(4) " He is becoming one," they say; ce he does not see." " He is becoming one," they say; " he does not smell." '• He is becoming one," they say; "he does not taste." "He is becoming one," they say; "he does not speak." " He is becoming one," yamdina text and does not fit in well with the context. Cf. 4. 3. 16. they say; "he does not hear." " He is becoming one," they say; " he does not think.3' " He is becoming one," they say; " he does not touch." <% He is becoming one/' they say; u he does not know." The point of his heart becomes lighted up. By that light the self departs, either by the eye, or by the head, or by other bodily parts. After him, as he goes out, the life (prand) goes out. After the life, as it goes out, all the breaths (prdnd) go out. He becomes one with intelligence. What has intelligence departs with him. His knowledge and his woiks and his former intelligence [i.e. instinct] lay hold of him. The soul of the unreleased after death

(121) Behold, thou understanding spirit: The spirit speaketh to thee, and not to the dead spirit of the flesh: Open wide the door of thy astral birth, and elevate that one part of the astral birth in the light, and let the other in the wrath stand still, and take heed also that thy animated or soulish spirit do wholly unite with the light.

(24) O soul, persistent one, be sober and shake off your drunkenness, which is the work of ignorance. If you persist and live in the body, you dwell in rusticity. When you entered into a bodily birth, you were begotten. Come into being inside the bridal chamber! Be illuminated in mind!

(47) In my own faculties or powers I am as blind a man as ever was, and am able to do nothing; but in the spirit of God my innate [regenerated] spirit seeth through ALL, though not always with long stay or continuance; but only when the spirit of God's love breaketh through my spirit, then is the animated or soulish birth or geniture and the Deity one being, one comprehensibility, and one light.

(4) Those who understand the divine nature of my birth and activities, O Arjun, upon leaving the body, do not have to take birth again, but come to my eternal abode.

(15) 'He who has perceived that which is without sound, without touch, without form, without decay, without taste, eternal, without smell, without beginning, without end, beyond the Great, and unchangeable, is freed from the jaws of death.'

(2) "O Shem, no one who wears the body will be able to complete these things. But through remembrance he will be able to grasp them, in order that, when his mind separates from the body, these things may then be revealed to him. They have been revealed to your race. O Shem, it is difficult for someone wearing a body to complete these things, as I said to you. And it is a small number that will complete them, those who possess the particle of the mind and the thought of the light of the spirit. They will keep their mind from the impure rubbing. For many in the race of nature will seek the security of the power. They will not find it, nor will they be able to do the will of faith. For they are seed of the universal darkness. They will be found in much suffering. The winds and the demons will hate them. And the bondage of the body is severe. For where the winds, and the stars, and the demons are cast out from the power of the spirit, there repentance and testimony come upon them, and mercy will lead them to the unconceived spirit. And those who are repentant will find rest in the consummation and faith, in the place of the hymen. This is the faith that will fill the place that has been left empty. But those who do not share in the spirit of light and in faith will dissolve in the darkness, the place where repentance did not come.

(10) And I have chosen the gate of knowledge of the light, and will follow after the impulse and knowledge of the spirit, though my bestial body should be brought to beggary, or be destroyed or ruined. I regard none of these things, but will say with the royal prophet David, [Psalm lxxiii. 26] Though my body and soul should faint and fail, yet thou, O God, art my salvation, my comfort, and the refuge of my heart.

(29) There be some who affirm, that a man, while in this present time, may and ought to be above being touched by outward things, and in all respects as Christ was after His resurrection. This they try to prove and establish by Christ’s words: “I go before you into Galilee there; shall ye see Me.”36 And again, “A spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye see Me have.”37 These sayings they interpret thus: “As ye have seen Me, and been followers of Me, in My mortal body and life, so also it behoveth you to see Me and follow Me, as I go before you into Galilee; that is to say, into a state in which nothing hath power to move or grieve the soul; on which state ye shall enter, and live and continue therein, before that ye have suffered and gone through your bodily death. And as ye see Me having flesh and bones, and not liable to suffer, so shall ye likewise, while yet in the body and having your mortal nature, cease to feel outward things, were it even the death of the body.” Now, I answer, in the first place, to this affirmation, that Christ did not mean that a man should or could attain unto this state, unless he have first gone through and suffered all that Christ did.

