The knowledge of the realm of death makes it possible for the shaman to move freely back and forth and mediate these journeys for other people.
An important consequence of freeing oneself from the fear of death is a radical opening to spirituality of a universal and non-denominational type.
The experiences associated with death were seen as visits to important dimensions of reality that deserved to be experienced, studied, and carefully mapped.
Death is the ultimate enemy - and I find nothing reproachable in those who rage mightily against the dying of the light.
Philosophy means nothing unless it is connected to birth, death, and the continuance of life. Anytime you are going to build a society that works, you have to begin from nature and the body.
Prepare for death, if here at night you roam, and sign your will before you sup from home.
A friend said to me, 'Be glad for your troubles - they strengthen you.' Well, if that's the truth, I'm going to be so strong they'll have to beat me to death!
Death is the one predator we can't escape. But vampires have found the loophole so many of us crave. I think that's the allure of vampirism.
Because of its tremendous solemnity death is the light in which great passions, both good and bad, become transparent, no longer limited by outward appearences.
Through good times and bad, American workers and their families have been able to rely on Social Security to provide guaranteed protection against the loss of earnings due to retirement, disability, or death.
When I'm lying in my bed I think about life and I think about death and neither one particularly appeals to me.
I have seen great jazz musicians die obscure and drinking themselves to death and not really being able to get any work and working in small, funky jazz clubs.
The exact time of death, I think, is not something that matters so much at this moment for we will be reliving John Paul's life for many days and weeks and even years and decades and centuries to come.
True love makes the thought of death frequent, easy, without terrors; it merely becomes the standard of comparison, the price one would pay for many things.
Prohibit the taking of omens, and do away with superstitious doubts. Then, until death itself comes, no calamity need be feared.
I'm not frightened about death. I don't know why, but I just feel that at a certain moment your switch is switched off, and that's it. And you can't do anything about it.
Though I am a Catholic, a professing one, I have serious doubts about the survival of the human personality after death.
There's a story everywhere. Being bored to death someplace is basically a funny proposition. What you have to watch out for is you don't write a boring story about a boring place.
I see some recurring themes: things that feel threaded together, some symbolic references, and songs about some of the big questions, like death. There are a lot of references to weather, too!
I was court-martial in my absence, and sentenced to death in my absence, so I said they could shoot me in my absence.
I put for the general inclination of all mankind, a perpetual and restless desire of power after power, that ceaseth only in death.
