One of the amazing creations of the life process is the ability of some forms of life to shed one form and adopt another. We commonly notice that some creatures such as butterflies that can fly great distances, and as in the case of the monarch butterfly several thousand miles, emerge from creatures that would otherwise experience a few hundred feet at the most.
What is so amazing is the caterpillar of the monarch is so unassuming and innocent of its future existence. It must come as a really big surprise to a creature from one day being a caterpillar larva to another being a pupa, and then to being a creation that can fly extraordinary distances: http://www.ohio-nature.com/butterfly-pictures.html
It might be said that the consciousness of a crawling larva must be fairly simple relative to the consciousness of a winged butterfly.
We also know that the monarch butterfly's life cycle is repetitive in that it returns to a region in Mexico, Angangueo, consistently. See: http://www.learner.org/jnorth/spring2000/species/monarch/index.html
One might be very simple to ask the question whether human beings shed human form and leave earth for the next stage of their journey. The next leg of being and consciousness for the human being does not appear to be anything that can be seen or touched as in the case of the butterfly where it is obvious what is happening. Is the life cycle of the butterfly analogous to the life cycle of the human being? Many think so, and it is this thought that gives them hope!
The real question becomes that of explaining what produces the new form that a human takes on the death of the human body. It does not seem to be anything visible since what is visible is a huge number of larvae and lots of ordinary flies laying eggs. Hopefully, the next stage of existence represents something beyond an ordinary fly, which seems of a much lower order to a butterfly, such as the monarch.
What this does suggest, however, is that the life cycles of the ordinary fly and the human being are closely linked in some way. It is a human characteristic that we kill ordinary flies on sight, well apart from great people who respect all life. Isn't there a lesson here that we should have respect for even flies, after all, flies have eaten human flesh, all be it dead flesh.
But returning to the possibility of a shedding of human form and the adoption by a very complex and as yet unknown process of a very different form, what are we to think? Some say that become the new form is of spiritual matter, we will never discover it. That, however, is a non-sequitor because we are aware of spirit, and do know of its existence. Everyone, I have talked to, seems to think that spirit is real. But, then what actually is spirit?
Let's assume as a starting point that spirit is real and that it is not fermionic, see: http://www.fnal.gov/pub/Art_Gallery/archive/MesonWilbat/indexMeson.html in form. What sort of form is it? I think that it might be leptonic, see:
http://delphiwww.cern.ch/delfigs/delwww/sumphys/tau/tau_leptonic.html
and have some sort of form that does not obey the Pauli exclusion principle. See:
http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/pauli.html
or,
http://universe-review.ca/F12-molecule.htm
It happens that a good leptonic candidate may be light itself, which does not seem to occupy a location.
http://people.cornell.edu/pages/jag8/tetra10.html
When we look towards the sun, but not directly at it, we should recognize that light from the sun sustains all life on earth, even spiritual life! Even the Christian saviour Jesus Christ of Nasareth made reference to light saying that he was the light and that no one came to the father but by him. We are so intelligent, and yet we are only beginning to understand photosynthesis and are just barely beginning on the road to create fusion energy. See:
http://fire.pppl.gov/iaea_2006.html
The creation of a fusion energy creation machine will change human society in ways we can't even imagine. All human life has up to now had to cope with limited energy. The joy behind a fusion energy machine is that it respresents an achievement of people of many different cultures working together in a highly disciplined way. Perhaps, there is hope for the future if such projects become the norm.