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THE KEY OF KNOWLEDGE.
Ananda within, which will turn this very earth into a heaven, for Jehovah ordains:
"I call heaven and earth to record this day against you that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live" (Deut. XXX. 19.)
Here the choice distinctly lies between 'life' and 'death;' and its significance becomes obvious the moment we understand the passage: 'for in the day that thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die' (Genesis, II. 17). The soul is blissful and immortal by nature, but when it identifies itself completely with its body, which is perishable, it is inevitable that it should regard the dissolution of the body as its own death.
Now, since the knowledge of good and evil of things is possible only by observing their effect on our own bodies, it naturally tends to 'pamper' the body at the cost of the soul. Hence, he who abandons himself to sensualism must necessarily believe the death of the body to be his own death, and in this sense may be said to die. Obviously, then, he who knows himself to be the immortal Atman obtains the resurrection from the dead.
Thus, the true sense of redemption has nothing in common with the idea of a future rising of the dead on an universal Judgment Day.
Why mankind cling so frantically to the notion of resurrection is, because
"the best and most plausible ground for athanatism is to be found in the hope that immortality will re-unite us to the beloved friends who have been prematurely taken from us by some grim mischance. But even this supposed good fortune proves to be an illusion on closer enquiry; and in any case, it would be marred by the prospect of meeting the less agreeable acquaintances and the enemies who have troubled our existence here below. Even the
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