First of all, let us consider the fact just mentioned. There is no separate, indivisible, specific point of death. Life is a state of becoming, and death is a part of this process of becoming. You are alive now, a consciousness knowing itself, sparkling with cognition amid a debris of dead and dying cells; alive while the atoms and molecules of your body die and are reborn. You are alive, therefore, in the midst of small deaths; portions of your own image crumble away moment by moment and are replaced, and you scarcely give the matter a thought. So you are to some extent now alive in the midst of the death of yourself — alive despite, and yet because of, the multitudinous deaths and rebirths that occur within your body in physical terms.

What happens at the point of death? The question is much more easily asked than answered. Basically there is not any particular point of death in those terms, even in the case of a sudden accident. I will attempt to give you a practical answer to what you think of as this practical question, however. What the question really means to most people is this: What will happen when I am not alive in physical terms any longer? What will I feel? Will I still be myself? Will the emotions that propelled me in life continue to do so? Is there a heaven or a hell? Will I be greeted by gods or demons, enemies, or beloved ones? Most of all the question means: When I am dead, will I still be who I am now, and will I remember those who are dear to me now?

(10:26.) These people are particularly helpful because they are still involved with physical reality, and have a more immediate understanding of the feelings and emotions involved at your end. Such persons may or may not have a memory of their nightly activities. Experiences with projection of consciousness and knowledge of the mobility of consciousness, are therefore very helpful as preparations for death. You can experience the after-death environment beforehand, so to speak, and learn the conditions that will be encountered.

(Mildly humorous): Now: For those of you who are lazy I can offer no hope: Death will not bring you an eternal resting place. You may rest, if this is your wish, for a while. Not only must you use your abilities after death, however, but you must face up to yourself for those that you did not use during your previous existence.

Birth and death then have their function, intensifying and focusing your attention. Life seems more dear in your terms, corporeal terms, because of the existence of death. It seems, perhaps, easier to have no conscious idea of the year or time that death might occur. [...]

The knowledge is usually hidden for many reasons, but the fact of death, personal death, is never forgotten. It seems obvious, but the full enjoyment of life would be impossible in the framework, now, of earthly reality without the knowledge of death.

[...] Mortality with its birth and death is the framework in which the soul, for now, is expressed in flesh. Birth and death contain between them the earthly experience that you perceive as happening within a given period of time, through various seasons, and involving unique perceptions within areas of space — encountered with other human beings, all to one extent or another sharing with you events caused by the intersection of the self and time and space.

[...] In addition, she had recently received a medical verdict about the certainty of her death within a year or two.

If death disappeared on your planet even an hour all of life would soon be threatened. [...] We must admit, then, that death is indeed a part of life — and even more, we must say that death is healthy.

[...] There are people who must feel themselves to be at the brink of death before they can fully appreciate the quality of life. There are people who cannot appreciate or enjoy the satisfaction of life or of happiness unless faced simultaneously with the threat of death or intense pain.

(4:22.) It should be noted before we begin that death itself is the delivery — a deliverer — of your species and all others. [...] Because of death, life is possible, so these two seemingly opposite qualities are simply different versions of the same phenomena.

DAREDEVILS, DEATH-DEFIERS, AND HEALTH

[...] Now the manner of death is no coincidence, it is chosen. [...] If it led on occasion to death, it also led to adventure. Death by water in those days was an honor, death by land a disgrace. [...]

[...] He came back to tell you there was no death—you would not listen, hear or believe. [...] He came to tell you there was no death. [...]

[...] Death was instantaneous. [...]

He knew only he could teach you this lesson, and no one else whose death would affect you so strongly. [...]

[...] No, the manner of death is no coincidence, it is chosen. [...] If it led on occasion to death, it also led to adventure. Death by water in those days was an honor, death by land a disgrace. [...]

[...] He came back to tell you there was no death—you would not listen, hear or believe. [...] He came to tell you there was no death. [...]

[...] Death was instantaneous. [...]

He knew only he could teach you this lesson, and no one else whose death would affect you so strongly.

[...] With proper understanding, therefore, it is quite possible for you to become quite familiar now with after-death landscapes and environments and experiences. [...] Such explorations will completely alter somber preconceptions about existence after death. [...]

“DEATH” CONDITIONS IN LIFE

(Humorously): Now: Chapter Ten: “‘Death’ Conditions in Life.” [...]

After-death experiences will not seem so alien or incomprehensible if you realize that you encounter similar situations as a normal part of your present existence.

[...] I should add here that the 105th session dealt with the death of Jane’s mother, as well as Jane living to an advanced age. The mother’s death has not yet occurred, Seth saying that the information was by way of allowing Jane to prepareherself for the shock of her mother’s death. [...]

(Tonight, Jane then went on to foresee her own death at 67. [...] Seth prefaced this by saying something about “I see a breathing difficulty.” He went on to say that Ruburt was upset at this information, and that her relatively early death simply meant she had to work harder in this life. [...]

[...] In the 105th session, among others, he stated that Jane’s death was not “to occur for many years.” [...]

