by Axel von Fielitz-Coniar

The Theosophist, 1960

from Theosophical Website
 

THERE is an ancient Greek saying that there is neither life nor death but simply becoming visible and invisible. For many people only the visible side of life is real and what they call “my life” is the span between birth and death. We are so concentrated on the waking state of our consciousness that we often forget that there are other and even more important states of consciousness. In moments of inspiration, admiration and high devotion we contact such higher states and feel the wholeness of life. Things of the outer world are then seen in their right perspective and the reality of the inner worlds becomes more and more vivid.

What we call life and death are closely interwoven, as spirit and matter are interwoven, and form a whole.

Fear is a characteristic of our time, not only fear of death but fear of life too. People are afraid of losing their beloved ones, their job, their money, their health. They are afraid of war with all its atrocities and devastations. There is a general feeling of uncertainty nowadays in every respect. There are only two facts which are certain for everyone: the beginning of life on earth, called birth, and the end of it, called death.

If one considers these two as isolated facts one will not grasp their deep meaning. Only in trying to understand life in its wholeness, in its visible as well as in its invisible part, shall we become aware of its grandeur and beauty. Then everything is seen in its right place and life and death are not any more felt as contrasts but as means for a high purpose.

Christian painters have painted death as a skeleton with a scythe, a very ugly and frightening symbol of a fact in nature. How much more beautiful and nearer to truth is the symbol of Greek antiquity: a beautiful youth holding a burning torch downwards to extinguish the flame. Both symbols show an end but each end is a beginning of something new. What we call life and death are closely interwoven, as spirit and matter are interwoven, and form a whole.

There is a constant dying and being born everywhere, even in the human body where old cells are expelled and replaced by new ones all the time. As Jeans has said: “Matter is not a state, matter is a process.” We are living in a world of becoming and not of being; fortunately so, because there would be no possibility of any progress if life were static and not dynamic, constantly changing....

...that there is no death, no end but only a change, a new opportunity for wider and higher experiences.

Birth and death are like two gateways, the one at the entrance to the earth, the other at the entrance of higher worlds, both opening the road to wide fields of experience for the human soul.

Goethe is said to have said shortly before he passed over:

”Now comes the transformation to higher transformations (Jetzt kommt die Wandlung zu hoheren Wandlungen).”

He knew that there is no death, no end but only a change, a new opportunity for wider and higher experiences.

The more of our beloved ones have passed over before us the more we come into contact with the invisible worlds because they remain in vivid contact with us, nay even more than they were on earth. A French author whose name I do not know has put this truth very beautifully in the following words:

Men believe that death is a going away whereas it is really a secret presence. They believe that it creates infinite distances whereas it abolishes all distance by giving back to the spirit what had been imprisoned in the flesh. To live is often to leave one another; to die is to come together again. For those who have gone to the depths of love, death is a consecration and not a fall. Love can be the more intimate, more purified and full of deepest reverence. The heart plunges deeply into the mystery to seek those who have fled.

Full article: http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/sociopolitica/sociopol_brotherhoodss21.htm