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From "Ponder on This" by Alice Bailey

DEATH
(1) I speak about Death as one who knows the matter from both the outer world experience and the inner life expression: There is no death. There is, as you know, entrance into fuller life. There is freedom from the handicaps of the fleshly vehicle. The rending process so much dreaded does not exist, except in the cases of violent and of sudden death, and then the only true disagreeables are an instant and overwhelming sense of imminent peril and destruction, and something closely approaching an electric shock. No more. For the unevolved, death is literally a sleep and a forgetting, for the mind is not sufficiently awakened to react, and the storehouse of memory is as yet practically empty. For the average good citizen, death is a continuance of the living process in his consciousness and a carrying forward of the interests and tendencies of the life. His consciousness and his sense of awareness are the same and unaltered. He does not sense much difference, is well taken care of, and oft is unaware that he has passed through the episode of death. For the wicked and cruelly selfish, for the criminal and for those few who live for the material side only, there eventuates that condition which we call "earth-bound". The links they have forged with earth and the earthward bias of all their desires, force them to remain close to the earth and their last setting in the earth environment. They seek desperately and by every possible means to re-contact it and to re-enter. In a few cases, great personal love for those left behind or the non-fulfilment of a recognised and urgent duty, holds the good and beautiful in a somewhat similar condition. For the aspirant, death is an immediate entrance into a sphere of service and of expression to which he is well accustomed and which he at once recognises as not new. In his sleeping hours he has developed a field of active service and of learning. He now simply functions in it for the entire twenty-four hours (talking in terms of physical plane time) instead of for his usual few hours of earthly sleep. (4 – 300/1).
(2) The mind of man is so little developed that fear of the unknown, terror of the unfamiliar, and attachment to form have brought about a situation where one of the most beneficent occurrences in the life cycle of an incarnating Son of God is looked upon as something to be avoided and postponed for as long a time as possible.
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Death, if we could but realise it, is one of our most practised activities. We have died many times, and shall die again and again. Death is essentially a matter of consciousness. We are conscious one moment on the physical plane, and a moment later we have withdrawn onto another plane and are actively conscious there. Just as long as our consciousness is identified with the form aspect, death will hold for us its ancient terror. Just as soon as we know ourselves to be souls, and find that we are capable of focussing our consciousness or sense of awareness in any form or any plane at will, or in any direction within the form of God, we shall no longer know death. . . People are apt to forget that every night, in the hours of sleep, we die to the physical plane and are alive and functioning elsewhere. They forget that they have already achieved facility in leaving the physical body; because they cannot as yet bring back into the physical brain consciousness the recollection of that passing out, and of the subsequent interval of active living, they fail to relate death and sleep. Death, after all, is only a longer interval in the life of physical plane functioning; one has only "gone abroad" for a longer period. But the process of daily sleep, and the process of occasional dying are identical, with the one difference that in sleep the magnetic thread or current of energy along which the life force streams, is preserved intact, and constitutes the path of return to the body. In death, this life thread is broken or snapped. When this has happened, the conscious entity cannot return to the dense physical body, and that body,
lacking the principle of coherence, then disintegrates. (4 – 494/5).
(3) The young forget, and rightly forget, the inevitability of that final symbolic detachment which we call Death. But when life has played its part, and age has taken its toll of interests and strength, the tired and world-weary man has no fear of the detaching process, and seeks not to hold on to that which earlier was desired. He welcomes death, and relinquishes willingly that which earlier engrossed his attention. (15 – 76).
(4) Death, as the human consciousness understands it, pain and sorrow, loss and disaster, joy and distress, are only such because man, as yet, identifies himself with the life of the form and not with the life and consciousness of the soul, the solar angel. . . . The moment a man identifies himself with his soul and not with his form, then he understands the meaning of the Law of Sacrifice; he is spontaneously governed by it; and he is one who will, with deliberate intent, choose to die. But there is no pain, no sorrow, and no real death involved. (15 – 94).
