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 kamic 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 Atma-Buddhi-Manas, the reflection of the Immortal Self.  This sends out its Ray, which becomes encased in grosser matter, in the desire body, or kamic 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 Bird of Heaven, but its wings are bound to its side by the matter into which it is plunged.  When man recognises his own inherent nature, he learns to open his prison doors occasionally and escapes from his encircling gaol; first he learns to identify himself with the Immortal Triad, and rises above the body and its passions into a pure mental and moral life; then he learns that the conquered body cannot hold him prisoner, and he unlocks its door and steps out into the sunshine of his true life.  So when Death unlocks the door for him, he knows the country into which he emerges, having trodden its ways at his own will.  And at last he grows to recognise that fact of supreme importance, that “Life” has nothing to do with body and with this material plane; that Life is his conscious existence, unbroken, unbreakable, and that the brief interludes in that Life, during which he sojourns on Earth, are but a minute fraction of his conscious existence, and a fraction, moreover, during which he is less alive, because of the heavy coverings which weigh him down.  For only during these interludes (save in exceptional