It is Plato's doctrine, and none more defensible, that the soul, before it entered the realm of Becoming, existed in the universe of Being.  Released  [at death] from the region of time and space, it returns to its former abode into communion with itself.  After a season of quiet "all alone with the Alone," of assimilation of its earthly experiences and memories, refreshed and invigorated, it is seized again by the desire for further trials of its strength, further knowledge of the universe [in the physical nature], the companionship of former friends, by the the desire to keep in step and on the march with the moving world.  There, it seeks out and once more animates a body, the medium of communication with its fellow travelers, and sails forth in this vessel upon a new venture in the ocean of Becoming.

As a worker in gold, taking an ornament, moulds it to another form newer and fairer; so in truth the soul, leaving the body here, and putting off unwisdom, makes for itself [in the heavenly state] another form newer and fairer: a form like the forms of departed souls, or of the Seraphs, or of the gods . . . .

For never to an evil place goeth one who doeth good. The man whose devotion has been broken off by death goeth to the regions of the righteous, where he dwells for an immensity of years and is then born again on earth in a pure and fortunate family: or even a family of those who are spiritually illuminated.

For in the next world neither father, nor mother, nor wife, nor sons, nor relations stay to be his companions; spiritual merit alone remains [with him].  Single is each being born; single it dies; single it enjoys [the reward of its] virtue; single [it suffers the punishment of its] sin.

Not all human souls but only the pious ones are divine.  Once separated from the body, and after the struggle to acquire piety, which consists in knowing God and injuring none, such a soul becomes all intelligence.  The impious soul, however, punishes itself by seeking a human body to enter into, for no other body can receive a human soul; it cannot enter the body of an animal devoid of reason.  Divine law preserves the human soul from such infamy.

Do you not know that those who depart out of this life according to the law of Nature. . . enjoy eternal fame; that their houses and their posterity are sure; that their souls are pure and obedient, and obtain a most noble place in heaven, from whence, in the revolution of ages, they are again sent into pure bodies; while the souls of those whose hands have acted madly against themselves are received by the darkest place in Hades?

I don't want to be one note sounding alone . . . . If I could be one note in a glorious symphony, would it not be well for separateness to be lost in symphony?

After the death of the body, idhlozi (the soul) hovers for a while near the body, and then departs to Esilweni, the Places of Beasts.  This is very different from entering the body of a beast.  In Esilweni, the soul assumes a shape, part beast and part human . . . . After a period, long or short, according to the strength of the animal nature, the soul throws aside its Beastly shape, and moves onward to a place of rest.  There it sleeps till a time comes when it dreams that something to do and learn awaits it on earth; then it awakes and returns, through the Place of Beasts, to the earth and is born again as a child.

[Souls are] ordained to wander between incarnations, and in a higher region dwell advanced beings call genii.  They are present at, and assist in, the most advanced of the initiatory rites . . ., they act and serve as saviors in battle and at sea; and whatsoever thing in these capacities they do amiss . . . they are punished for it, for they are driven down again to earth and coupled with human bodies.

As I walk by night on the seashore and listen to the song of the waves, all sorts of visions and memories flood my brain.  I seem as though I had once looked down from above on the same shifting scene and, dizzy with terror, had fallen to the earth.  I seem as though with telescopic eyes, I had seen the stars moving through the heavens large as life . . . then, as from millennial depths, there surge up . . . thoughts of primeval wisdom, but all so misty that I know not what they mean.

In sleep our ideas, our sensations, our sentiments of the evening before, seem to become incarnate in us, become ourselves by a phenomenon analogous to that of the digestion and assimilation of our bodily food.  It is thus that sleep regenerates us, and that we emerge from it the stronger, with a certain oblivion.  In death, which is a mightier oblivion, it seems our life becomes digested and elaborated.  Then comes the awakening, or new birth . . . . We are in our potentiality the exact sequence of what we were, still the same being but grown larger.

 . . . . All experienced the same thing.  They virtually shed their physical bodies, as a butterfly comes out of a cocoon. They describe a feeling of peace, often beautiful, indescribable peace, no pain, no anxiety.  And they were perfect -completely whole.

Between one active life and another there may well be . . . an intermediate state of mental rumination and reflection as many theologians have assumed.  This state, it has been said, "is not a domain of deeds and works, for the external conditions for these are wanting . . . it is the domain of inwardness, of silent consideration and pondering, a domain of recollection in the full sense of the word."

. . . basically, the inner portion of you, the soul-stuff, will not suddenly change its method of perception nor its characteristics after death.

"There is no death of anyone save only in appearance, even as there is no birth except in seeming.  The change from being to becoming seems to be birth, and the change from becoming to being seems to be death; but in reality no one is ever born, nor does one ever die."  --Appollonius of Tyana

This theory [of conservation of mental categories] has an important relationship to Plato's  idea of a recollection by our soul of conditions in the world from which it originally came.  The conclusion at which we arrive is that in the non-physical world to which we return at death, there is the space and time of our perception, but not the metrical space and time of physics . . .