What is continuous consciousness?

What comfort can you offer for the losses to the living of the dead? 

I am so weary of not knowing that it is better with those who are gone beyond. 

What can you say of it?

In answer, the Teacher replies—

This short period of limitation, miscalled life, is but a veil, hiding the Real Life from you. 

It is as though you tied a bandage over your eyes during a journey and then denied the sunlight and the beautiful landscape.

Life is continuous―the consciousness only recedes within.

Periodically, the outer covering (the physical body) is slipped off, just as you would slip off an old garment.

The Soul, the Immortal Ego, is the Real Self, which clothes itself with various garments suitable to contact the different spheres and states of consciousness.

It does this just as you would don different garments for different occasions―a fur coat for winter―a thin one for summer.

Slipping off the fur coat does not in any way alter your individuality, even though it does reveal your true appearance more perfectly.

You are the same individual whether dressed in a single garment―or wrapped in many.

So it is with the Real Self. 

At the time of the so-called death, the grossest and most hampering garment, comparable to the fur coat, is slipped off, and the consciousness is expanded and freer, just as you are freer with your fur coat off.

You when wrapped in your fleshly garments are perhaps blind to the more etheric and radiant garment because of the thickness of the outer, but your loved ones know you as you are.

Every effort you make to advance spiritually helps them more than it does you, and they in turn help you.

For instance, a truth that might be very hard for you to grasp would be quickly grasped by one who was near you, yet unhampered by a fleshly body. 

He in turn would bring all his loving force to bear to help you to understand.

When persons pass from the earth life their character is in no way different.

They know just as much as they did before, and little more. 

The chief difference is that they are in a different environment where their faculties of perception are keener. 

For instance, they can sense thought, while those on earth have to wait for words. 

They can see within, as well as without, and can transport themselves from place to place by the power of thought. 

Therefore, you can well understand that passing into this new phase of life with all the love of their hearts concentrated on a loved one still on earth, they would not desire to pass farther on into higher spheres, but would stay close to the one they loved.

And on the psychic plane, there are Masters whose pleasure it is to teach all who desire to learn, just as they teach those who still remain on earth.

Letters from the Teacher, Teachings of the Order of the 15