Both the Bhagavad Gita and Evolutionary Astrology discuss how the Soul creates the ego it needs for each life and how that ego then creates the personality necessary to function within that life. And yet that personality doesn’t remain stagnant throughout one’s life.

In the parable that Chopra threads through his book, Life After Death, spiritual teacher Ramana points this fact out to the about-to-be-widowed Savitri as he introduces her to the “ghosts” of her own past, i.e., her personality at different ages. The point of this knowledge is that death is with us every moment of every day. We experience the death of old cells, old emotions, old thoughts and even old identities, as it were. We are not the same as we were 20 or 30 years ago, or even yesterday or this morning. And yet there is something within that does remain: the Soul.

Most of us who believe in reincarnation know that our Soul provides the continuity from life to life; although it changes form, puts on a new overcoat, as Yogananda used to refer to it, the Soul maintains itself as the continuing consciousness whether in a body or form or in between incarnations. I think that most of us probably have thought about death in this larger image, as a transformation of consciousness out of a body to the astral plane, or heaven, or whatever term we’re most comfortable with. And yet, as Ramana points out, we have a taste of this ‘death,’ this transformation throughout our life.

I had never really stopped to think about it this way, but as I read this part of the parable, it made complete sense, a sense that was very comforting. For when I looked back throughout my own life, and saw my own “ghosts” of past personalities, it strengthened my knowledge and understanding of the Soul as the continuing thread throughout this and other lifetimes, and how the consciousness that I refer to either by the pronoun I or by my name is still in tact even though my personality is not in tact the way it was earlier in my life.

As I continue to grasp what this parable means and how it points to a larger reality, it also gives me increasing comfort and understanding of the ‘death’ or transition I am approaching that will end this body, this incarnation, but not the journey of the Soul that inhabits the body. If we look at these “ghosts” of ourselves from time to time and integrate what they have to teach us and then release them, we take another step in our preparation for letting go of that final personality of this incarnation.

And while I won’t know for sure until I arrive at that point, it seems as if it will be much easier to let go of one or a few of our latest personalities at the final transition  than to have to release all of them at once. Perhaps we can think of them as practice for the final transition, or “little deaths.” It’s one more thing we can do to make our transition as easy as possible, since at the time of our transition we also have to overcome our survival instinct, the strongest instinct we have. But when we realize how much we have actually given up before this time, then we can better understand how this thing we call death is truly a transformation, as energy – the Soul – cannot be destroyed; it can only change form.