"I received a letter from New York while sojourning in Florida which contained the following: ‘The report has gone around that you died last week. Of course we know it is not true, but how do these things get started?’ I had to reply to this letter somewhat after the following manner, ‘In the language of Mark Twain I must say that the report of my death is greatly exaggerated — and yet somehow or other the same report is true.’ The offices of death are many. According to the apostle Paul, death is one of the most helpful and necessary things that can be performed. He advised the habit of ‘dying daily,’ and this prefaced the glorious possibility of being born daily also! There is something back of the ‘idea’ of death which is replete with substance for meditation."

"When you die to anything you are through with it. Just as in the relative sense of the word when a man dies he is immediately separated from all his possessions; good, bad, or indifferent. His debts are cancelled so far as he is concerned. His estate is disintegrated almost immediately, and no longer is attached to him. Like a cloud of dust in a hurricane, his entire affairs are scattered in all directions. Not understanding Life, the greatest enemy is death. It deprives Life of its manifestation. When Jesus became conscious of Life, He could pass in and out of the shadow called death almost as if passing through a purifying fire. When He arose from physical death, even His disciples did not recognize Him until He allowed Himself to take on enough of the former form, to which He had died, for them to do so. All along the way to Emmaus, they could not distinguish the man with whom they had been for three years. ‘I have power to lay down my life, and I have power to take it up again.’ And He took it up on a higher plane!"

"When the eagle is born or hatched, it means death to a thing or state of things called ‘egg’ — and in this new process it is impossible to carry any of the old estate with you. Many are seeking the new birth, but they do not want to go through death to get it. In other words, they want to hold on to old stages of development, and at the same time try to express new capacities. It is quite as impossible for a caterpillar to fly as it is for an egg; both must perform the death upon the thing of which they want to be rid, and re-embody themselves with the new reality, before they can attain the expression they are seeking. When you learn the proper interpretation of the word ‘death’ you will see that it becomes a friend (O death, where is thy sting?), for it is a cleansing, liberating process. It is a letting go completely and ascending to a place where the former things cannot enter in, and have nothing whatsoever to do with the present manifestation. Instead of getting rid of things temporarily, man dies completely to the idea of its manifestation. In the new place he finds himself as incapable of experiencing his former limitations as an eagle flying over the abyss would have in experiencing the cramped quarters of the eggshell from which it evolved."

"A tiny plant starts from its cell and the seed dies. It pushes forth a bud, the flower comes, and the scales or outer leaves die, and the flower is born. The fruit pushes out into manifestation and the flower dies, and so it goes ever onward and upward into the more glorious manifestation of Life here and now. The never-ending merging into new and lovelier states takes place when what you have been and have obtained is ready to die, and when the ‘last enemy’ has become a friend and thus the ‘sting’ has been taken from it. The offices of death are oblivion to that which is outgrown and of no further use. If you have not already died to much of the conscious thinking of yester-years, you are suffering from arrested or retarded mental development. If you have not died to many of your previous stages of development and former states-of-being, then your growth is indeed stunted and you are a spiritual dwarf. And so death, when properly understood, becomes the friendly enemy. It is that which throws a veil of oblivion to outgrown states and cast-off limitations and causes the Magdalene to look about and see that she has no accusers. Suddenly she is dead to the thing called harlot and all that has gone with it, and she is born at the same instant to something that cannot experience or even understand the former state of things. The friendly enemy has released her!"

Much more in the text:

https://www.godfire.net/eby/rev180.html