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14
THE TRUTH
the soul itself and there can be no obtaining them from without. They have only to be exposed from within where they lie burried.
The idea of merging in God on attaining Nirvana implies no more than the acquisition of status and divinity of Godhood, for there can be no merger of two or more real entities into one another by any posibility. The analogy of the absorption of a drop in the sea is beside the point, and actually proves the opposite of that which it is intended to prove, since the sea is but a collection of drops so that the additional drop only goes to increase the number of those already there.
Clement of Alexandria, who was the famous disciple of St. Peter, says ;
“But it is not as a portion of God that the spirit is in each of us”-A. N. C. L. XII, 273
“But God has no natural relation to us.... neither on the supposition of his having made us from nothing, nor on that of having formed us from matter .......... neither portions of himself nor his children” Ibid, page 45.
Origen says in A. N. C. L. XXIV, p. 151 :
“Beloved, says he, now are we the sons of God, not by natural affection, but because we have God as our father. For it is the greater love, that, seeing we have no relationship to God, He nevertheless loves us and calls us His sons",
· From the scientific point of view also, it is incorrect to say that all souls are portions of God. This will mean that God is not an individual entity, but a plural being, a collection of souls which can be separated. Only a mixture of several units can be separated into parts without losing its attributes.
The supposition that souls are not separate from God, but all of them only form its infinite body, will suffer from the difficulty that souls will lose their individual entity. No portion of
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