August 2

If the human being is only a corporeal being, then death is the end of everything. If, however, the human being is a spiritual being and the body is only a limitation of the spiritual being, then death is only change.

1

Our body limits the divine, spiritual source that we call the soul. And, like a vessel that gives form to a liquid or gas contained within it, this limitation gives form to the spiritual source. When the vessel breaks, its content ceases to hold its previous form and spreads out. Does it merge with other substances? Does it take on a new form? We do not know any of this, but we know for certain that it loses the form which it previously had in its limited state, because that which was limiting it has been destroyed, but we cannot know anything about what will happen to that which it was limiting. After death, the soul becomes something else—what exactly, we cannot say.

2

As Emerson was asserting his immortality, he was asked: “But what if the world ends?” He answered: “I do not need the world to be immortal.”

3

Humility is necessary not only for life, but also for death. To enter the house of God you must make yourself small before others and before yourself. Renounce yourself and you will merge with him. The more you renounce yourself, the closer you move to God and the easier death becomes.

4

Death is but a step in our continuous development. Our birth was exactly the same step, the only difference being that birth was a death of one form of being, while death is a birth of another form of being.

Death is happiness for the dying human being. By dying, you cease to be mortal. I cannot look upon this change with horror, as some people do. I think death is a change for the better. Are we not insane when we talk about preparing ourselves for death? Our task is to live. The one who knows how to live will know how to die. I want to live, our soul never tells us that we will die. The senses die, and it is the senses that have created death. So does it make sense for rational people to worry about it?

— Theodore Parker

5

Our last day brings us not destruction, but only change.

— Cicero

6

Death is the liberation of the soul (a spiritual essence that has its own, separate existence) from the conditions of material personality into which it was placed.

For a person who leads a spiritual life, there is no death.