Death

TUES., NOV. 9, 1982, 5:19 AM
FARM, STUDY

You were doing some planning and arranging for your class that learns more about this aspect of life. That is good. The experiences should be useful and part of a good balance for the course. I have taught you much about this reality/unreality/mystery, but how would it be if I devoted one whole teaching directly to it? Well, I shall be as direct as I can and still function as a good teacher.

Death is the direct term, in your language, for the end of a life in a human body. It can occur after only a short sojourn here (and you have had no real experience with that… Megan was a close one), it can be at the end of a long earth life, or absolutely any age in between. You know the basic causes of death, but know also that death has resulted from every conceivable circumstance. Deaths range from extremely quiet and peaceful to extremely violent… from painless to painful… and from those desired and wished for to those fought against with great courage and persistence.

So death encompasses a great panorama of human experience. And, as you have taught (and should continue to teach) experiencing the death of another can be, and should be, important experiences that are, ultimately, life enhancing. The fullest appreciation of life can come when it is contrasted with death.

Yet, life and its opposite, death, are earth terms and have reality only in bodily terms. Life is continuous, before and after an earth incarnation. Like matter and energy… and a human life is both of these… life is neither lost nor gained, but is transformed. Unlike the law of entropy, however, there is no determined way in which transformation always proceeds. Death is a transformation from life in a body to life in spirit form, but this may range from a powerful, soaring, enlightened spirit to one that is immature, sick, and incapable of much but the equivalent of sleep.

Life continues, and so does consciousness if the spirit is ready and willing to continue it thus. Just as in the earth, some spirits are very gregarious and seek relations with others… and then the complete range to spirits that are virtually alone. Gregariousness is not necessarily more desirable, let me add. Some may be gregarious as a substitute for real growth, and some who seem to be wholly alone are not lonely, but just in close relationship with Me. There is a greater range of spirit behavior, then, than of human, earthly behavior. So that is some range!