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Divine were thus forced to practise their faith in secret, and they also advised their followers to be cautious and guarded in expression.
To revert to the subject. The only way then, of dying alive, that is to say of out-living death, is to become actively conscious of the inherent Divinity of the Soul. This will fill the interior with Light and Life, and will induce the will to shun the temptations and toys of the external world, thus establishing it firmly in the principle of desirelessness. The body which is held together by the force of the magnetism of the desiring nature will be dissolved into its component parts, ju the absence of desires, and purity of Spirit will be attained as the culmination of the process of Self-realization. This is how death will be conquered by 'works.' As stated by the apostle, the last enemy that shall be destroyed is death” (I Cor, xv. 26). This is true, because death does not exist for pure Spirit, that is a simple substance, but is an incident attaching to compounds, that is to say, to embodied existence. The result is the same as desoribed by St. Paul, though he delights here in the use of mystifying expression :
“ For I through the law am dead to the law, that I might live unto
God."
As God, perhaps, would have been too un. ambiguous to suit the language of mystics ! In any case the exhortation to the disciple is forceful and grand :
Svako thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, aud
Chat alzil kite thee ligtt."
(Erossians,
11).
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