Collins M. - Death: Difference between revisions

  | original title = Death

  | has text = yes

  | publications = [[Lucifer/Vol3|''Lucifer'', vol. 3]], no. 13, September 1888, pp. 15-18

  | read links = [[Lucifer/Vol3/Text|Electronic journal edition in Teopedia]]

  | origin = English: Mabel Collins, ''Death''

}}

AT every active moment of our lives, in moments of pain or pleasure, even then Death lies doggedly in our future, waiting the moment when we approach near enough for him to grasp and devour us. With some people Death is the great terror of their lives. These are not necessarily “nervous” people in the ordinary sense; possibly they are very brave, and in a moment of excitement would forget their fear of Death entirely. But it is indeed surprising how men of this calibre will let the dread of Death haunt them, sit at their feasts, and accompany them into the dark hours of the night. A man of this sort, honest, straightforward, but entirely a man of the world, once candidly expressed himself in this manner: “I am afraid to die, because I have done so many bad deeds that I am sure to go to hell.” It appeared on further talk that he owned no religion, had no idea of Heaven or a state of reward, but only one fixed conception of an immortal state – one in which he would be punished for his sins on earth. This is the one terror of a keenly active nature, with a great deal of good in it, and an intellect overtopping others on the ordinary plane, but with no power of thought on things eternal. He is, perhaps, an advance on the ordinary man of the world, who says quietly to himself, with a little shudder, sometimes: “I’ll have to die like other people; it is too detestable to think of; but I’ll not say a word about it, and die game. Meantime I will enjoy myself.” The opposite extreme of feeling is reached in Keats’ phrase of “Easeful Death.” Such a glad, soft word is unintelligible to most people when applied to Death. And, indeed, it is an instance of the fact in occultism that pleasure and pain do, after a certain point of feeling, become the same. Death is painful; it is unpleasant; it is even horrible in its grimmer aspects. And Keats, who, like all great poets, had suffered all things in his short span of life, knew well that by the side of many forms of living, Death is indeed “easeful.” The supreme characteristic of Death is its silence; this is the most vivid horror it brings to those who lose one they love; it is the secret of the tempting power Death holds out to those who suffer keenly, to whom life is full of pain because of the reverberating thought, the echo in the mind, the longing for knowledge which never can be satisfied – never!

''The Wise One:'' “It is not you who ask me that, for you are too sensible to do so. It is Servus who has uttered it as a truism, and you have passed it on to me as a question.”

''The Neophyte:'' “Yes.”

We are such pigmies that, as a rule, great thought dwarfs us and we resent it; or we succeed in dwarfing it by the vulgar “Hobson Newcome” method of refusing to believe in any other possibilities in it save those evident to ourselves. To the Hobson Newcomes of the world death is a thing to be put off as long as possible, and then to be met with decency. He might pull a wry face sometimes when, in walking to the City of a morning, he got some gentle reminder that man is mortal,

and his thoughts of death are simply a picture-like vision of himself in the four-post bed at home, Maria, his wife, crying bitterly over him, and a doctor at his side. He cannot think any further about himself; his mind wanders to Maria, and how much she cries over trifles, and how wet weather is good for transplanting, and she will certainly marry again; then he wonders can he do any more in his will to make the young ’uns safe – but there, he is at his office, and with the sight of its pleasant face all unpleasant thoughts vanish.

''The Wise One'' (coming from the temple with his pupils): “See – the sun is setting. What do we know of it till it rises again? What

an emblem this is. But for the moment apply it to the subject we have been talking of. Death thus pushes man from consciousness, as the sun leaves us in darkness. But the light returns. Resurrection is everywhere – here at our feet, where last summer’s flowers bloom again.”