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You will note that the various words I have chosen in considering the basic requirements have been so chosen for their specific meanings:

  1. The Work of Restitution signifies the returning of the form to the basic reservoir of substance; or of the Soul, the divine Spiritual energy, returning to its source—either on Soul or Monadic levels, according to the point in evolution. This restitution is predominantly the work of the human Soul within the physical body and involves both the heart and the Head centers. These three processes are Death.

  1. The Art of Elimination refers to two activities of the inner Spiritual man; i.e., the elimination of all control by the threefold lower man, and the process of refocusing itself upon the concrete levels of the Mental plane as a point of radiant light. This concerns primarily the human Soul.

  1. The Processes of Integration deal with the work of the liberated Spiritual man as he blends with the Soul (the overSoul) upon the higher levels of the Mental plane. The part returns to the whole, and the man comprehends the true meaning of the words of Krishna, "Having pervaded this whole universe with a fragment of myself, I remain." He, too, the conscious experiencing fragment which has pervaded the little universe of the form in the three worlds, still remains. He knows himself to be a part of the whole.

It will be obvious to you that when humanity attains this outlook upon the fact of death or the art of dying, the entire attitude of the race of men will undergo beneficent change.

There are, speaking in the larger sense, three major death episodes:

  1. There is, first of all, the constant recurrence of the fact of physical death. This is familiar to all of us through its extreme frequency, could we but realize it. This recognition would rapidly eliminate the present fear of death. There is then the "second death" spoken of in the Bible, which is in this present planetary cycle associated with the death of all Astral control over the human being. In the larger sense, this second death is consummated at the fourth initiation, when even Spiritual aspiration dies, being no more needed; the Will of the initiate is now fixed and immovable, and Astral sensitivity is no longer required.

  1. There is a curious counterpart to this experience upon a much lower level in the death of all Astral emotion which takes place for the individual aspirant at the time of the second initiation. It is then a complete episode and is consciously registered. Between the second and the third initiations, the disciple has to demonstrate a continuity of nonresponse to Astralism and emotionalism. The second death, to which I am here referring, has to do with the death or the disappearance of the Causal body at the time of the fourth initiation; this marks the completion of the building of the Antahkarana and the institution of direct, unimpeded continuity of relationship between the Monad and the personality.

  1. The third death takes place when the initiate leaves behind him, finally and with no prospect of return, all relation with the cosmic Physical plane. This death, necessarily, lies far ahead for all in the Hierarchy and is at present only possible and permissible for a few in the Council Chamber at Shamballa. It is not, however, a process through which Sanat Kumara will pass. He underwent this "transformation" many aeons ago, during the great cataclysm which inaugurated the Lemurian Age, and which was induced by His cosmic experience and the need for an inflow of energy from extra-planetary Beings.

We have consequently, when considering the death of a human being, to employ the word death in relation to two phases in which it functions:

  1. Phase One:  The death of the physical-Etheric body. This phase falls into two stages:

  1. That in which the atoms which constitute the physical body are restored to the source from whence they came. This source is the sumtotal of the matter of the planet, constituting the dense physical body of the planetary Life.

  1. That in which the Etheric vehicle, composed of an aggregation of forces, returns these forces to the general reservoir of energy. This dual phase covers the Process of Restitution.

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