My belief that death is the end has, however, been modified by some of my learnings of the past decade. | am impressed with the accounts by Raymond Moody (1975) of the experience of persons who have been so near death as to be declared dead, but who have come back to life. I am impressed by some of the reports of reincarnation, although reincarnation seems a very dubious blessing indeed. | am interested in the work of Elisabeth Kibler-Ross and the conclusions she has reached about life after death. I find definitely appealing the views of Arthur Koestler that individual consciousness is but a fragment of a cosmic con- sciousness, the fragment being reabsorbed into the whole upon the death of the individual. | like his analogy of the individual river eventually flowing into the tidal waters of the ocean, drop- ping its muddy silt as it enters the boundless sea. So I consider death with, I believe, an openness to the expe- rience. It will be what it will be, and I trust I can accept it as either an end to, or a continuation of, life.