Preserve and protect your life, for nothing is more valuable than life. Of course, there are cases where men and women have given their lives to save others or stand up for specific ideas. Yes, only in these situations do we have the right to sacrifice our lives. The prophets and initiates who lost their lives for the glory of God lost nothing in reality, as after that, they received an even more prosperous, more beautiful new life because they had sacrificed themselves for good.
But apart from these cases, we must keep, preserve, purify and intensify our lives, for it is the source, the reservoir, the point of departure of all other developments: intellectual, emotional, aesthetic, and so forth. Life comes first, and then come wisdom, love, beauty, and so on, like so many branches on the primordial tree of life. 

Omraam Mikhael Aivanhov