[T]he anxiety-laden problem of what will happen to me when I die is, after all, like asking what happens to my fist when I open my hand, or where my lap goes when I stand up.

In the great debate that has raged for centuries about what, if anything, happens to you after death, be it heaven, hell, purgatory or extinction, one thing has never been in doubt - that you would at least know the answer when you were dead.

What will I die with in my hand?
A paintbrush (for houses), an M15
a hammer or ax, a book a gavel,
a candlestick
tiptoeing upstairs.
What will I hold or will I
be caught with this usual thing
that I want to be my heart but
it is my brain and I turn it
over and over and over.

To find out actually what takes place when you die you must
die. This isn't a joke. You must die - not physically but
psychologically, inwardly, die to the things you have cherished and
to the things you are bitter about. If you have died to one of your
pleasures, the smallest or the greatest, naturally, without any
enforcement or argument, then you will know what it means to die.
To die is to have a mind that is completely empty of itself, empty
of its daily longing, pleasure; and agonies. Death is a renewal, a
mutation, in which thought does not function at all because thought
is old. When there is death there is something totally new. Freedom
from the known is death, and then you are living.

Just as when we come into the world, when we die we are afraid of the unknown. But the fear is something from within us that has nothing to do with reality. Dying is like being born: just a change

Just as when we come into the world, when we die we are afraid of the unknown. But the fear is something from within us that has nothing to do with reality. Dying is like being born: just a change.

If you ask, 'What happens when we die? Why do we die?' you are asking, 'Why do we live?

'But what happens when you die?' 'You’re finished with,' Enderby said promptly. 'Done for. And even if you weren’t – well, you die then, gasp your last, then you’re sort of wandering, free of body. You wander around and then you come in contact with a sort of big thing. What is this big thing? God, if you like.'

It is a curious thing, the death of a loved one. We all know that our time in this world is limited, and that eventually all of us will end up underneath some sheet, never to wake up. And yet it is always a surprise when it happens to someone we know. It is like walking up the stairs to your bedroom in the dark, and thinking there is one more stair than there is. Your foot falls down, through the air, and there is a sickly moment of dark surprise as you try and readjust the way you thought of things.

If being prepared for death entails knowing when and where it will happen, the odds are you will not be prepared. Not only are you bound to die and leave this world; you are bound to leave it in such a precipitate fashion that the present significance of anything — your relationships, your plans for the future, your hobbies, your possessions — will appear to have been totally illusory.

Just as when we come into the world, when we die we are afraid of unknown things. But the fear is something from within us that has nothing to do with reality

Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything – all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure – these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important.

When I die it's not me that will be affected. It's the ones I leave behind.

Dying doesn't end anything - it just changes where you are