Death--and After?

know that the etheric doubleIn Theosophical thought, this is a subtle body that exists between the physical body and the soul, serving as a template for physical matter. is the vehicle of Prânaoriginal: "Prâna"; a Sanskrit term for the universal life-force or vital energy that permeates the cosmos and animates living beings., the life-principle, or vitality. Through the etheric double Prâna exercises the controlling and co-ordinating force spoken of above, and “Death” takes triumphant possession of the body when the etheric double is finally withdrawn and the delicate cord which unites it with the body is snapped. The process of withdrawal has been watched by clairvoyants, and definitely described. Thus Andrew Jackson Davis, “the Poughkeepsie Seer” Andrew Jackson Davis (1826–1910) was an American Spiritualist who claimed to receive medical and philosophical revelations while in a trance state., describes how he himself watched this escape of the ethereal body, and he states that the magnetic cordAlso known as the 'silver cord,' this is described in various mystical traditions as a thread linking the spirit to the physical body. did not break for some thirty-six hours after apparent death. Others have described, in similar terms, how they saw a faint violet mist rise from the dying body, gradually condensing into a figure which was the counterpart of the expiring person, and attached to that person by a glistening thread. The snapping of the thread means the breaking of the last magnetic link between the dense body and the remaining principles of the human constitution; the body has dropped away from the man; he is excarnatedfrom the Latin 'ex' (out of) and 'caro' (flesh); the state of being outside of a physical body., disembodied; six principles still remain as his constitution immediately after death, the seventh, or the dense body, being left as a cast-off garment.

Death consists, indeed, in a repeated process of unrobing, or unsheathing. The immortal part of man shakes off from itself, one after the other, its outer casings, and—as the snake from its skin, the butterfly from its chrysalis—emerges from one after another, passing into a higher state of consciousness. Now it is the fact that this escape from the body, and this dwelling of the conscious entity either in the vehicle called the body of