UN General Assembly
1978

180. We mourn the passing, the transition, of our beloved ones. But mourning and sorrowfulness should never be allowed to supersede or to take precedence over the importance of the lessons we ought to learn from death- physical death. Man has grown to be so materialistic today that he places undue value and importance on his physical self, his material worth, his political power and achievements, in such a manner that all these things seem to overshadow the recognition of the real man, the soul- man's consciousness. From this important and inescapable event, death, let us learn a lesson; let us face the realities of life and recognize the fact that our life-span on earth is comparatively short and, in consequence, let us in conscience and in truth examine our life style; let us restructure our patterns of behaviour towards our fellow- men, for in the final analysis the decisive and all-important question is, "How well we truly loved; how well we truly served",