Illuminating Quotes on Death
Chuang Tzu (399-295 B.C.)
Untergehend sogar ist's immer dieselbige Sonne.
At the age of 75, Goethe continued, with much cheerfulness, one must,
of course, think sometimes of death. But this thought never gives me the least uneasiness,
for I am fully convinced that our spirit is a being of a nature quite indestructible,
and that its activity continues from eternity to eternity. It is like the sun, which
seems to set only to our earthly eyes, but which, in reality, never sets, but shines on
unceasingly.
The sun had, in the meanwhile, sunk behind the Ettersberg. We felt in the wood the chill
of the evening, and drove all the quicker to Wiemar, and to Goethe's house. Goethe urged me
to go in with him for a while, and I did so. He was in an extremely engaging mood. He talked
a great deal about his theory of colors, and of his obstinate opponents; remarking that he
was sure that he had done something in this science.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832)
I said when I awoke, After some more sleepings & wakings I shall lie on this mattress sick;
then dead; and through my glad entry they will carry these bones. Where shall I be then?
I lift my head and beheld the spotless orange light of the morning beaming up from the dark
hills into the wide Universe. (October 21, 1837)
The event of death is always astounding; our philosophy never reaches, never possesses it;
we are always at the beginning of our catechism; alwasys the definition is yet to be made,
What is Death? I see nothing to help beyond observing what the mind's habit is in regard
to that crisis. Simply, I have nothing to do with it. It is nothing to me. After I have made
my will & set my house in order, I shall do in the immediate expectation of death the same
things I should do without it. (October 28, 1837)
Life & Death are apparitions. Last night the Teachers' Sunday School met here & the theme was
Judgment. I affirmed that we were Spirits now incarnated & should always be Spirits incarnated.
Our thought is the income of God. I taste therefore of eternity & pronounce of eternal law
Now & not hereafter. Space & time are but forms of thought. I proceed from God now & ever
shall so proceed. Death is but an appearance. Yes & life's circumstances are but an appearance
through which the firm virtue of this God-law penetrates & which it moulds. The inertia of
matter & of fortune & of our employment is the feebleness of our spirit. (May 14, 1838)
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882), Journals
The curve of life is like the parabola of a projectile which, disturbed from its initial state
of rest, rises and then returns to a state of repose... Like a projectile flying to its goal,
life ends in death. Even its ascent and its zenith are only steps and means to this goal...
For, enlightenment or no enlightenment, consciousness or no consciousness, nature prepares
itself for death.
Carl Gustav Jung (1875-1961), "The Soul & Death"
We go toward something that is not yet, and we come from something that is no more. We are what
we are by what we come from. We have a beginning as we have an end. There was a time which was not
our time. We hear of it from those who are older than we; we read about it in history books;
we try to envision the unimaginable billions of years in which we did not exist...
When the writer of the fourth Gospel speaks of the eternity of Christ, he does not only point
to His return to eternity, but also to His coming from eternity. Truly, truly,
I say to you, before Abraham was, I am. Christ comes from another dimension than
that in which the past lies... He does not say "I was" before Abraham; but He says "I am" before
Abraham was. He speaks of his beginning out of eternity. And this is the beginning of everything
that is not the uncounted billions of years but the eternal is the ultimate point in our past.
The mystery of the past from which we come is that it is and is not in every moment of our lives.
It is, insofar as we are what the past has made of us. In every cell of our bodies, in every trait
of our faces, in every movement of our souls, our past is in the present.
In each human life a struggle is going on with the past. Blessings fight with curses. Often we do not
recognize what are blessings and what are curses... A pathetic struggle with their past is going on
almost without interruption in many men and women in our time. No medical healing can solve this
conflict, because no medical healing can change the past. Only a blessing which lies above the conflict
of blessing and curse can heal; it is the blessing which changes what seems to be unchangeable
the past. It cannot change the facts: what has happened has happened and remains so in all eternity!
But the meaning of the facts can be changed by the eternal, and the name of this change is the
experience of "forgiveness." If the menaing of the past is changed by forgiveness, its influence on the
future is also changed. The character of curse is taken away from it. It has become a blessing by the
transforming power of forgiveness...
The mystery of the future and the mystery of the past are united in the mystery of the present. Our time
the time we have, is the time in which we have "presence."... The mystery is that we have a present;
and even more, that we have our future also because we anticipate it in the present; and we have
our past also because we remember it in the present. In the present our future and our past are
ours. But there is no "present" if we think of the never-ending flux of time... It is the eternal
which stops the flux of time. It is the eternal "now" which provides for us a temporal "now." But sometimes
it breaks powerfully into our consciousness and gives us the certainty of the eternal, of a dimension of
time which cuts into time and gives us our time.
People who are never aware of this dimension lose the possibility of resting in the present. As the letter
to the Hebrews describes it, they never enter into the divine rest. They are held by the past and cannot
separate themselves from it, or they escape towards the future unable to rest in the present. They have not
entered the eternal rest which stops the flux of time and gives us the blessing of the present. Perhaps this
is the most conspicuous characteristic of our period, especially in the Western world and particularly in
this country. It lacks the courage to accept "presence" because it has lost the dimension of the eternal.
I am the beginning and the end. This is said to us who live in the bondage of time, who have
to face the end, who cannot escape the past, who need a present to stand upon. Each of the modes of time
has its peculiar mystery, each of them gives its peculiar anxiety. Each of them drives us to an ultimate
question. There is one answer to these questions the eternal. There is one power which
surpasses the all-consuming power of time the eternal: He who was and is and is to come, the beginning
and the end. He gives us forgiveness for what has passed; He gives us courage for what is to come. He gives
us rest in His eternal presence.
Paul Tillich (1886-1965), "The Eternal Now"
Ramana Maharshi (1879-1950)
|
| Top of Page
| Dad Index
| Home |
© Peter Y. Chou, WisdomPortal.com P.O. Box 390707, Mountain View, CA 94039 email: peter@wisdomportal.com (10-22-2001) |
![]() |