A Letter After Death (A Reflection on 'Death' and 'Life')

First, I must tell you of my love for all of you. I loved you with the whole of my being. I was intimate with your pain, and as far as I was able, I suffered with your sufferings and rejoiced with your joys. Every wound that settled upon your body pained my body, and every healing it found was a solace to me. At times, I purchased wounds for my own soul before they could settle upon yours, and at other times, I bore your sufferings silently and in secret so that you might remain joyful and kind to one another.

A Letter After Death

Masoud Zanjani

* For Engineer Mohammad Razavi, who was for me the meaning of humanity and its suffering

Sometimes it is only death that breaks the silence and makes it possible to speak of life; just as it is separation that bestows this gift upon love. In my lifetime, I found no seeker for the essence of my soul and no listener for my inner melody, and of necessity, I adopted solitude and silence. But now, the dreadful and mysterious fate of death has made it possible for me to sing to you of the sorrowful and simultaneously joyful nature of life.¹ So I break my silence and let the fire of my soul blaze forth, that perhaps enamored souls might hear it and reflect.

I was a lover of humanity, and in the depths of my soul, I bowed in reverence before all its sufferings.³ I suffered humanity, and truly, this indescribable passion of mine for enduring suffering was the source of my happiness.⁴ Thus it was that when I purchased all sufferings for my soul, it was as if I suffered no pain at all.⁵ As if I were invulnerable, or as if I had lived many times over, that I could live so lightly amidst sufferings and still say «To weep or not to weep? That is the question!» In my bereavement, though both are possible, I say again: choose the difficult. One must gaze, not weep! One must think, not suffer and wail! To gaze means to open one's eyes to the other and to grasp their individuality and their affliction-ridden situation in life. I will not return through weeping, lamentation, and wailing. Not even through crying tears of blood and rending one's collar will I return. But let not this fact create the illusion in you that I am unreturnable. No! I shall return to you, if you gaze upon me and think. «To be or not to be? That is the question!»¹⁰ In my parting, instead of endlessly pondering my being or non-being after death, ponder a little my being or non-being before death. The monumental question of to be or not to be must be asked on the horizon of life, not beyond it. You say, 'But your being before death is obvious: you were alive; you were among us.' Ah! A paltry answer to a weighty question! Doubt your criteria for 'being' and 'being alive'! I had died and departed from among you long before you imagine. Two deaths, continually, cast their shadows over my life: a bitter death and a sweet death. My life, in truth, was the struggle of the messengers of these two: the ominous messenger of 'Forgetfulness' and the auspicious messenger of 'Love'. My death, too, was the tragic end of this breathless and relentless struggle.

No one grasped my bitter and lamentable death! I had died from the hemlock of forgetfulness. A human being, when their existence is not understood, becomes nothing and dies; just as through understanding, they gain life and are revived. Indeed, «to be is to be perceived».¹¹ This law always holds firm in human life: «Everyone exists to the extent that they are perceived; are thought of.» So it is better to say: «I am thought of, therefore I am.» Today, the «other» is lost through thoughtlessness, and no insurance or guarantee covers this loss. The threat to human life in contemporary societies is not weapons of mass destruction, but this very alienation and rupture among them. It is this silent massacre that, in our time, continually creates catastrophe. Reject this ominous death and avoid this lamentable abandonment and self-estrangement in your own lives!

No one grasped my sweet and delightful death either! I had died from the nectar of love; this magical death in which my true being was concealed.¹² Love is the child of death, and life is the child of love. The phoenix of love is born from its own ashes. Love alone revives dead souls and brings peace only to liberated spirits. So die, that you may not die, and know that this death is the only path to liberation from a deathly life.¹³ Seek this auspicious death and attain this lovelornness and joyful self-estrangement in your own lives!

Do not fear death! Death is not the worst thing that can happen in a person's life;¹⁴ one can lose things far more important than life itself within life.¹⁵ Should one not offer the funeral prayer for a human being whose heart is not alive with love and in whose soul and spirit the flame of human kindness does not blaze?¹⁶ Yes! How contemptible is the death of life compared to the death of love!¹⁷

I did not die with death, but was born again.¹⁸ Death for me was not an unexpected catastrophe but a rebirth. For I was a lover of both death and life, and death for me was not the negation of life but its culmination.¹⁹ Lovers die not as they must, but as they will, and they embrace death not helplessly, but manfully, and from it they seize an eternal life.²⁰ The death of love is the death of life, but love of death, like death from love, is the birth of life. Nothing, not even death, is against life.²¹ Everything, whether suffering or pleasure, sorrow or joy, youth or old age, sickness or health, all, all are soldiers and agents of life.²²

