Death into Life. Olaf Stapledon.

What is this dying? No one who has done it can tell us what it is like.
Are we mere sparks of sentience, that death extinguishes, or fledgeling
immortals who fear to leave the nest? Or both, or neither?
Are we conceived in mystery, into mystery we die. Let us at least,
not clamour for immortality, nor pledge our hearts to it.
If the end is sleep, well, when we are tired, sleep is the final bliss.
Yet perhaps what dies is only the dear trivial familiar self of each.
Perhaps in our annihilation some vital and eternal thing does break
wing,fly free. We cannot know.
This we do know: whether we are annihilated or attain in some strange
way eternal life, to have loved is good.
When the body dies, and I myself sink into eternal sleep, I shall have
lost so little. For the Cosmos will go on; and the spirit, in innumerable
other centers, will go on. In losing this infinitesimal 'me',
I lose after all nothing.
Further, in ageing, in this slow withering away of cherished delights,
and vaunted powers, there is a kind of purgation; as though in
readiness for some great impending event. The victim is being shorn,
and cleansed in preparation for the alter.
The universal spirit, that inwardly possessed it, is now slowly discarding
the idiosyncrasies of this outworn individual, is now stretching long
cramped wings, impatient for flight. Those dear delights, those modist
powers, all that is the cherished me, I willingly let go.
Others will repeat them, and some more splendidly.
For me, when this tiresome ageing is fulfilled, the welcome end is sleep.
But you? But me? The fair thing that has awakened in us, must that too,
sleep forever? Or does it, since its essence is of the spirit, strike free?