Death is a tax the soul has to pay for having had a name and a form.
Hazrat Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan
Related Material by Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan
Compiled by Wahiduddin Richard Shelquist – wahiduddin.net
All that is constructed is subject to destruction; all that is composed must be decomposed; all that is formed must be destroyed; that which has birth has death. But all this belongs to matter; the spirit which is absorbed by this formation of matter or by its mechanism lives, for spirit cannot die.
That which the soul has borrowed it must give back when it has done its work; it was borrowed for a certain time and for a certain purpose. When the purpose is fulfilled, when the time is finished, then every plane asks for that which the soul has borrowed from it, and one cannot help but give it back to that plane. It is this process which is called assimilation. Since people are born greedy and selfish they have taken all things willingly, enthusiastically — they give them back grudgingly and call it death. …
Death is nothing but the taking off of one garb and giving it back to the plane from which it was borrowed, for the condition is this: one cannot take the garb of the lower plane to the higher plane. The soul is only released when it is willing — or compelled — to give its garb to the plane it has taken it from. It is this which releases the soul to go on in its travel. And as it proceeds to a higher plane, after its stay there, it must again give its garb back and be purified from it in order to go further. … This knowledge also throws a light upon the question of death. Death is not really death; it is only a passing stage, it is only a change, as changing clothes.
Commentary by Murshid S.A.M. (Sufi Ahmed Murad)
Samuel L. Lewis
Soul does not die, form dies. Soul does not die, name dies. Life is a journey from aeon to aeon and yet is not a journey. Circumstances change, essences never. We don and doff cloaks, which we call bodies, which are not ourselves. Such is the nature of creation.