Today, more than usual, I've been thinking a lot on death. So much, that it's threatening to put me into depression.

It began as I was reading a lot of astronomy news - about certain events that are due to occur 100 to 10,000 years from now. I want to live to witness these things!

We're born with a drive to learn and an ability to understand most things, to analyze them, to want to learn more. We spend our lives learning, even if we're not conscious of it. Why so much intelligence and such drive when we're going to die? What does this prepare us for, if anything?

Some might say we strive "to further mankind." To what end?

What is the power of the soul when it is released from the body? If I knew for a fact that there are souls (which I believe there are in a sense, but) and that souls are immortal and intelligent, I wouldn't fear death at all. Who would?

To me, the fear of death is the fear of total non-existence. If not that, then being able to see the living and not being able to help them. If I died tomorrow and my three-year-old son was diagnosed with a terminal illness a week later, what torment my insubstantial soul would be in! It wouldn't ease me much knowing he was coming into the same existence as I - I wouldn't be there in his life where I was needed. I wouldn't be there with living relatives who would mourn. I couldn't tell them that he was alright.

Why the big secret, if it is that? Why aren't we allowed to know if there is an afterlife and what it is like? Probably because there would be a significant decrease in the population of the living (mass suicides). But why would it be so important for people to stay here all their natural lives? Why would souls care?

If souls are immortal, I wonder how many there are in that other plane. Is the soul of the first living being there? Or just the first being with a certain amount of intelligence? Does having intelligence even matter? Are there insect souls? Reptile souls?

Do souls take up space? Is there infinite room for the continuous arrival of souls?

Why aren't our mediums able to give us a detailed description of death? Wouldn't that be a question to ask the "dead"? If I was a soul in contact with a medium, I think it would be important to let certain things about death and my new state of being be known.

Is death like birth? Who can tell another what it was like to be born?

Or is it something else? Is there a rule that souls must never tell these things? If there is, who made that rule? Who enforces it? What punishment might souls endure if they told the living their secrets? Is the punishment death of your soul and that's why none have told?

Is there a purpose?

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When it happens that such a vision arises, do not be afraid! Do not feel terror! You have a mental body made of instincts; even if it is killed or dismembered, it cannot die! Since in fact you are a natural form of voidness, anger at being injured is unnecessary! The Yama Lords of Death are but arisen from the natural energy of your own awareness and really lack all substantiality. Voidness cannot injure voidness! --Tibetan Book of the Dead, 12