"In discussing the various popular and religious misconceptions with regard to death, I have naturally to a considerable extent indicated the attitude held\ towards it by students of Theosophy. From our point of view we cannot but look upon it as a matter of much less importance to the soul of man than it is commonly supposed to be. To the average man of Western birth physical life seems to present itself as a straight line beginning abruptly at birth, and cut off again with equal abruptness at death. To us, however, even if for the moment we consider one incarnation only, the physical existence appears rather as a small segment of a large circle, birth and death being nothing more than the points at which the circumference of that circle crosses a certain straight line which marks the boundary between the physical and astral planes."