A Treatise on the Seven Rays:

Through death, a great at-one-ing process is carried [446] forward; in the "fall of a leaf" and its consequent identification with the soil on which it falls, we have a tiny illustration of this great and eternal process of at-one-ing, through becoming and dying as a result of becoming.
- Vol. II, page 173.

A Treatise on White Magic:

I speak about Death as one who knows the matter from the outer world experience and the inner life expression: There is no death. There is, as you know, entrance into fuller life. There is freedom from the handicaps of the fleshly vehicle. The rending process so much dreaded does not exist, except in the cases of violent and sudden death, and then the only true disagreeables are an instant and overwhelming sense of imminent peril and destruction and something closely approaching an electric shock. No more. For the unevolved, death is literally a sleep and a forgetting, for the mind is not sufficiently awakened to react, and the storehouse of memory is as yet practically empty. For the average good citizen, death is a continuance of the living process in his consciousness and a carrying forward of the interests and tendencies of the life. His consciousness and his sense of awareness are the same and unaltered. He does not sense much difference, is well taken care of, and oft is unaware that he has passed through the episode of death. For the wicked and cruelly selfish, for the criminal and for those few who live for the material side only, there eventuates that condition which we call "earth-bound." The links they have forged with earth and the earthward bias of all their desires, force them to remain close to the earth and their last setting in the earth environment. They seek desperately and by every possible means to recontact it and to re-enter. In a few cases, great personal love for those left behind, or the non-fulfilment of a recognized and urgent duty, holds the good and beautiful in a somewhat similar [447] condition. For the aspirant, death is an immediate entrance into a sphere of service and of expression to which he is well accustomed and which he at once recognizes as not new. In his sleeping hours he has developed a field of active service and of learning. He now simply functions in it for the entire twenty-four hours (talking in terms of physical plane time) instead of for his usual few hours of earthly sleep.
- Pages 300-301.

A Treatise on Cosmic Fire:

True death, under the Law, is brought about by the attainment of the objective, and hence by the cessation of aspiration. The etheric double of a man, a planetary Logos, and a solar Logos, being shattered, becomes non-polarized as regards its indweller, and permits therefore of escape. It is (to word it otherwise) no longer a source of attraction, nor a focal magnetic point. It becomes non-magnetic, and the great Law of Attraction ceases to control it; hence disintegration is the ensuing condition of the form.
- Pages 129-130.

A Treatise on the Seven Rays:

"The Law demands the entrance of that which can effect a change."

Bearing in mind what I have elsewhere given, it is obvious that that which must find entrance is that vital concentrated will which, when set in motion in an individual, in a group, in a nation, in a kingdom of nature (a planetary center), and in the planet as a whole, i.e., in all the planetary centers simultaneously, will cause a stirring, a changed measure, a new movement and momentum, an uprising and a consequent abstraction. The changes wrought in the centers when the death of the physical body is taking place have never yet been observed or recorded; they are, however, definitely present to the eye of the initiate and prove most interesting and informative. It is the recognition of the condition of the centers which enables the [448] initiate to know - when in process of bestowing healing - whether the physical healing of the body is permissible or not. He can see, by looking, whether the will principle of abstraction, to which I have been referring, is actively present or not. The same process can be seen taking place in organizations and in civilizations in which the form aspect is being destroyed in order that the life may be abstracted and later again rebuild for itself a more adequate form. It is the same under the great processes of initiation, which are not only processes of expanding the consciousness but are rooted in the death or the abstraction process, leading to resurrection and ascension.

That which effects a change is a discharge (to use a totally inadequate phrase) of directed and focused will-energy. This is so magnetic in quality that it draws to itself the life of the centers, bringing about the dissolution of the form but the release of the life. Death comes to the individual man in the ordinary sense of the term when the will-to-live in a physical body goes and the will-to-abstract takes its place. This we call death. In cases of death in war, for instance, it is not then a case of the individual will-to-withdraw, but an enforced participation in a great group abstraction. From its own place, the soul of the individual man recognizes the end of a cycle of incarnation, and recalls its life. This it does through a discharge of the will-energy that is strong enough to bring about the change...Christ referred to this work of abstraction as regards the third great planetary center, Humanity, when He said (and He was speaking as the Representative of the Hierarchy, the second planetary center, into which all human beings achieving initiation are "withdrawn" esoterically), "I, if I be lifted up, will draw all men unto Me." A different word to this word of His will be spoken at the end of the age when the Lord of the World will speak from Shamballa [449] (the first planetary center), will abstract the life principle from the Hierarchy, and all life and consciousness will then be focused in the planetary head center - the Great Council Chamber at Shamballa.

"The Law demands that the changes thus effected remove the form, bring quality to light, and lay the emphasis upon life."

Here the three great aspects - form, quality, and life - are brought into relation, and the point of the evolutionary objective is seen in its true light - Life. Note this phrasing. Form or appearance, having served its purpose, disappears. Death of the form takes place. Quality, the major divine attribute being developed in this planet, becomes dominant, is "conscious of itself" - as the ancient writings put it. It is identified and individual, but has no implementing form, except that of the greater whole in which it finds its place. Neither form nor quality (body nor consciousness) are paramount in the new state of being, only the life aspect, the spirit on its own plane becomes the dominating factor. Some faint dim light on the significance of this may come if you bear in mind that our seven planes are only the seven subplanes of the cosmic physical plane. The process of developing sensitivity in this sevenfold evolution has been undergone in order to enable the initiate to function upon the cosmic astral plane, when withdrawn or abstracted after the higher initiations. He is abstracted from our planetary life altogether. Only one factor could prevent this, and that might be his pledge to serve temporarily within the planetary ring-pass-not. Such members of the Hierarchy Who pledge Themselves to this work are stated to have Buddhic consciousness, and the line of Their descent (occultly understood) is from the Eternal Pilgrim, the Lord of the World, then the Buddha, and then the Christ. They remain identified through free choice with the "quality seen [450] within the light" and, for the term of Their freely rendered service, work with the consciousness aspect in order to lay the emphasis later upon the life aspect...
- Vol. V.