The end of feeling. Seneca, Epistles 4.30.5-6

How to shake our fear of death? Seneca presents Bassus' method, which was to recognize that fear is about our anticipation of some bad feeling, then to realize that death presents no feeling at all: it is the end of feeling.

Bassus noster videbatur mihi prosequi se et componere et vivere tamquam superstes sibi et sapienter ferre desiderium sui. Nam de morte multa loquitur et id agit sedulo ut nobis persuadeat, si quid incommodi aut metus in hoc negotio est, morientis vitium esse, non mortis; non magis in ipsa quicquam esse molestiae quam post ipsam. Tam demens autem est qui timet quod non est passurus quam qui timet quod non est sensurus. An quis quam hoc futurum credit, ut per quam nihil sentiatur, ea sentiatur? Ergo inquit mors adeo extra omne malum est ut sit extra omnem malorum metum.

Our Bassus seemed to me always a credit to himself, putting his life together and bearing his desire to overcome so wisely that he appeared likely to survive his own demise, when the time came. He said many things about death, seeking tirelessly to persuade us that any fear or discomfort in this business belongs to the weakness of the person dying, not to death herself. He maintained that she brings with her as little trouble as we feel after she has gone. That the man who fears what he is not going to suffer is just as ludicrous as the one who fears what he shall not feel. Does anyone really believe, he asked, that we will feel death, whose ministrations put us beyond all feeling? “Death is so far beyond every mortal evil,” he said, “that she is also beyond every fear such evils inspire.”