T h e  A n s w e r :  As was stated at the end of the answer to the first question, death is a discharge from the duties of life; it is a rest, a change of residence, a transformation  of  existence;  it  is  an  invitation  to  eternal  life,  a  beginning,  the introduction to an immortal life. Just as life comes into the world through an act of creation and is appointed and determined, so departure from the world is created and determined,  and is planned  wisely and purposively.  The ways plants die, plant life being the simplest level of life, show their death to be a more orderly work of art than life. For although the death of fruits, seeds, and grains appears to occur through their decay and dissolution, it is in fact a sort of kneading that comprises exceedingly well- ordered chemical reactions and a balanced combining of elements and wise formation of particles; their unseen, orderly and wise deaths appear through the life of the new shoots. That is to say, the death of the seed is the onset of the shoot’s life. Indeed, since its death is like life itself, it is created and regular the same as life is.

Moreover, the death of living fruits or animals in the human stomach is the beginning of their rising to the level of human life; it may therefore be said that being thus, their death is more orderly and created than is their life.

If the death of plant life, the lowest level of life, is created, wise, and ordered in that way, the death that befalls human life, the highest level of life, must be the same. Similarly, as a seed sown in the ground becomes a tree in the world of the air, so a man who is laid in the earth will surely produce the shoots of an everlasting life in the Intermediate Realm.

Now for the aspects of death that are bounties; we shall point out four of them.

The First: Death is a great bounty because it means one is freed from the duties and obligations of life, which become burdensome. It is also a door through which one passes  in order to join and be united with one’s friends,  ninety-nine  out of a hundred of whom are already in the Intermediate Realm.

The Second: It is to be released from the narrow, irksome, turbulent prison of this world, and to receive an expansive, joyful, troublefree immortal life, and to enter the sphere of the Eternally Beloved One’s mercy.

The Third: There are numerous factors like old age which make life arduous and show  death to  be a far  superior  bounty.  For example,  if together  with  your  very elderly   parents   who   cause   you   much   distress   you   beheld   before   you   your grandfather’s  grandfathers  in all their  pitiful  state,  you  would  understand  what  a calamity life is, and what a bounty, death.

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