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 desire, the kâmic or astral
body, or in a yet more ethereal Thought Body, can be effected during
earth-life; so that man may become familiar with the excarnated
condition, and it may lose for him all the terrors that encircle the
unknown. He can know himself as a conscious entity in either of these
vehicles, and so prove to his own satisfaction that "life" does not
depend on his functioning through the physical body. Why should a man
who has thus repeatedly "shed" his lower bodies, and has found the
process result, not in unconsciousness, but in a vastly extended
freedom and vividness of life--why should he fear the final casting
away of his fetters, and the freeing of his Immortal Self from what he
realises as the prison of the flesh?

This view of human life is an essential part of the Esoteric
Philosophy. Man is primarily divine, a spark of the Divine Life. This
living flame, passing out from the Central Fire, weaves for itself
coverings within which it dwells, and thus becomes the Triad, the
Atmâ-Buddhi-Manas, the reflection of the Immortal Self. This sends out
its Ray, which becomes encased in grosser matter, in the desire body,
or kâmic elements, the passional nature, and in the etheric double and
the physical body. The once free immortal Intelligence thus entangled,
enswathed, enchained, works heavily and laboriously through the
coatings that enwrap it. In its own nature it remains ever the free