What do you have in your hand when the spirit has left?

Crumble a dried leaf and see. Simply ashes. Cremate the body of a man and what do you have? Ashes. The real, the substantial, the enduring has left and gone up higher. 

The ashes are left behind, the real and tangible has arisen, the form has gone up, the colour has gone up, the ego, spirit and soul have gone up―all that was real and tangible has departed and finds a spiritual world containing all the living entities that he had known on earth―or those like them―that had preceded him.

―Spirit Herr Franz