(1) Whether every human being is immortal or we are wholly destroyed, or whether something of us passes over to dissolution and destruction, while something else, that which is the true man, endures for ever- this question will be answered here for those willing to investigate our nature.

We know that man is not a thing of one only element; he has a soul and he has, whether instrument or adjunct in some other mode, a body: this is the first distinction; it remains to investigate the nature and essential being of these two constituents.

Reason tells us that the body as, itself too, a composite, cannot for ever hold together; and our senses show us it breaking up, wearing out, the victim of destructive agents of many kinds, each of its constituents going its own way, one part working against another, perverting, wrecking, and this especially when the material masses are no longer presided over by the reconciling soul.

And when each single constituent is taken as a thing apart, it is still not a unity; for it is divisible into shape and matter, the duality without which bodies at their very simplest cannot cohere.

The mere fact that, as material forms, they have bulk means that they can be lopped and crushed and so come to destruction.

If this body, then, is really a part of us, we are not wholly immortal; if it is an instrument of ours, then, as a thing put at our service for a certain time, it must be in its nature passing.

The sovereign principle, the authentic man, will be as Form to this Matter or as agent to this instrument, and thus, whatever that relation be, the soul is the man.

(1) [This chapter is supplementary to chapter iii.] Those who understand the conditions of life devote no attention to things which life cannot accomplish. Those who understand the conditions of destiny devote no attention to things over which knowledge has no control. For the due nourishment of our physical frames, certain things are needful. Yet where such things abound, the physical frame is not always nourished. For the preservation of life it is necessary that there should be no abandonment of the physical frame. Yet where the physical frame is not abandoned, life does not always remain. Life comes, and cannot be declined. It goes, and cannot be stopped. But alas! the world thinks that to nourish the frame is enough to keep life. And if indeed it is not enough, what then is the world to do? Although not enough, it must still be done. It cannot be neglected. For if one is to neglect the physical frame, better far to retire at once from the world. By renouncing the world, one gets rid of the cares of the world. The result is a natural level, which is equivalent to a re-birth. And he who is re-born is near.

(12) Again, the Cosmos is the first of living things, while man is second after it, though first of things subject to death. Man hath the same ensouling power in him as all the rest of living things; yet is he not only not good, but even evil, for that he's subject unto death. For though the Cosmos also is not good in that it suffers motion, it is not evil, in that it is not subject to death. But man, in that he's subject both to motion and to death, is evil.

(18) Know, therefore, generally, my son, that all that is in Cosmos is being moved for increase or for decrease. Now that which is kept moving, also lives; but there is no necessity that that which lives, should be all same. For being simultaneous, the Cosmos, as a whole, is not subject to change, my son, but all its parts are subject unto it; yet naught [of it] is subject to corruption, or destroyed. It is the terms employed that confuse men. For 'tis not genesis that constituteth life, but 'tis sensation; it is not change that constituteth death, but 'tis forgetfulness. Since, then, these things are so, they are immortal all - Matter, [and] Life, [and] Spirit, Mind [and] Soul, of which whatever liveth, is composed.

(11) When one is so far advanced that every shadow and every echo has disappeared, so that one is quite quiet and firm, it is safe within the cave of power, where all that is miraculous returns to its roots. The place is not changed but divides itself. It is incorporeal space where a thousand and ten thousand places are one place. The time is not changed, but divides itself. It is immeasurable time when all the aeons are like a moment.

(5) And so he should be the full store of life and deathlessness; if that it needs must be that he should live for ever. And so the Sun, just as the Cosmos, lasts for aye. So is he, too, for ever ruler of [all] vital powers, or of [our] whole vitality; he is their ruler, or the one who gives them out. God, then, is the eternal ruler of all living things, or vital functions, that are in the World. He is the everlasting giver-forth of Life itself. Once for all [time] He hath bestowed Life on all vital powers; He further doth preserve them by a law that lasts for evermore, as I will [now] explain. XXX

(93) By placing man himself at the point D 10, his true constitution is revealed. He exists upon four worlds, only one of which is visible. It is then made evident that his parts and members upon the material plane are, by analogy, hierarchies and intelligences in the higher worlds. Here, again, the law of interpenetration is evidenced. Although within man is the entire universe (the 43 spheres interpenetrating D 10), he is ignorant of its existence because he cannot exercise control over that which is superior to or greater than himself. Nevertheless, all these higher spheres exercise control over him, as his functions and activities demonstrate. If they did not, he would be an inert mass of substance. Death is merely the result of deflecting the life impulses of the higher rings away from the lower body.

(9) "Albeit at the dissolution of the universe, that is when the number of the perfect souls is completed and the mystery [through] which the universe altogether hath risen, is completed, I will pass a thousand years according to the years of the Light, being king over all the emanations of the Light and over the whole number of the perfect souls who have received all mysteries."

