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.

Source: 20^th Letters, Risale-i Nur Collection