This vivid sight is succeeded, in the ordinary person, by the dreamy,
peaceful semi-consciousness spoken of above, as the etheric double
floats above the body to which it has belonged, now completely
separated from it.

Sometimes this double is seen by persons in the house, or in the
neighbourhood, when the thought of the dying has been strongly turned
to some one left behind, when some anxiety has been in the mind at the
last, something left undone which needed doing, or when some local
disturbance has shaken the tranquillity of the passing entity. Under
these conditions, or others of a similar nature, the double may be
seen or heard; when seen, it shows the dreamy, hazy consciousness
alluded to, is silent, vague in its aspect, unresponsive.

As the days go on, the five higher principles gradually disengage
themselves from the etheric double, and shake this off as they
previously shook off the grosser body. They pass on, as a fivefold
entity, into a state to be next studied, leaving the etheric double,
with the dense body of which it is the counterpart, thus becoming an
ethereal corpse, as much as the body had become a dense corpse. This
ethereal corpse remains near the dense one, and they disintegrate
together; clairvoyants see these ethereal wraiths in churchyards,
sometimes showing likeness to the dead dense body, sometimes as violet
mists or lights. Such an ethereal corpse has been seen by a friend of
my own, passing through the horribly repulsive stages of
decomposition, a ghastly vision in face of which clairvoyance was
certainly no blessing. The process goes on _pari passu_, until all but
the actual bony skeleton of the dense body is completely
disintegrated, and the particles have gone to form other combinations.