the other latent. When it is extinct or entirely latent, the
molecules obey a superior attraction, which draws them
asunder and scatters them through space. This dispersion must
be Death, if it is possible to conceive such a thing as
Death, where the very molecules of the dead body manifest an
intense vital energy.... Says Eliphas Levi: "Change attests
movement, and movement only reveals life. The corpse would
not decompose if it were dead; all the molecules which
compose it are living and struggle to separate."[8]

Those who have read _The Seven Principles of Man_,[9] know that the
etheric double is the vehicle of Prâna, 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possession of the body when the etheric double is finally withdrawn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",
describes how he himself watched this escape of the ethereal body, and
he states that the magnetic cord 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
excarnated, disembodied; six principles still remain as his
constitution immediately after death, the seventh, or the dense body,
being left as a cast-off garment.