To Light a Thousand Lamps - The Theosophical Society

48 / TO LIGHT A THOUSAND LAMPS
find their lives plunged into confusion. Naturally, the person
who is faced with early death has a painful process of
adjustment to go through, and equally so have those who
love him or her.
Many people are having to meet just these circumstances,
and a knowledge of reincarnation lends dignity to
living and to dying. We realize that how we live when we
are twenty or forty or sixty influences the quality of our
death, our afterlife, as well as our future incarnations. If we
can share something of this larger picture with our loved
ones, they are better able to work with their karma and do
as Marcus Aurelius enjoined: ‘‘Now your remaining years
are few. Live them, then, as though on a mountaintop.’’*
There is a dignity in the human soul that comes into its own
in these hours of trial. Even where there are very diªcult
patches to go through, it helps immeasurably to know that
our lives are a natural part of the destiny each of us has been
weaving since the dawn of time, which has been preparing
us for just this moment. It is mutually healing to be able to
talk quietly and openly or silently commune with those who
are dying; not only do they find deep relief, but we ourselves
share in the process in a most sacred way.
*Meditations, bk. 10, §15, trans. Staniforth, p. 157.