What are the stages of existence?

There is no death. That law that provides for the changes in material substances, also provides for the garnering up of every thought. 

Thought never perishes, it abides forever, builds the temples of the future, erects your home, clothes your spirit and paves the way to higher stages of existence of which you have no knowledge. 

The science of spiritual life is brought home to your consciousness. Instead of the dim grovelling of the outward senses, you have the illumined scroll of the spirit held down to your view in which you behold with the eye of vision mentioned in the Apocalypse, the wonderful Jerusalem that is to come. 

It is not a temporal city, it is not an external power, it is not simply a building up to the outward senses, but it is a new condition of mind and life on earth. 

It does not revel alone in the external, but builds in the eternal and clothes your soul for the habitation of the future world. This is the day when there is no death. 

Your friend hidden from sight is only caught up in the atmosphere. You do not see him, but you may perceive him with spiritual vision. 

The mother mourns her child as dead, looks into the grave for the object of her care and builds up a snowy monument over the body there. But she must not think the child is there. The spirit, like a white dove, hovers around her, and the spirit of the child is waiting at the door that you may enter. 

There is no death! 

Mother Earth consumes the body, and that which you bury this year will bloom into flowers in the spring, but the buds of your spirit are transplanted and blossom in the midst of eternal life, and the little feet trip among the asphodels in the green meadows of the spiritland. 

This is the lost chain of life, this is the golden stone that philosophers have sought for in vain in times past, this is the nectar, the Nepenthe that ancient sorcerers sought that life might be forever prolonged. 

You cast away your body as you would a worn-out or imperfect garment. There are new raiments waiting for you, there is a new habitation ready for you. 

Your feet will not rest upon strange soil, but friends will gather around you. 

It is as clear to the eye of the spirit as are the names of the constellations to the astronomer, and though you dwell in the garments of the flesh you still see beyond and perceive how in all the great world of matter and spirit, there is no room for death to abide, for he has gone utterly with ignorance and darkness and the prejudices of the past, and life, only life, remains as your inheritance. 

Life, only life, remains as your inheritance. 

Encyclopaedia of Death and Life in the Spirit World—Opinions and Experiences from Eminent Sources