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which is immortal and blissful by nature, hence, the very essence of immortality and joy, can never be an attribute of what is essentially perishable. Therefore, all that is characterised by death, that is to say, the personal forms of the dead, are not God; and, conversely, Godhood is not the characteristic of the dead, hence, God is not the God of the dead-which term certainly includes the Jewish patriarchs.
THE KEY OF KNOWLEDGE.
6
In respect of the third and the fourth propositions, it suffices to point out the significance of the idea of death in connection with the human soul. In association with the physical body with which it identifies itself, more or less completely, which is evident from such sayings as, 'I am old,' I am dying,' and the like, the soul appropriates to itself the conditions of the body. as if there were a complete identity between them. In reality, the soul, being immortal and undying and free from degeneration and decay, ought to think, not 'I am old,' and the like, but my body is old,' and so on. But, so great is the power of imagination, and so far-reaching the consequences of the Fall,' that by far the greatest majority of mankind seldom think themselves to be any other than the body. When the soul is obsessed with the delusion of identity between itself and its body, it is inevitable that it should imagine the death of the body as its own. Hence, when death, is about to effect a forcible separation between the immortal tenant and his perishable tenement, the ignorant soul, whose craving for life becomes stronger as the body grows weaker clings to the fast-dissolving compound of matter with all the tenacity of a drowning
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