Your answer is interesting. People had never told me anything like that. I believe that dying is not just about ceasing to exist (from a physical point of view). You can die while you're still alive. This is a spiritual or mental death (as you prefer to see it). When you don't have a purpose in your life (or you just don't know yet), nothing satisfies you, etc; you simply leave your bed to repeating your routine every day, for me, that is to be dead.

I believe that when your body it's not tangible anymore, your conscience, spirit or whatever you prefer to call it, it passes to another plane. I think you're frozen in time, and eventually, you come back to our world as a new person (reincarnation). As you say, this cycle is repeated again and again.