Death is an inherent phenomenon of life, which cannot be ignored.

The remarkable teacher Joanna de Angelis, the dear spiritual mentor of Divaldo Franco, addresses with great propriety the recurring question of death, its psychological implications, the despair involved, in short, shows us that this “(...) biological fatality, (death) is a common phenomenon of life”. (The Whole Man, chap. 9)

“In the molecular gear, particles are associated and disaggregated, transforming themselves through the imperative that constitutes them, in view of the specific purpose of each one. Indeed, the same occurs with the body, resulting in the phenomenon known as death.

Uninformed about the mechanisms of organic form and functionality, psychologically unstructured, man fears death, due to the representative atavism of the end of life, of the consummation of being.

In various primitive and contemporary cultures, to escape the reality of this inevitable occurrence, ceremonials and religious cults were created that aim to diminish the unfortunate event, hiding it, while adorning the dead with hope for survival. In many societies of the past, it was common to place a gold coin between the teeth of the deceased, to reward the boatman in charge of taking him to the other side of the river of Life. In Greece, particularly, this usage became normal, aiming to compensate for Charon's avarice, who threatened to let the non-payers wander, when crossing the River Styx, according to Mythology.

Modernly, repeating the embalming in which the Egyptians were famous, in the Houses of the Dead, the aim is to beautify the dead so that they give the impression of life and well-being, thus freeing the living from fears and bitter reminiscences. However, no matter how much the truth is masked, the moment comes when everyone faces it without escapism, invited to experience it. Death is an inherent phenomenon of life, which cannot be disregarded.

Neuroses and severe psychoses are established in the individual due to the fear of death, paradoxically, in manic-depressive expressions, leading the patient to commit suicide in the fear of waiting for it. In a deep psychological analysis, man fears death, because he fears life. He unconsciously transfers the dread of physical existence to that of the destruction or transformation of the implements that constitute it. Accustomed to evading responsibilities, through apologetic mechanisms, the inexorable event of death becomes a challenge that he would like not to face, out of conscience, perhaps, of guilt, starting to hate this confrontation. To escape, he plunges into the intoxication of the consuming senses and disturbing emotions, shortening time by wearing down the sustaining energies of the physical body. Man, believing himself to be farsighted and ambitious, spends time preparing for the future and preserving the present. However, he could and should invest part of himself in the reflection of the phenomenon of death, in order to consider it natural and await it with a calm emotional disposition. Neither desiring it nor even avoiding to dribble it. The education given to him from an early age, in the face of the same terrifying atavism of death, is centered on pleasure, on the delights of the ego, on the advantages that he can take from the body, without the corresponding analysis of temporality and fragility that they cover. Thanks to this inadvertence, conflicts, phobias and insecurity trigger him.

A daily moment of analysis, around physical life, predisposes the creature to project thought beyond the portal of ash and mud in which somatic organization deteriorates. Everything in the physical world is impermanent, and such impermanence can be seen in two ways: the outer or gross, and the inner or subtle. Nothing is ever the same, although the appearance it preserves in different time periods. For this very reason, everything is in incessant alteration in the field of micro-particles until the moment in which the form changes - a subtle phase of impermanence. An object that breaks down and a body, plant, animal and human, that dies, go through the phase of gross outer transition to another structure, experiencing death.

Death, however, does not eliminate the continuum of consciousness after cadaveric disjunction. If, from an early age, the habit of meditation is created about the surviving consciousness, independent of the body, death loses its taboo effect of annihilating, hateful, destroying the ideal, being, life. The traditional riddle of what happens after death must be of relevant interest to the man who, in meditation, finds the way to decipher it. Letting oneself be carried away by fear or not giving any importance to it are alienating behaviors.

Curiosity for the unknown, the tendency to investigate new phenomena are attractions for the inquiring mind, which finds skillful resources for commitments. The intuition of life, the instinct to preserve existence, the psychic experiences of the past and parapsychological present attest that death is a vehicle for the transference of the thinking energetic being, from one vibratory phase or stage to another, without expressive structural alteration of its psychology. Thus, one dies as one lives, with the same psychological contents that are the foundations (unconsciousness) of the rational self (consciousness). In this overview of life (in the body) and death (of the body) a decisive factor in human behavior stands out: the attachment to matter, with the consequent disturbing emotions and contaminated extracts of behavior, lying in the personality. From one point of view, the manifestation of the conservation instinct is valuable, as it limits the blunders of man who, in the face of any vicissitude, would resort to suicide, as happens with certain psychopaths. In a way, when restrained, unconsciously, he faces the problems and overcomes them with the efficient action of his properly directed effort.

On the other hand, religious clarifications, despite the multiplicity of their approaches, demonstrating that death is a period of transition between two phases of life, contribute to demythologizing the dread of annihilation.

Definitively, psychic, parapsychological and mediumistic experiences, whether provoked or natural, have brought an important contribution to solving the problem of death, giving meaning to existence. When man becomes aware of the continuity of the thinking being after the transformations of the body through the death of the form, his concepts about life and his conduct in the course of organic experience are totally altered. In any case, reserving mental spaces for detachment from things, people and positions, analyzing the inevitability of death, which forces the individual to leave everything, is a healthy and necessary therapy for a happy transit through the objective world.”

