Dead

Dying is as much a part of this dance as being born. One day death will annihilate us. The crucial point is whether we see it as a stage of development or as a terrifying evil. Believers know that life cannot die, only a form of life can. Mystical death is the death of the ego. Our original sin is that we thought that with our ego we could "be like God." Without death there is no resurrection to a more comprehensive existenance. We have to let go of our ego-bound existence - everything depends upon letting ourselves be transformed from within. Lettin go so that the Divine can unfold its power in us. We learn to die in order to live. (p15) We must die so that we might be reborn. John of the Cross said: "He who knows how to die in all things will have life in all things." he dying of the ego is the dark night of the senses, mind, and soul. It is the way of purification or letting go of all safeguards. (p146-7) Greet death as the great transformer. Without death there is no new life. Those who object to death object to the resurrection and ultimately to God. The cosmic law of transformation is life-death-resurrection.(p202) (Meaning)

Death is understood as a transistion to a new form of existence - it is the great transformer. What is divine in us remains the same in all forms of existence. (Meaning, p282)

Look on death as a friend rather than an enemy. If we believe that death is the transition from this life to life eternal, should see it as a friend. (Gift of Peace, p127-8)

Nietze's statement that "God is dead" was a metaphor for the absence of god from modern consciousness/culture. (Uncascroog@aol.com)

Spiritual death is separation from God.

Only human beings can defeat death by summoning up the memory of someone they loved and lost, and feeling that person close to them as they do do. Memory is what ultimately gives us power over death, by keeping the person alive in our hearts. Memory is what gives us power over time, by keeping the past present. (How Good, p163)

Pagans believed that it was death which made human beings different from the gods. In the bible, however, knowledge, not death, was the distinquishing hallmark of the divine. In the garden, God had seen knowledge as inseparably linked linked with with death. The knowledge sought by Adam and Eve was not information, but they desired wisdom and insight. What they sought from the tree of knowledge was not the philosophical or scientific knowledge desired by the Greeks, but the practical wisdom that would give them blessing and fulfilment.

Immersed in the wonder of the Tao, you can deal with whatever life brings you, and when death comes, you are ready. The Master knows that he is going to die, and he has nothing left to hold on to: no illusions in his mind, no resistances in his body. (Wisdom, Taoism, p151-2)

There is no death, but only life. Even death is part of God's life, part of his "in-folding" and "out-folding." Differentiation emerges out of oneness and is a self-representation of this one. God is a process which "develops" both inward ("in-fold") and outward ("out-fold"). (Contemplation, p38)

Eckhart's sentence came to mind: "Death has no existence and is not a being." It gave me such certainity and peace. (Contemplation, p124)

God was dead - the parable of the madman - who ran into the marketplace crying "I seek God! Where has God gone? I mean to tell you. We have killed him, you and I! We are all his murderers!" The death of God would bring about a newer, higher phase of human history. To become worthy of their deicide (the killing of a god), human beings would have to become gods themselves. (Friedrich Nietzsche,1800-1900?, Hist, p356)

There is (re)birth when you become conscious that you're dying? (Philosophy). For example, could the Fall of Man in the Garden of Eden have been the birth of modern man when they became aware that they were naked? "And today we are experiencing something that looks very much like the death of modern man. Perhaps the end of "man" himself is at hand. But man is not a goal. Man is something that must be overcome - and fulfilled, in the embrace of the feminine. (p445, The Passion of the Western Mind)

Those who want to save their life must lose it; those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the Gospel, save it. (Mark 8:35)

We cannot achieve the purify Jesus taught in the Sermon on the Mount unless we die interiorly. We die interiorly every time we refuse to let evil intentions and movements of rage, envy, lust, injustice, avarice (???), pride, and slander take root in our consciousness, not allowing them a place in our hearts. (Purif, p25-26)

The next step toward the realization of man's possibilities will be taken by him on another stage, the lowly door to which is death?' (Rebld, p77)

Unless the grain of wheat falling to the ground dies, itself alone remains. One must lose one's life. One must lose the very grasp upon one's ego, only to find a new ego - and it is then that the joy of enlightenment fills the personality. (Zen, p88)

The only causes which die are the causes for which people do not die. (Rebld, p272)

St. Teresa of Avila put it thus: 'I want to see God and, in order to see Him, I must die.' The great French saint, Therese of Lisieux said, 'I am not dying: I am entering life.' As St. James put it, is still a mystery, as it always has been. It is right to see death not as a precipice into the abyss but as a bridge. Death itself is not the experience we have to fear most. It is the judgment that follows death. (Quest, p140-142)