15 avons constitué un `nous' avec le mourant. Et c'est dans ce `nous' (...) que nous sommes amenés à la connaissance vécue de notre propre devoir mourir"51. 42. It may be recalled, in this respect, that the inspiring Tibetan Book of the Dead cares to advise the incorporation of death into life, so that the living can gradually prepare themselves for the passage into death; in fact, - the book reminds, - at every moment something is born and something dies within ourselves, and this is part of one's existence. The book deals, in a way, with "universal conscience", and points out that those who have, in life and meditation, recognized "the true nature of the spirit" are better prepared for the arrival of the day of their passage into death, into liberation52. 43. The equally inspiring Egyptian Book of the Dead, on its turn, reveals the belief in the afterlife and in the "spiritual substance of the gods"; to the ancient Egyptians, death was rather a passage into the eternal world of the gods, there being thus a continuity. The living were particularly careful with their dead, so that these latter would have a "happy eternity". Hence the elaborate funerary rites, the process of mummification, so that the corpses would be well preserved to keep the soul therein (and thus avoid it "to disappear forever"), and would be carefully deposited in the funerary chambers, and would be well taken care of by the relatives of the dead53. 44. The history of human thinking reveals the permanence of the doctrine of the survival or eternity of the spirit, from Plato's days to modern times (e.g., Kant, Goethe); in Scheler's view, the belief in the immortality of the spirit guards relationship with the way one lives54. The significant attitude of remembering, reentering into the past, may provide intuitions (Plato's Phaedon) for the issue of survival55. 45. In face of death, distinct collective attitudes can in fact be detected not only in different cultures but also at distinct historical moments. In a pioneering study, for example, of collective attitudes in face of death in the XVII and XVIII centuries, M. Vovelle remarked that in vain were the attempts in those days to erase death from human mind, as, towards the last decades of the XVIIIth century, the reality of death came again to occupy human thinking. And he recalled Robespierre's remark that if the immortality of the soul was nothing but a dream, yet it remained one of the most beautiful conceptions of the human spirit56. . P.-L. Landsberg, Essai sur l'expérience de la mort, Paris, Seuil/Points-Sagesses, 1993 (reed.), pp. 36-37 and 40, and cf. pp. 38-40. 51 . Cf. El Libro Tibetano de los Muertos (Bardo-Thödol), (org. E.K. Dargyay), Madrid, EDAF, 1997 (reed.), pp. 20-23, 38, 79, 170-171, 179-180 and 218-219. 52 . Cf. El Libro Egipcio de los Muertos (org. A. Champdor), Madrid, EDAF, 2000 (reed.), pp. 35, 41, 51, 99-100, 118, 125, 141, 145-147, 151, 156-157 and 163, and cf. pp. 178-181. 53 . M. Scheler, Muerte y Supervivencia, op. cit. supra n. (27), pp. 58, 71-72, 74-75, 87-88 and 90. 54 . Ibid., p. 62. 55 . M. Vovelle, Mourir autrefois, Paris, Gallimard/Julliard, 1990, pp. 207 and 223. 56