What dies with death?

Q: What dies with death?
M: The idea 'I am this body' dies; the witness does not.
Q: The Jains believe in a multiplicity of witnesses, forever separate.
M: That is their tradition based on the experience of some great people. The one witness reflects itself in the countless bodies as 'I am'. As long as the bodies, however subtle, last, the 'I am' appears as many. Beyond the body there is only the One.
Q: God?
M: The Creator is a person whose body is the world. The Nameless one is beyond all gods.
Q: Sri Ramana Maharshi died. What difference did it make to him?
M: None. What he was, he is -- the Absolute Reality.
Q: But to the common man death makes a difference.
M: What he thinks himself to be before death he continues to be after death. His self-image survives.