Then, last of all, that pale clear-cut face, that sweet clear voice, with its high thrilling talk of the
deathlessness of glory, of the worthlessness of life, of the pain of ignoble joys, and of the joy which lies in all pains which lead to a noble end.
The Human-stories of the elves are doubtless full of the Escape from
Deathlessness. But our stories cannot be expected always to rise above our common level.
The fact of death gives Hector's story its shape and confers a dignity on him that surpasses the limitless power and amazing
deathlessness of the gods.
In this way,
deathlessness itself can disturb and disgust people by making them feel uncomfortable about themselves.
A piece in the New Yorker went so far as to suggest that "the efficacy of all his words had somehow been canceled by his death--that his hope, or faith, was no longer usable by the rest of us." "For many people," the novelist William Giraldi suggested, "the circumstances of his death still take precedence over the
deathlessness of his work."
(5) Osho Swami Sambuddha Devaraj, From Death to
Deathlessness. Answers to the Seekers on the Path, Talks given from 02/08/85 am to 14/09/85 am (pp.
This general idea is summed by the following claim made in the Buddhavamsa: "Living beings were gladdened by the mere sight of that Buddha/Those who heard his voice as he was speaking attained
deathlessness" (Trainor 178).
At the outset, he masterfully parses the opening lines of "Song of Myself," exhibiting the passage as the crux of Whitman's poetics: from his sense of human divinity and scientific inspiration to his faith in
deathlessness and direct address to readers.
Separating us from others he said, "I have acquired some esoteric drugs, but have no desire to obtain a state of
deathlessness for myself alone.
Religion, in his view, is a nonreductive category related to an "'immaterial dimension of beatitude and
deathlessness." No religious teaching, however, can secure universal consent, and no religious community will be able to maintain its exclusivist positions, less it falls sadly into doomed forms of fundamentalism.
Peter Berger cited play as another "signal of transcendence" because its "intrinsic intention points beyond itself and beyond man's 'nature' to a 'supernatural' justification." Play by creating joyfulness and timelessness in this world suggests the "
deathlessness of childhood." It has the cachet of the actual eternal and infinite by bracketing our "living toward death" (Heidegger)--though it takes an act of faith, Berger claims, to overcome reductionists that would dismiss this as only "wish fulfillment".
It is the space of
deathlessness, death as repetition and stasis, not the mortal death that follows struggle, individuality, and life.