Spiritual Experiences (Odhner) n. 1235

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1235. What the goals of a person's life are becomes evident during illnesses, when death threatens

Whatever people love, they fear to lose. Therefore, during sicknesses especially, when death is near, it can be learned what they have loved, or what someone's goals in life have been. If, for example, they have striven for distinctions, and found in them their highest delight, then they are very afraid of dying. On their deathbed they also talk about their favorite things, and cannot abstain from busying themselves with them. Thus they are still absorbed with themselves. Likewise in the case of one who has found his or her highest delight in possessions, profits, and other worldly values. They then keep their thought on them, disposing of them at the point of death by making a will and the like; while one who cares nothing for those things considers them of no importance, thinking only of eternal salvation and regarding them as of little value, not worth mentioning-even if it were the whole world [that one possessed].


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