IMMORTAL SPIRIT

The terrors with which we clothe death come largely from the erroneous and revolting descriptions of it given to us. Thus, it is sometimes styled decomposition or corruption, but we do not, speaking exactly, fall into either one or the other of these states.

Some say that to die is to leave the world, but we never do leave the world, that being in itself impossible.

Others again claim that death is synonymous with destruction, but we cannot be destroyed. No; to die is to return unto our Father. Our souls merely cast off garments which do not become them, to put on others more worthy of them. The shudder caused by the usual description of death is due to the fact that these descriptions are largely borrowed from the state of the inanimate body. Every false conception is justly repulsive to us. So soon as the reason is wounded everything in us is wounded, and the imagination strives in vain to make that which is irrational seem becoming. The state of the corpse in the tomb is not our state, but simply that of the covering which we have stripped off. And what is our earthly covering if it be not the worn-out or damaged garment of the immortal spirit?

Queen Victoria, Meditations Upon Death and Eternity

The Encyclopaedia of Death and Life in the Spirit World—Opinions and Experiences from Eminent Sources, J. R. Francis, Chicago, The Progressive Thinker Publishing House, 1903