Death

Death is the meaning of life. At least, properly understood it is. Misunderstood, it shows the meaninglessness of life, being the return of existence to non-existence which makes existence more or less pointless. But seen as the moment at which material life returns to spiritual it puts earthly life into perspective, giving it purpose. Imagine life without death. That really would be terrifying in its banality even if it included eternal youth.

At one time early on in my spiritual journey I read some of the spiritualist literature. While interesting and optimistic about the afterlife it was always slightly unsatisfactory because so much of the life described seemed too much like the better aspects of this life stripped of pain. I realise this would be what is called Summerlands and that spiritualism posits higher levels of spiritual reality above that but even so there was always an element of the mundane and expected about the whole spiritualist description of the post-mortem world. I am not denigrating it because I do believe it gave something that blind faith didn't to millions at a time when people were reaching out for something more, but it never really presented the next world as much more than a continuation of this one and the people in it as very little different in the fundamentals to how they were here.

Now, this may be the experience of a large section of humanity. They may find themselves in an environment that reflects what they are within, and if they are not particularly spiritually attuned in this life nor will they be in the next. But death in the real spiritual sense must mean something more than just relinquishing the physical body. To take away its deep existential significance, as spiritualism tends to do, is to diminish something that should be of profound relevance to the near trite. If death is tamed and made almost comfortable it will not be the transformative experience it should be.

Modern man has lost sight of the beauty of death. Isn't that a strange word to choose to describe something so often seen as full of terror and horror, something that signifies loss and suffering? Perhaps it is and I am certainly not recommending a "half in love with easeful death" attitude. To seek or wish for death is a spiritual sin because it is an evasion of responsibility. But the beauty of death lies in its transformative power and reward for a job well done. When your work here is over and you have been true to your calling as an incarnated soul then death comes as a release from the trivial mundanities of mortal life and entry into glory. The only people who need fear death (as in be frightened of, we should all have an attitude of humble awe before it as we should before any mystery) are those, unfortunately numerous now, who deny life because life is far more than worldly, material things and death, rightly considered, is the doorway to greater life.