Below is an excerpt from C von Hassett’s Awakening in the End: The Luminous Body

The Luminous Body

We are each, literally, a body of light. We have our physical body, yes, but what animates the physical body is this subtle body of light, known in the Eastern traditions as the Luminous Body. The light or luminous body is, in essence, an awareness body, without which the physical body cannot come into being. It cannot form. Once in being, however, when the time comes for our luminous body to leave its physical form, which is the time of our eventual death, the body it once inhabited is no longer “lit,” so to speak, for it is now seen solely as a corpse.

To roughly measure your own luminous body, lift your arms straight above your head and let them fall, di Vinci style, outward to your sides and down to your hips. This gives you an idea of its general range and shape. Imagine your light body as the flame of a candle, wherein its wick is the actual physical body. As we move more imminently toward death, our luminous body begins to dim, as would the flame on a faltering wick. As it dims, it draws down onto the body before receding altogether within. This begins the dissolution of our animate elements: earth, water, fire and air.

The dissolution of our elements – the final stages of existence in our body – occurs in the central channel, through which the luminous body ascends, sheds its individual elements at their corresponding chakras, and exits as a spatial awareness through the crown chakra located at the top of the head.