[...] Subconsciously, Seth said, Jane was aware that the death of her grandfather, whom she had loved, was early next month, March. [...]

Individuals who defy death time and time again are actually more frightened of it than most other people are. Trapeze performers, stunt men and women, race-car riders, and many other groups have a life-style that includes death-defying stunts on a very regular basis.

(Long pause at 4:16.) Only when they pursue some death-defying career do such individuals feel safe enough to relax otherwise and live a fairly normal life outside of their death-defying careers.

[...] It is true that these individuals do choose for themselves a carefully planned and regulated style of life, in which the threat of death is encountered personally and regularly; each day becomes an odyssey, in which death and life are purposefully weighed. [...]

[...] Through testing “fate,” death-defiers try each time they perform to prove to themselves that they are indeed safe, that they can overcome life’s most dire conditions. [...]

[...] You may find that when you imagine yourself as a child — after death — that you suddenly have the form of the child that you were. [...] You may die at eighty and after death think of the youth and vitality that you had at twenty, and find then that your form changes to correspond with this inner image.

[...] (Humorously): In out-of-body experiences from the living state, many of the problems are encountered, in terms of space, that will be met after death. [...] After death it does not take time to go through space, for example. [...]

One of Ruburt’s students wondered whether or not there was any kind of organization in the immediate after-death experiences. [...]

First of all, it should be obvious from what I have said so far that there is no one after-death reality, but [that] each experience is different. [...]

This is not the reason for all such deaths by any means, but there is usually an implied statement in them so that the death seems to have an additional meaning that makes parents and contemporaries question. Such individuals usually choose deaths with a high dramatic content, because regardless of appearances they have not been able to express the dramatic contents of their psyches in the world as it seems to be to them. They turn their deaths into lessons for other people, forcing them to ask questions that would not be asked before. There are also mass statements of the same kind for people come together to die, however, to seek company in death as they do in life. [...]

Death is a part of you, even as birth is. Its import varies according to the individual — and in a certain fashion, death is your last chance to make a statement of import in any given life, if you feel you have not done so earlier.

Some people’s deaths are quiet periods. Some others’ are exclamation points, so that later it can be said that the person’s death loomed almost greater in importance than the life itself. [...]

[...] And when it seems that the world is devoid of meaning, then some people will make a certain kind of statement through the circumstances connected with their own deaths.

I mentioned before that some people court exciting and dangerous sports, living quite purposefully on the edge of death, and choosing to taste life spiced exotically by the ever-present sprinkling of ashes. [...] In the same way, however, some people do live their lives so that its light is experienced in contrast to death in a different fashion—so that the rest of the years’ experiences are seasoned by that earlier taste of death.

He was looking for someone like the young boy, someone whose actions would result in his death, but in a death without malice, a death that would in its way serve an important purpose. [...]

While you believe that death represents the end of personal consciousness, then death must indeed seem the ultimate tragedy or surrender. [...]

(9:49.) In a way they will feel special—saved from the “clutches of death.” In perhaps a manner that appears strange, they will experience a new sense of their own validity, for if they were saved from death, then something—if only the fates—must have found them worthy. [...]

In more specific terms, I’m organizing this rather short exploration of Jane’s death around these items; a loose chronology surrounding her writing of Seth, Dreams … in 1966-67, and our unsuccessful attempts to sell the book; my acceptance of the survival of the personality after physical death; a waking experience involving my sensing Jane very soon after she had died; a metaphor I created for her death; a dream in which I not only contacted her but gave myself relevant information; another metaphor for Jane’s death; my speculations about communication among entities, whether they’re physical or nonphysical; a letter that could be from the discarnate Jane — one that was sent to me by its recipient, a caring correspondent whom I’ll call Valerie Wood; a note I wrote to Sue Watkins about the death of her mother; some quotations from a published letter of mine; Jane’s notes concerning the relationship we had; and, finally, the poem in which she refers to her nonphysical journeys to come.

Many people know of Jane’s death by now, and this makes it impossible for me to deal with that event in chronological order within her books. [...] But for convenience’s sake, in Seth, Dreams … I bring together certain events in chronological time; I feel that its having been written some time ago makes this book the ideal place for me to discuss Jane’s death, to unite the “past,” the “present,” and the “future’; I regard it as being next in line after Dreams, “Evolution,” and Value Fulfillment, which Prentice-Hall, Inc. [...] I made no leaps in time to write about her physical death, for to me that sad event lay too far in the future — over two and a half years — from the time she finished dictating Dreams, “Evolution,” … in February 1982.

After Jane’s death I became extremely busy. [...] I told no one about the notebooks, or the three drawings I had made of Jane as she lay in her bed right after her death. [...]

[...] My visitors reminded me anew of how private an event Jane’s death is for me, yet how universal it is. [...] And I don’t believe that anyone has tried to cope with questions of life and death any more valiantly than Jane did.

The relief he felt after deciding that he had safely tricked himself, he thought in the morning, was due to the fact that the future death was not his mother’s or his own, but one involving a relative at least somewhat distant. The relief of course was the result of his partial success in distorting the information, but despite distortions the sender came through, and the sex of the person whose death was unfortunately perceived.

