a part he really played in our
existence. As sudden silence gives the consciousness a keener
realization of the sound that has just ceased, so death, by its
contrast, gives a vivid, realistic touch to life. We all know how
enormously the heart qualities are quickened by the death of a close
friend. The whole nature is in some degree purified and spiritualized.
Selfishness is decreased and compassion expands. Sympathy for others in
distress is born, and thus a decided evolutionary advance is made. We
have only to reflect upon the fact that separation without death
produces the same effects in a minor key, to realize the evolutionary
value of death. In constant association we grow careless and
indifferent. But an absence of a month or two enables one to get a truer
perspective of personal associations and thereafter life has new zest. A
child regards its mother with a certain degree of appreciation but a
short absence enormously increases its appreciation. All human beings
come into closer and more sympathetic association after a period of
separation, and the completeness of the separation caused by death
renders it peculiarly efficacious in the development of the spiritual
side of one's nature. It often requires death to turn attention away
from materialistic life. Frequently a family becomes completely absorbed
in material success. There is no thought at all given to the higher
life. Wealth, position, power, fame, all the vanities of the world, hold
them firmly. They become completely self-centered. Then suddenly death
enters and breaks the family circle, and the transient character of all
they had been so strenuously striving for suddenly dawns upon them, and
attention is turned to the nobler things of life. It is a well known
fact that great wars are accompanied or followed with widespread
spiritual awakening, and it is no doubt largely because the shadow of
death has fallen on tens of thousands of households.
It has sometimes been asked by doubtful critics if it would not be an
improvement on nature's plan if the sorrow caused by the death of our
friends were softened by direct knowledge of their continued existence.
It is evidently the plan of nature to have the physical life and the
astral life normally separated at our present level of evolution. Some
of the reasons have already been discussed. There are undoubtedly others
that we are incapable of understanding, and still others that we can
readily comprehend. If the higher, joyous life of the astral world were
open to our consciousness, then concentration upon the duties of this
life would be difficult, if not impossible. Our life in the physical
body may be compared to the tasks of children in school. They have
serious business before them in the acquiring of knowledge and the
development of the intellect. They can best accomplish the work when
completely isolated from other phases of life. Introduce into their
work-day consciousness the joys of a child's existence, the circus, the
military parade, the picnic and the dancing parties, and the purpose for
which the school exists would be defeated. To exactly the extent that
the consciousness is withdrawn from such things will desirable progress
be made with the work of the school-room. And so it is with the
limitation of our physical senses. It serves a purpose.
But there is a point in human evolution where such limitation of the
senses is no longer of any service and may be transcended. Some people
have attained it. They are those who have previously been referred to as
the psychic scientists, with the higher clairvoyance of the
cerebro-spinal system developed. It is an accomplishment to which all
may aspire. None need submit to the separation commonly caused by death.
By hard work in co-operating with nature's methods of evolution and by a
serious and sustained effort to live the highest and most helpful life
of which one is capable, it is possible in time to attain a level of
consciousness where one has personal knowledge that the dead still live.
But in the very work of rising to that level, the concentration
previously enforced by the limitation of the physical senses will have
been acquired.
One of the common delusions about death is that some radical change in
the nature of a person then takes place. This is no doubt due in part to
the theological ideas that have come down to us from the time of the
Middle Ages. It is popularly supposed that at death one comes to some
sort of a judgment that classes him as either a saint qualified for
eternal bliss or a fiend fit only for endless torture! The belief is
based on that erroneous view of human nature that was common to the
melodrama of a past generation and that will possibly have eternal life
in the cheap novel. It represented the hero as unqualifiedly good and
the villain as absolutely bad. The one had no flaw of character and the
other had not a redeeming feature. But human nature does not thus
express itself. The spark of divine life is in all, notwithstanding it
is sometimes darkly hidden. On the other hand we find no perfected
beings. The perfect heroes were merely creations of an imperfect
imagination. At our halfway stage of evolution we find neither the
absolutely good nor the hopelessly bad.
Why should the change we call death transform a human being? It is
merely the loss of one part of the mechanism of consciousness. The soul,
the thinker, has lost connection with the physical world because the
physical body has ceased to exist. The mental body and the astral body
remain and they enable him to think and feel. But he can not think more
than he knows, nor feel what he has not evolved. All that has happened
in death is that contact with the material world has been lost.
One of the misconceptions is that death brings great wisdom, and we
often hear of people getting into communication with those who have
passed on, with the hope of obtaining valuable advice. It is true that
death ushers one into a realm of wider consciousness and that in the
astral world one can see a little further ahead and take a few more
things into consideration. But--and it is a vital point--he would have
no better judgment in determining a course of action than he had while
here in the physical world.
Both mentally and emotionally he is unchanged. His grade of morality is
neither better nor worse. His tolerance or narrowness remains what it
previously was. If he was bigoted while here he is still bigoted there.
If he was the unevolved ignoramus here he remains precisely that in the
astral world. Whether genius or fool, saint or villain, he remains
unchanged and goes on with his evolutionary development, but in a world
where emotion is the determining factor.
Death merely opens the door to a new and wider realm where the evolution
of the soul proceeds. It would be difficult to say which is the greater
misfortune--the delusions that make death the king of terrors, or the
complacent belief that if death does not end all, it at least brings the
soul to a judgment that ends all personal responsibility and settles
one's fate forever. Death can no more lessen responsibility or
transform the moral nature than sleep can change character or determine
destiny.
The theosophical conception of death is as consoling as it is
scientific. Instead of the fear of death it gives us knowledge of
continued life. Instead of doubt and despair it gives us confidence and
joy, for it guarantees the companionship once more of those we have
known and loved, and erroneously supposed we have lost.