QA129 QUESTION: If you say to yourself “I learn to be the master of myself,” and, “I’m going to live a very long life, because I’m going to take excellent care of myself and properly develop myself and feed myself well,” – you may do all of these things and still walk right out into the street and a car may strike you dead. It seems like there’s a factor that is involved here.
ANSWER: You’re talking now about your conscious self. It is very possible that your conscious self does everything possible to maintain your life, to live long and to live healthily. But when, nevertheless, something happens, it is because deep down in your unconscious you want something different.
To find this unconscious is a real part of self-discovery. I might add here that leaving this life is not under all circumstances a destructive act. It is man who chooses to see death as a tragedy. Death may, under certain circumstances, be a going forward, that this life is finished. He has done everything in this sphere, in this realm of being, that he is capable of doing, and he is now ready to go on to some further expansion that he cannot experience on this sphere.
This may be constructive, but at times dying may be a destructive wish. Whether it is the one or another can only be determined by the inner feeling a person has regarding life and death. Is he happy in life? Is he fearless toward life? Does he have no No-currents obstructing happiness, and is he unafraid at the same time of death. Then when death comes, it is a step forward. It is not escaping; it is not negativity.
But if man is afraid of life and afraid of death, and he says no to happiness in some way, then dying may be an escapism. It may be an evasion. It may be an expression of the negativity. Whether it is the one or the other, we cannot generalize.
But whether it is the one or the other, when death comes, it is still the product of what is within the self – maybe from long, long, long times before, so deeply ingrained that constructive conscious attitudes cannot yet uncover this, what is usually referred to as a karmic condition.
QA180 QUESTION: This is in connection with a sudden death, in an accident, of a very good friend of ours at the age of forty. I understand that everything has its meaning and its purpose. But is there really no such thing as an accident?
ANSWER: No.
QUESTION: Or can an accident be used for development?
ANSWER: Right.
QUESTION: But can this have been avoided?
ANSWER: No, it cannot have been avoided if the entity in question is, at that point, where this life must terminate or wants to be terminated. I cannot judge, of course.
There are two reasons, basically, why a life is terminated. The one reason is that this life has organically ended; the plan has been fulfilled. This may be at any age. It may be that a specific incarnation is supposed to end in infanthood, and in another when one is ninety years old. There is no rule on that.
But there are incarnations which are organically, rightfully ended at a certain period, regardless of what age. Then a future incarnation may have longer or shorter duration, depending on the plan. In other words, when the life plan has been fulfilled, the life has organically ended.
The other possibility for the ending of a life is that the entity is far away from fulfilling his plan, is so discontent, so tired, so unhappy with his life and within himself that he does not want to finish living. Let us say his deepest unconscious does not want the challenge any longer or wants to start a new life plan, or maybe he even ignores that there is such a thing and just wants out of the struggle, which, of course, is an illusion, for struggle must exist until the entity is fully unified and the negativity is overcome.
These are the basic reasons for a life to terminate. Whether the life then terminates in a gradual sickness – a sickness that brings death about gradually – or in an accident, really does not matter. These are just details, and these details all have their significance and their meaning – there is nothing coincidental. In principle it is the same.
So, from the spiritual point of view, there is no accident – ever. Even if there is a mass disaster where hundreds of people die, it is not coincidence that some die and some will be miraculously out of the situation or will not be in that place where the accident occurs. There is no coincidence possible. Coincidence has only one meaning – not seeing the total connections as they exist.
