To Enter The House Of Death

It was in the third of these London talks (1955) that he (K) made his first public reference to entering the house of death while still living - a theme he was often to talk about in future. It came in answer to a question: "I'm afraid of death. Can you give me any reassurance?" K replied in part:

"You are afraid to let go of all the things you have known...You are afraid to let all that go, totally, deep down, right from the depths of your being, and be with the unknown - which is, after all, death...Can you, who are the result of the known, enter into the unknown which is death? If you want to do it, it must be done while living, surely, not at the last moment...While living, to enter the house of death is not just a morbid idea; it is the only solution. While living a rich, full life - whatever that means - or while living a miserable, impoverished life, can we not know that which is not measurable, that which is only glimpsed by the experiencer in rare moments?...Can the mind die from moment to moment to everything that it experiences, and never accumulate?"

K was to express the same idea more simply in the second series of Commentaries on Living (1959):

"How necessary it is to die each day, to die each minute to everything, to the many yesterdays and to the moment that has just gone by! Without death there is no renewing, without death there is no creation. The burden of the past gives rise to its own continuity, and the worries of yesterday give new life to the worries of today."