As a child, I remained unmoved when shown the most moving pictures of hell, for even then nothing appeared to me quite so horrible as nothingness itself. To overcome the fear of death, we must think about it constantly and discuss it. The important thing, however, is to think of it in the proper manner, reminding ourselves that we are but parts of nature and must reconcile ourselves to our allotted roles. Life is a banquet from which it is our obligation to retire graciously at the appointed time, or to a role in a play whose limits ought to satisfy us, since they satisfy the author. Some people believe that they can live without God, and that they can go on if there is no after life, but do not think they could go on if there was no possibility of goodness in the World. I do not like to call humans sinners because it makes them believe that they are damned souls, Satan’s creatures, who exist only by the will of God to make mortals suffer for God’s glory. It makes them see their lives as given to them only at the price of suffering and torment. Concepts of good and evil, Heaven and Hell, are very clear and simple for them. #RyanPhillippe 1 of 7

The primary concern of most philosophers who have dealt with the question of death has been to discover ways in which human may mitigate or overcome the fear it tends to inspire. Many incorrectly think that humans are the only species the know they will die, but have you ever witnessed an animal running from a slaughter house? Is death a natural phenomenon? We have such a terrible, terrible misconception of science. We think it involves the definite, the precise, the known; it is a horrid series of gates to the unknown as vast as the Universe. God acts through natural causes in natural phenomena. For example, a cicada goes on singing in its breast for some time after its head has been cut off. Some hold a belief that the primary causes of, and influences upon, Earthly events are in some way bound up with celestial phenomena. The whole Universe represents an ordered and hierarchical procession from God. The human soul is created by God, and it is immortal, surviving the body because it is not dependent upon it. Rather than saying the soul is in the body, we should say that the body is in (that is, participates in the existence of) the soul. Souls are like unto grooves of a phonographic record. Put the needle into the groove and the voice sings. However, the singer is not there. #RyanPhillippe 2 of 7

Understanding differs from sensation, and it and it can be compared only with the eternal rotatory motions of the stars. Because of this motion, the soul is held to be immortal. Although each sense has its own sense organ, sense awareness is possible because a coordinating brain synthesized different sense reports; a sense organ, sense awareness is possible because a coordinating brain through special passages. Sleep is caused by the retirement of the blood to large blood vessels; awakening, by the blood’s redistribution. Although health is the equilibrium between the opposites in the body, such a balance, as far as we know, is not necessarily preserved forever, to our knowledge. Hence, this leads us to believe that at some point people may make a transition from their bodies, at some point. However, experience is a criterion of truth, experience alone is reliable concerning the individual existence. We pass over what the ancients have written on this topic because their statements do not agree with experience; but it is not sufficient to know something as included in a universal; but we strive to know each thing as it is in its own individual kind of being, for this is the best and person kind of knowing. #RyanPhillippe 3 of 7

It is noteworthy, however, that most primitive people attribute death to the agency of gods or demons who are jealous of human achievements. Equally significant is the Christian explanation of death as punishment for the sins of Adam. It should also be observed that is by a natural phenomenon one means a fact that can be fully understood and explained by empirical inquiry, death is not necessarily a natural phenomenon. Mortals thrill at the possibility of immortality that a grand and beautiful thing could be utterly evil.  Evil is either indulged in or redefined on such as a dazzlingly large and glamorous scale, with a people who are exquisitely beautiful, wealthy, and indeed, immortal. The total freedom of immorality along with its great material rewards speaks to the dark side in all of us. Maybe they wish they could be that lusciously evil creature. With respect to the fear of death, the great divide is between those who argue that only the hope of personal immortality will ever reconcile humans to death, and those who argue that the fear of death may be mitigated or overcome even when death is accepted as the ultimate extinction of the individual person. #RyanPhillippe 4 of 7

The fear of death is based upon the beliefs that death is painful and that the soul may survive to experience pain or torture in an afterlife. Since both of these beliefs are mistaken, it suffices to expose them as such. Although death may be precipitated by painful disease, death itself is perfectly painless loss of consciousness, no more to be feared than falling asleep. And since the soul is merely a special organization of material atoms, it cannot survive physical destruction, but because the soul is divine, it is preserved. Therefore, death is nothing to us, it does not concern either the living or the dead, since for the former it is not, and the latter are no more. Yet, people actually fear death not because it is painful, but because are unwilling to lose consciousness permanently. We must learn the fear of death displays a baseness wholly incompatible with the dignity and calm of the true philosopher, who has learned to emancipate himself from finite concerns. Philosophizing means learning to die; that is, learning to commune with the eternal through the act of philosophic contemplation. Fear of death can only be overcome by divine grace. #RyanPhillippe 5 of 7

A free human does of nothing less than of death, and one’s wisdom is not a mediation upon death but upon life. However, to overcome your fears you have to confront what is bothering you, not just simply divert attention from it. Fear can only be allayed only by facing it directly. Just as a day well spent brings happy sleep, so, a life well spent brings a happy death. Painful preoccupations with death has its source in human misery; the cure is to foster human well-being. A happy person is not seriously pained by the thought of death, nor does one dwell on the subject. In order to achieve happiness in this life, you have to overcome the fear of death. Happiness, therefore, is not a cure; it is a consequence of the cure. The superior man will not permit death to seek him out in ambush, to strike hum down unawares. #RyanPhillippe 6 of 7

The superior man will live constantly in the awareness of death, joyfully and proudly assuming death as the natural and proper terminus of life. The benefit of cultivating the awareness of death is chiefly as a means of heightening our sense of life. The knowledge of death gives to life a sense of urgency that it would otherwise lack. The life without the consciousness of death is like romance without stakes, you will take it for granted. The awareness of death confers upon a man a sense of his own individuality. Dying, is the one thing no one can do for you; each of us must die alone. To shut out the consciousness of death is, therefore, to refuse one’s individuality and to live inauthentically. Do not waste your love on somebody who does not value it. #RyanPhillippe 7 of 7