(7) But the esoteric schools of thought, and the occultists, were always insistent upon the principle that there was nothing lifeless in the universe—that everything was instinct with life in some form, degree, or phase. And, lo! modern science has at last reached the point where it is practically looking Occultism squarely in the face, in full agreement upon this important point. The old idea of a half-lifeless universe is fast passing away, and men of advanced science are beginning to whisper to each other that "The Universe is Alive, as a Whole and in all of its parts." Surely this is a remarkable change in scientific opinion.

(1) Now let us sing the Eternal Life, from which comes the self-existing Life, and every life; and from which, to all things however partaking of life, is distributed the power to live appropriately to each. Certainly the life; and the immortality of the immortal Angels, and the very indestructibility of the angelic perpetual motion, both is, and is sustained from It, and by reason of It. Wherefore, they are also called living always and immortal; and again, not immortal, because not from themselves have they their immortality and eternal life; but from the vivifying Cause forming and sustaining all life; and as we said of Him, Who is, that He is Age even of the self-existing Being, so also here again (we say) that the Divine Life, which is above life, is life-giving and sustaining even of the self-existing Life; and every life and life-giving movement is from the Life which is above every life, and all source of all life. From It, even the souls have their indestructibility, and all living creatures, and plants in their most remote echo of life, have their power to live. And when It is "taken away," according to the Divine saying, all life fails, and to It even things that have failed, through their inability to participate in It, when again returning, again become living creatures.

(5) A man dies when he has no life-air, just as the fishes are destroyed when deprived of water. Therefore the adepts have taught the people to hold fast to the primal and to guard the One; it is the

(7) Those who take shelter in me, striving for liberation from old-age and death, come to know Brahman , the individual self, and the entire field of karmic action.

(19) Whatever then doth live, oweth its immortality unto the Mind, and most of all doth man, he who is both recipient of God, and co-essential with Him. For with this life alone doth God consort; by visions in the night, by tokens in the day, and by all things doth He foretell the future unto him - by birds, by inward parts, by wind, by tree. Wherefore doth man lay claim to know things past, things present and to come.

(2) So down [to Earth] He sent the Cosmos of this Frame Divine - man, a life that cannot die, and yet a life that dies. And o'er [all other] lives and over Cosmos [too], did man excel by reason of the Reason (Logos) and the Mind. For contemplator of God's works did man become; he marvelled and did strive to know their Author.

(4) Man, then, being thus created and composed, and to such ministry and service set by Highest God,—man, by his keeping suitably the world in proper order, [and] by his piously adoring God, in both becomingly and suitably obeying God’s Good Will,—[man being] such as this, with what reward think’st thou he should be recompensed? If that, indeed,—since Cosmos is God’s work,—he who preserves and adds on to its beauty by his love, joins his own work unto God’s Will; when he with toil and care doth fashion out the species (which He hath made [already] with His Divine Intent), with help of his own body;—with what reward think’st thou he should be recompensed, unless it be with that with which our forebears have been blest?

(113) But that the life lies hid under and in the death of the earth, as also in the children of the earth, I will here demonstrate to you.

(50) Accordingly I find, that the birth or geniture of nature stands to this day, and generateth itself, just so as it did when it first took its beginning; and whatsoever riseth up in this world, whether men, beasts, trees, herbs, grass, mineral ores, or be it what it will, all riseth up in such a quality, manner and form as it first did; also every life, be it good or bad, taketh its original thus [as it did from the beginning].

(6) But all things must be made; both ever made, and also in accordance with the influence of every space. For He who makes, is in them all; not stablished in some one of them, nor making one thing only, but making all. For being Power, He energizeth in the things He makes and is not independent of them - although the things He makes are subject to Him. Now gaze through Me upon the Cosmos that's now subject to thy sight; regard its Beauty carefully - Body in pure perfection, though one than which there's no more ancient one, ever in prime of life, and ever-young, nay, rather, in even fuller and yet fuller prime!

(67) Moreover, thou art to know also, that the regimen or dominion of the seven spirits of God in the house of this world is not on that account exsiccated or dried up in death, that all must needs receive its life and beginning from the planets and stars.

(15) And Death is not real, even in the Relative sense--it is but Birth to a new life--and You shall go on, and on, and on, to higher and still higher planes of life, for aeons upon aeons of time. The Universe is your home, and you shall explore its farthest recesses before the end of Time. You are dwelling in the Infinite Mind of THE ALL, and your possibilities and opportunities are infinite, both in time and space. And at the end of the Grand Cycle of Aeons, when THE ALL shall draw back into itself all of its creations--you will go gladly for you will then be able to know the Whole Truth of being At One with THE ALL. Such is the report of the Illumined--those who have advanced well along The Path.