If you were stationed on an island in the mid-Atlantic and a ship appeared, you would see it first on the horizon as a tiny point, scarcely moving. As it came closer it would appear to be traveling faster and growing larger. Finally, when it came closest to your island, it would appear to be going full steam ahead. Then, after a while, it would get smaller and seem to slow up, finally to disappear on the horizon and vanish from your sight. But it would still be on its journey, although no longer visible to you.
Now,. we can look at life not just as we see it between birth and death, but rather as we have looked at this journey of a ship. Very little of life appears to express itself in newborn children, but as they go through childhood into youth, there is an increasing surge of activity. They appear to be going faster, experiencing more and more of life. Finally they reach that stage of intensity where they seem to have come to the maximum, and life is at its fullest. We often say people are "at their prime" when this stage is reached. Then, toward old age, they slow down; they withdraw more and more from physical activity; they become more interned and reflective. Finally they reach the point where they withdraw completely. So we can see that death is really a gradual process that begins somewhere around middle age, when we have reached our prime, the maximum of our intensity in our rushing out toward physical experience which this life is.
Death begins when we turn away from this outer activity to a more reflective experience. Death is really the gateway to a fuller, freer life, on an ocean that is less bounded; it is a continuation of the journey on that invisible part of the great circle.
by Eunice and Feliz Layton (Life, your great adventure - a theosophical view)
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