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RITUAL
356
from the Auglo-Saxon hal (Old German and Icelandic, heil and Gothic hails), meaning whole, sound or safe. There is, thus, no question of condonation or forgiveness of sins, but of making whole, of removing unsoundness, of eradicating 'disease.' It is the sacrificing of the báhirâtman, in symbolic thought the purusha-medha of the ancient Hindus, which alone has the effect of making us holy. As the unholy traits and tendencies constituting this ill-omened factor of evil are eradicated and destroyed from the mind, divine grace is set free to manifest itself in the life of their destroyer, till, finally, on the destruction of all the forces of sin and evil, the perfection of Divinity is enjoyed by the Jiva (soul) now become perfectly whole and holy by the very act or fact of ridding himself of these agents of defilement and corruption.
The substance of the accusation-when ye slew a man (according to the letter of the text, it should be, when ye slew a soul)-is that the real man has been smother & by the apparent ego, the bahirátman, of the soul-less humanity, who regard Life as the product of matter, and themselves as no other than the physical body. They have killed the soul, as it were, and then contend among themselves concerning it-whether it exist ? whether it be not the product of matter? and so forth. God (Life) now astonishes you with a miracle. He asks you to touch what you regard as a dead carcass with a part of the sacrificed cow, when lo! and behold!
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