September 7

If life is a good, then so is death, for it constitutes a necessary condition of life.

1

Death is a liberation from the one-sidedness of personality. This is probably the reason why the majority of the deceased have an expression of peace and tranquility on their faces. The death of every good person is calm and easy; but to be prepared to die, to die readily and joyfully—that is the privilege of the one who has renounced himself, the one who has rejected and denied the will to life. Only such a person has a real and not a seeming desire to die, and, consequently, does not need or demand a future existence for his personality.

— Schopenhauer

2

Where are the dead? The same place where the unborn are.

— Seneca

3

If we are afraid of death, then the reason for this lies not in death, but in us. The better a human being is, the less he fears death.

For a saint there is no death.

4

Corporeal death destroys the thing keeping the body together—it destroys the consciousness of temporal life. But, after all, this happens to us constantly and daily when we fall asleep. The question is, does corporeal death destroy that which unites all of the successive consciousnesses into one, i.e. my particular relationship to the world? To make this claim it is necessary to first of all prove that this particular relationship to the world, which unites all of my successive consciousnesses into one, was born with my corporeal existence, and would therefore die with it. And this proof is missing.

Reasoning on the basis of my own consciousness, I see that what unites all of my consciousnesses into one is a certain receptiveness to one thing and coldness to another, as a result of which one thing remains in me while another disappears—the degree of my love for goodness and hatred for evil—and that this particular relationship of mine to the world, which constitutes me in particular as an individual, is not the result of some external cause, but is the primary cause of all other phenomena of my life.

Reasoning on the basis of observation, it appears to me that the causes of my particular self are to be found in the particularities of my parents and the conditions that have influenced both them and me; but, reasoning further along this path, I cannot but see that if my particular self lies in the particularity of my parents and the conditions that have influenced them, then it also lies in the particularities of all my ancestors and the conditions of their existence—right up to infinity, i.e. beyond time and space—which means that the origin of my particular self lies beyond space and time, and that is exactly what I perceive.

5

Before reaching old age, I tried to live well; in old age, I am trying to die well. And to die well means to die willingly.

— Seneca

6

People who do not understand life cannot but fear death.

You are afraid of death, but think: what if you were doomed to eternal life in your one and the same personality?