Thinking that the words referred to the physical condition of the person whose death was foreseen, Ruburt changed them as mentioned in an effort to better the situation. You will see here that indirectly but clearly we have given you the identity of the person whose death is foreseen, particularly when I add to the positive statement, though it may appear negative, that your mother, Joseph, is in no way involved.

Ruburt is calmer now, and I may add not only that his death was not involved in any manner, but also that his death will not occur for many years. [...]

[...] She has come to think that these experiences, taken together, may forecast her mother’s death. [...]

[...] The passages are on death and suicide — natural death, no less, and how we continually interfere medically with people’s chosen time of death. [...]

[...] I said I wanted information on whether she wanted to live or die — or whether she was trying to die her own natural death, in line with that excellent information in Mass Events. [...] Or was her death the ultimate goal of the sinful self? [...] I told Jane it would be a joke if those portions of the self we’re blaming for her condition, really are the truest, most simple and honest portions after all, and that their roles in bringing about her natural death were being subverted by our conscious-mind meddling and interference. [...]

[...] The great question, then, is why those portions of the self would — and do — continue their terribly destructive ways, even to the point of bringing about their own death — for if allowed to, I think, death would be the end result, the final step along their chosen path.

[...] Although she obviously played a vital part in keeping herself alive, I believe that that action came after her own natural, chosen time of death had been subverted. [...]

[...] Jane’s pace was quite slow.) If you want to know what death is like, then become aware of your own consciousness as it is divorced from physical activities. [...] With practice you will discover that your normal waking consciousness is highly limited, and that what you thought of once as death conditions seem much more like life conditions. [...]

After-death environments exist all about you, now. [...]

[...] Your physical senses are extensions of these inner methods of perception, and after death it is upon these that you will rely. [...]

… so that you can even become familiar with the nature of perception after death, now. [...]

Your consciousness, as you think of it, may of course leave your body entirely before physical death. (As mentioned earlier, there is no precise point of death, but I am speaking as if there is for the sake of your convenience.)

[...] Vast gulfs exist between one man’s reality and another’s. After death, experience has as much organization, highly intricate and involved, as you know now. [...] These are highly charged, significant psychological and psychic events, whether they happen before or after death.

[...] The intellect should go hand in hand with the emotions and intuitions, but if it pulls against these too strongly, difficulties can arise when the newly freed consciousness seizes upon its ideas about reality after death, rather than facing the particular reality in which it finds itself. [...]

(9:32.) Again, as mentioned earlier, an individual can be so certain that death is the end of all, that oblivion, though temporary, results. [...]

I want to begin a series of sessions dealing in rather practical terms with those events that follow immediately after physical death.

[...] If you learn to know yourself as you are, and not simply as you seem to be, then you will become quite familiar with the part of yourself that does survive physical death.

[...] It goes without saying that there is no other place in those terms, into which those who have survived physical death disappear.

Upon physical death you simply step out of the intense focus upon one self-constructed plane. [...]

2. In the 837th session Seth dealt mostly with Billy’s death. It wasn’t that the loss of “just a cat” was the only thing involved in our deep upsets (although Billy’s death came first in our reactions); we also felt a host of emotional and intellectual ramifications arising from that event. [...] This effect was heightened because we had no body to “prove” his death to us. [...]

From Session 837 for February 28, held on the evening of the day Billy died: “My dear friends: Existence is larger than life or death. Life and death are both states of existence. An identity exists whether it is in the state of life or in the state of death. [...]

[...] He’s come through with four more sessions since then, too — the last three of them growing out of the unexpected death of our young cat, Billy, on February 28. [...]

(Seth also touched upon the question while dealing mainly with Billy’s death in the next three sessions, which are also private, but this evening he was more specific. [...]

This is the experiment that has not been tried, and these are the truths that you must learn after physical death. Some, after death, understanding these truths, choose to return to physical existence and explain them. [...]

[...] There are no special “places” or situations or conditions set apart after physical death in which any given personality must have experience.

A suicide may bring about his own death because he rejects existence on any but highly specific terms chosen by himself. [...]

[...] This is a psychic refusal to accept the fact of death. [...]

[...] They may seek death out in dangerous pursuits. In the framework of general beliefs, however, the natural desire for death is not included in the list of human motivations. [...] The person recognizes the restrictions and changes his or her ways accordingly, opening the doorway not into death but to further life and action in this space and time. [...]

[...] In that framework it seems as if people are cut down in their primes often, despite their own wishes, desires or intents, and it is taken for granted that death is the undesired, unwanted, unsought victor over creatures whose natural desires lead them to fight for natural survival at all costs. [...]

[...] In a manner of speaking, now, illnesses also serve as gateways to death in that regard—which may or may not be chosen at any specific time. [...]

(Long pause at 9:02.) When people finally want to die they will pursue that intent, because each physical death does indeed come—despite your beliefs—as the final framing or finishing touches or culmination of a given existence. [...]