Live life vividly²³ so that the sun of love may shine upon you more than ever, and the envoy of destiny may sound the loud song of a happiness and hold the great celebration of a victory. If you live life vividly, I shall not die, I shall not freeze, and I shall not wither, for I shall grow again beside you, I shall flourish, and I shall bloom.²⁴

You will find me in life. You will always find the pulse of my presence and the current of my being, everywhere, and in everything; in the earth, the mountain, the forest, the breeze, the star, the sun, the rain, the path, the gaze, the smile, the silence, the conversation, the doubt, the philosophy, the poetry, the music, the homeland, the politics, the courage, the faith, the loyalty, the sacrifice, and in all that is not alien to humanity;²⁵ even death. You will find me in death as well. In death, too, you will feel another form of my being and my renewed presence.

Be mindful of death! But think of death also in its relation to life. After all, what do you know of life that you would seek to know of what lies beyond it?²⁶ Do not dwell on the thought of the soul's immortality! Several mortal lives are better for you than one immortal soul.²⁷ Let the path that has had no "returnee" so far remain mysterious and in the crucible of enigma and secrecy.²⁸ One can cling to the mystery with faith; but one must flee from knowledge of it;²⁹ knowledge of what lies beyond death could even be harmful to you.³⁰ Contemplation of death should summon you to this very life, here and now, not take back this very present asset.³¹

Be in love and create the seed of love within yourselves to revive me. Be joyful and spread the seed of joy among yourselves to expand me. Be thoughtful and cultivate the sprout of thought at all times to deepen me. Be free and nurture the sapling of freedom in every place to make me flourish. Blend love, joy, thought, and freedom in "joyful and free shared-thinking" to test your own happiness and that of the people. Refine the impurities and adorn the purities within yourselves, so that you may once again return the meaning of the earth to the earth³² and recreate life within it. Like flowers, thrive together, and like rain, pour upon one another. Like the proud, towering cypress trees, stand tall and smile at life and its sufferings. For life is nothing but a joyful dance upon the sufferings of life.

Make peace with the sufferings of life to transform them into happiness for yourselves and others. Become a child so that, bird-like and light-hearted, you may overcome the hardships and heaviness of life. Live without anything depriving you of love, joy, thought, and freedom. Perhaps one day it will become clear even to the disbelievers that without these there is no path to salvation, and thus, they too will join you and, to compensate for what they have neglected, will love humanity more; will spread joy more; will taste the suffering of love more and comprehend the sorrow of another; will suffer humanity and transform its suffering into joy.

References and Appendices:

1- Heraclitus, a pre-Socratic philosopher in ancient Greece: "The more terrifying death is, the greater its reward."

2- Anton Chekhov: "Some are happy in their lives only because others silently bear their sufferings for them."

3- Dostoevsky in Crime and Punishment, from the words of Raskolnikov, the main character, to Sonya, a prostitute who holds for him an aura of the sanctity of suffering: "I bow not to you, but to all the suffering of humanity."

4- Nietzsche describes his suffering somewhere as follows: "I am neither spirit nor body, but a third thing. I suffer everywhere and because of everything." But he considers the achievement of suffering to be the "chiseling and refining" of the human being and fundamentally reads suffering not as an obstacle to happiness but as a constituent component of it: "The greatest suffering is the ultimate salvation of the spirit. Only suffering compels us to go deep into the depths of our being." Gottfried Keller also reveals such an understanding and experience of suffering in his life when he declares, "My desire to suffer became my bliss."

5- Shakespeare in Hamlet, from Hamlet's words to Horatio: "Thou hast been as one, in suffering all, that suffers nothing."

6- Nietzsche's famous motto, "tragic yes-saying to life," is in spite of its suffering-laden and meaningless nature. In his view, only in this way can nothingness and futility be driven back from life. Akhavan-Sales also cultivated such an idea in his poetic language: "Whether in vain, or whatever the how and why, this is it and it is nothing but this. Death says: Hmm! How futile! Life says: But still one must live, one must live! One must live!"

7- Lou Salomé: "If you have no joy to give me, then give me your sorrow as a gift!"