(5) The intent is for man to die, as every man has to die, at the demand of his own soul. When man has reached a higher stage in evolution, with [Page 66] deliberation and definite choice of time, he will consciously withdraw from his physical body. It will be left silent and empty of the soul; devoid of light, yet sound and whole; it will then disintegrate, under the natural process, and its constituent atoms will pass back into the "pool of waiting units", until they are again required
for the use of incarnating souls. Again, on the subjective side of life, the process is repeated, but many have already learnt to withdraw from the astral body without being subject to that "impact in the fog", which is the symbolic way of describing the death of a man upon the astral plane. He then withdraws on to the mental level, and leaves his astral carcass to swell the fog, and increase its density. (17 – 29).
(6) Death has been present upon our planet from the very night of time itself; forms have come and gone; death has overtaken plants and trees, animals and the forms of human beings for untold aeons, and yet our planet is not a charnel house, as it well might be in the face of this fact, but is still a thing of beauty, unspoilt even by man. The processes of dying and of dissolution and the dissipation of forms, goes on every moment without producing contagious contamination, or the disfiguring of the surface of the earth. The results of dissolution are beneficent in effect. Ponder on this beneficent activity, and on the beauty of the divine plan of death and
disappearance. (17 – 245).
(7) The cycle in which we now live, has seen the greatest destruction of human forms, in the entire history of our planet. There has been no destruction of human beings. I would have you note this statement. Because of this wholesale destruction, humanity has made a very rapid advance towards a more serene attitude in connection with death. This is not yet apparent but –in a few years time – the new attitude will begin to be marked, and the fear of death will begin to die out in the world. This will also be largely due to the increased sensitivity of the human response apparatus, leading to a turning inward, or to a new orientation of the human mind, with unpredictable results. (17 – 432).
(8) Could you but see a little further into the matter, you would learn that death releases the individualised life into a less cramped and confined existence, and eventually – when the death process has been applied to all the three vehicles in the three worlds – into the life of universality.
This is a point of inexpressible bliss. (17 – 433).
(9) The sin of murder is in reality based upon the fact that it interferes with the soul purpose, and not really upon the killing of a particular human physical body . . .Death appears frequently to be so purposeless; that is because the intention [Page 67] of the soul is not known; past development, through the process of incarnation, remains a hidden matter; ancient heredities and environments are ignored, and recognition of the voice of the soul is not generally developed. These are matters, however, which are on the very verge of recognition; revelation is on its way, and for that I am laying the foundation. (17 – 436).
(10) Death to the average thinking man is a point of catastrophic crisis. It is the cessation and ending of all that has been loved, all that is familiar and to be desired; it is a crashing entrance into the unknown, into uncertainty, and the abrupt conclusion of all plans and projects. No matter how much true faith in the spiritual values may be present, no matter how clear the rationalising of the mind may be anent immortality, no matter how conclusive the evidence of persistence and
eternity, there still remains a questioning, a recognition of the possibility of complete finality and negation, and an end of all activity, of all heart reaction, of all thought, emotion, desire, aspiration, and the intentions which focus around the central core of man's being. The longing and the determination to persist, and the sense of continuity still rest, even to the most determined believer, upon probability, upon an unstable foundation, and upon the testimony of others – who
have never in reality returned to tell the truth. (17 – 438), (18 – 102).
(11) Perhaps some lines from the Manual of Death which is to be found in the hierarchical archives would prove explanatory to you, and might aid you in gaining a new perspective upon death . . ."This descending and ascension men call life, existence, and decease; this We Who tread the Lighted Way call death, experience and life. "Light which descends anchors itself upon the plane of temporary appearance. Seven threads it outward puts, and seven rays of light pulsate along these threads. Twenty-one lesser threads are radiated thence, causing the forty-nine fires to glow and burn. Upon the plane of manifested life, the word goes forth: Behold! A man is born. "As life proceeds, the quality of light appears; dim and murky it may be, or radiant, bright and shining. Thus do the points of light within the Flame pass and repass; they come and go. This men call life; they call it true existence. They thus delude themselves, yet serve the purpose of their souls and fit into the greater Plan. "And then a Word sounds forth. The descended, radiating point of light ascends, responsive to the dimly heard recalling note, attracted to its emanating source. This man calls death and this the soul calls life." (17 – 468/9).
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(12) Death is now the result of the will of the soul. Eventually it has to be the result of the united will of the soul and the personality, and when that happens, there will be no fear of death.