Leon Denis, the extraordinary French writer, brings us an encouraging study (The problem of being, destiny and pain) on death and dying, with very interesting conclusions that we pass on to you, dear reader: “(...) death is a simple change of state. The destruction of a fragile form that no longer provides life with the necessary conditions for its functioning and evolution. Beyond the grave, a new phase of existence opens. The Spirit, under its imponderable fluidic form, prepares itself for new incarnations; he finds in his state of mind the fruits of the existence that has ended.

Life is found everywhere. The whole of Nature shows us, in its marvelous panorama, the perpetual renewal of all things. Nowhere is there death as it is generally considered among us, nowhere is there annihilation; no being can perish in its life principle, in its conscious unity. The Universe overflows with physical and psychic life. Everywhere the immense tingling of beings, the elaboration of souls that, when they escape the lengthy and obscure preparations of matter, are to continue, in the stages of light, their magnificent ascent.

The life of man is like the Sun of the polar regions during the dry season. It goes down slowly, it goes down, it weakens, it seems to disappear for an instant below the horizon. It is the end, in appearance; but, soon after, it rises again, to again describe its immense orbit in the sky.

Death is only a momentary eclipse in the great revolution of our existences; but that moment is enough to reveal to us the serious and profound meaning of life. Death itself can also have its nobility, its grandeur. We must not fear it, but rather strive to beautify it, each one constantly preparing for it, by researching and conquering moral beauty, the beauty of the Spirit that shapes the body and adorns it with an august reflection at the time of supreme separations. The way in which each one of us knows how to die is already, in itself, an indication of what life in Space will be like for each of us. There is something like a cold, pure light around the pillow of certain deathbeds. Faces, hitherto insignificant, seem to be haloed by glare from the beyond. An imposing silence surrounds those who have left Earth. The living, witnesses of death, feel great and austere thoughts detach themselves from the banal background of their habitual impressions, giving some beauty to their interior life. Hatred and evil passions cannot resist this spectacle. Before the body of an enemy, all animosity subsides, all desire for revenge vanishes. With a coffin, forgiveness seems easier, duty more imperative. Every death is a birth, a rebirth; it is the manifestation of a life until then latent in us, the invisible life of Earth, which will join the invisible life of Space. After a certain period of trouble, we find ourselves, beyond the grave, in the fullness of our faculties and our conscience, together with loved ones who shared the sad or happy hours of our earthly existence. The tomb only contains dust. Let us raise our thoughts and our memories higher, if we want to find again the trace of the souls that were dear to us... Don't ask the stones of the tomb for the secret of life. Know that the bones and ashes that lie there are nothing. The souls that animated them left these places, they revive in subtler, more refined forms. From the bosom of the invisible, where your prayers reach them and move them, they follow you with their eyes, answer you and smile at you... The Spiritist Revelation will teach you to communicate with them, to unite your feelings in the same love, in an ineffable hope. Often, the beings that you cry for and that you are going to look for in the cemetery are by your side. Those who were the support of your youth, who cradled you in their arms, the friends, companions of your joys and your pains, as well as all the forms, all the gentle ghosts of the beings you meet, come to watch over you. on your path, who participated in your existence and took with them something of yourself, your soul and your heart. Around you floats the multitude of men who were lost in death, a confused multitude, which revives, calls you and shows you the path you have to travel.  O’ death, O’ serene majesty! you, of whom they make a scarecrow, are for the thinker simply a moment of rest, the transition between two acts of fate, one of which ends and the other prepares. When my poor soul, wandering for so many centuries through the worlds, after many struggles, vicissitudes and disappointments, after many shattered illusions and postponed hopes, will rest again in your bosom, it will be with joy that it will greet the dawn of fluidic life; it will be with ebriousness that it will rise from the Earth's dust, through the fathomless spaces, towards those whom it trembled in this world and who await it. For most men, death remains the great mystery, the dark problem, which no one dares to look in the face. For us, it is the blessed hour when the tired body returns to the great Nature to leave the Psyche, its prisoner, free passage to the Eternal Homeland.

This homeland is radiant Immensity, full of suns and spheres. Next to them, how stunted our poor Earth must look! The Infinite surrounds her on all sides. Infinite in extension and infinity in duration, this is what we are faced with, whether we are dealing with the soul or the Universe. Just as each of our existences has its term and must disappear, to make way for another life, so each of the “worlds” sown in Space must die, to make room for other, more perfect worlds. The day will come when human life will be extinguished on the cold globe. The Earth, vast necropolis, will roll, gloomy, in the silent vastness. Imposing ruins will rise in the places where Rome, Paris, Constantinople once existed, corpses of capitals, the last vestiges of extinct races, gigantic stone books that no carnal eye will ever read again. But Humanity will have disappeared from Earth only to continue, in more gifted spheres, the career of its ascension. The wave of progress will have driven all terrestrial souls to planets better prepared for life. It is likely that prodigious civilizations flourish at this time on Saturn and Jupiter; there, humanities reborn in incomparable glory will expand. There is the future place of human beings, their new field of action, the blessed places where they will be given to continue to love and work for their betterment. In the midst of their work, the sad memory of Earth will perhaps still haunt these spirits; but, from the heights reached, the memory of the pains suffered, of the trials endured, will only be a stimulant to rise to greater heights. In vain the evocation of the past will bring to their sight the specters of flesh, the sad remains that lie in earthly graves. The voice of wisdom will say to them: “What matter the shadows that are gone! Nothing perishes. Every being is transformed on the steps that lead from sphere to sphere, from sun to sun, to God. Eternal spirit, remember this: death does not exist!"