8- Hafez: "Since your sorrow cannot be found except in a joyful heart / In hope of your sorrow, we seek a joyful disposition"

9- Christian Bobin in Beyond Being: "In loss, one can either rot or attain the summit of life"

10 - This saying of Shakespeare in Hamlet has been adapted within a different interpretive horizon.

11- This saying of Berkeley has been freed from its empiricist context and thought within an existentialist context.

12- Rumi: "I was dead, I became alive; I was weeping, I became laughing / The fortune of love came, and I became an enduring fortune"

13 - Rumi: "Die, die, from this love, die / When you have died in this love, you will all receive spirit"

14- Plato: "Death is not the worst thing that can befall a human being"

15- Novalis, the German poet-philosopher: "In life, one can lose things more important than life itself"

16- Hafez: "Whoever in this circle is not alive through love / Upon him, though not dead, by my decree, pray the funeral prayer" "Never dies he whose heart has come alive through love / Our permanence is inscribed upon the scroll of the world"

17- Voltaire: "Everyone dies twice. Once when love departs from his heart, and another time when he bids farewell to life. But how contemptible is the death of life compared to the death of love!"

18- Christian Bobin in Beyond Being: "To live a little, even just a little, two births are necessary. The birth of the body and then the birth of the soul. Both births are like being torn away. The first birth casts the body into this world, and the second birth sends the soul to the heavens"

19- Rilke, the German poet, speaks of death as the "final birth."

20- Rumi: "If death is a man, let him come near me / So I may hold him tight, tight in my embrace" "I shall take from him life everlasting / He shall take from me a cloak of many colors"

21- The condition for two things to be able to be against one another is that they first have different aims? But since no phenomenon can have an aim outside of life, consequently no phenomenon is against life either.

22- This attitude toward life is part of the Heraclitean worldview, which can be found in several of his surviving fragments. Of course, it can also be found among the Eastern sages, in Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu.

23- Nietzsche: "It does not matter how long a human being has lived, but rather how alive he has lived"

24- Romain Rolland: "The surest way that brings us closer to our dead is our being alive, not our dying, for they are alive through our life and die with our death"

25- Terence, the Roman poet of the 2nd century BCE: "I am human, and nothing human is alien to me." Marx selects this sentence as his favorite in a questionnaire prepared by his daughter, Laura Marx.

26- Confucius: "What do we know of life, that we should know of death!"

27- Nietzsche, in reaction to the dominant thought in European philosophy since Parmenides and Plato that has always valued being over becoming, and the fixed and permanent over the changing and transient, puts forward this exceptional idea that mortality and dynamism are more precious than permanence and stasis. Now, it is within the context of this very thought that the meaning of Nietzsche's Zarathustra's longing for and preference for "having several mortal souls rather than one immortal soul" is understood.

28- Khayyam: “Of all who have traveled this long road, / Has any returned to tell us the secret?”

29- Lessing says: “Up to now, many religions have promised you the immortality or deathlessness of the soul, but if one day, beyond that, a religion were to appear that completely convinced you that you are immortal and deathless, it is better to refuse to accept that religion!” Yes! The only conceivable immortality, though certainly not the only possible immortality, is the immortality we experience in this very life. A life whose nature is mixed with suffering and pleasure, sorrow and joy, perfection and limitation, and ultimately, being and non-being. But that promised immortality, which is said to be composed of perpetual pleasure, absolute joy, and unlimited perfection, and in which there is no trace or sign of suffering, sorrow, limitation, or nothingness, lies fundamentally beyond human experience and, ultimately, his cognition. Nietzsche also warns thus: “Have you ever said Yes to a single pleasure? Then, my friends, you have also said Yes to all suffering. All things are chained together, bound on one string, captive to love as well. Yes! You have loved the world this way.” Perhaps, regarding these matters, a person can only tremble hopefully upon their faith and say, may it be so.

30- Perhaps Spinoza, too, when he says, “The free [wise] man thinks of life more than he thinks of death,” has in mind an avoidance of such a preoccupation with death.

31- Romain Rolland in The Game of Love and Death: “Whenever we sacrifice truth, love, human virtues, and the respect we have for ourselves for the future, we have sacrificed the future itself.”

32- Nietzsche says in Thus Spoke Zarathustra: “The Overman is the meaning of the earth,” and he considers Zarathustra’s mission, in a way, to be the restoration of the meaning of the earth to the earth.

A Letter After Death (A Reflection on 'Death' and 'Life')

Author: Masoud Zanjani

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