(3) Now, whilst none of these attain the repose of the holy men, he himself, when coming to the end of his own struggles, is filled with a holy consolation, and with much satisfaction enters the path of the holy regeneration. The familiar friends, however, of him who has fallen asleep, as befits their divine familiarity and fellowship, pronounce him blessed, whoever he is, as having reached the desired end crowned with victory, and they send up odes of thanksgiving to the Author of victory, praying also that they may reach the same inheritance. Then they take him and bring him to the Hierarch, as to a bequest of holy crowns; and he right gladly receives him, and performs the things fixed by reverend men, to be performed over those who have piously fallen asleep. II. Mysterion over those who have religiously fallen asleep. The Divine Hierarch collects the reverend Choir, and if the person who has fallen asleep were of the sacerdotal rank, he lays him down before the Divine Altar, and begins with the prayer and thanksgiving to God; but if he belonged to the rank of the chaste Monks, or the holy people, he lays him down near the hallowed sanctuary, before the sacerdotal entrance. Then the Hierarch finishes the prayer of thanksgiving to God; and next, the Leitourgoi, after reading the unfailing promises concerning our holy resurrection, contained in the Divine Oracles, reverently chant the odes of the same teaching and power, from the Oracles of the Psalter. Then the first Leitourgos dismisses the catechumens, and calls aloud the names of the holy people, who have already fallen asleep; amongst whom he deems the man, who has just terminated his life, worthy of mention in the same rank, and urges all to seek the blessed consummation in Christ; then the Divine Hierarch advances, and offers a most holy prayer over him, and after the prayer both the Hierarch himself salutes the defunct, and after him, all who are present. When all have saluted, the Hierarch pours the oil upon the fallen asleep, and when he has offered the holy prayer for all, he places the body in a worthy chamber, with other holy bodies of the same rank. III. Contemplation.

(172) Explore the River of the Soul, whence, or in what order you have come: so that although you have become a servant to the body, you may again rise to the Order from which you descended, joining works to sacred reason.

(1) "Blessings on those who guard themselves against the heritage of death, which is the burdensome water of darkness. For it will not be possible to conquer them in a few moments, since they hasten to come forth from the error of the world. And if they are conquered, they will be kept back from them and be tormented in the darkness until the time of the consummation. When the consummation has come and nature has been destroyed, then their thoughts will separate from the darkness. Nature has burdened them for a short time. And they will be in the ineffable light of the unconceived spirit without a form. And thus is the mind, as I have said from the first.

(45) With veils drawn over their faces, and asleep; But when the morn shall burst forth and the sun arise Every creature will raise its head from its couch; To the unconscious God will restore consciousness; They will stand in rings as slaves with rings in ears; Dancing and clapping hands with songs of praise, Singing with joy, "Our Lord hath restored us to life!" Shedding their old skins and bones, All pressing on from Not-being to Being, On the last day, as well the thankful as the unthankful.

(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.

(12) When the Hierarch has finished these things, he places the body in an honourable chamber, with other holy bodies of the same rank. For if, in soul and body, the man fallen asleep passed a life dear to God, there will be honoured, with the devout soul, the body also, which contended with it throughout the devout struggles. Hence the Divine justice gives to it, together with its own body, the retributive inheritances, as companion and participator in the devout, or the contrary, life. Wherefore, the Divine institution of sacred rites bequeaths the supremely Divine participations to them both--to the soul, indeed, in pure contemplation and in science of the things being done, and to the body, by sanctifying the whole man, as in a figure with the most Divine Muron, and the most holy symbols of the supremely Divine Communion, sanctifying the whole man, and announcing, by purifications of the whole man, that his resurrection will be most complete.

(132) But the wisdom of God prevents this speedy end, He says, "O parts, the appointed time is not yet; It is useless for you to take wing before that day." But as each part desires reunion with its original, How is it with the soul who is a stranger in exile? It says, "O parts of my habitation here below, My absence is sadder than yours, as I am heaven-born. The body loves green pastures and running water, The love of the soul is for life and the living one, The love of the soul is for wisdom and knowledge,

(24) Well hast thou taught me all, as I desired, O Mind. And now, pray, tell me further of the nature of the Way Above as now it is [for me]. To this Man-Shepherd said: When the material body is to be dissolved, first thou surrenderest the body by itself unto the work of change, and thus the form thou hadst doth vanish, and thou surrenderest thy way of life, void of its energy, unto the Daimon. The body's senses next pass back into their sources, becoming separate, and resurrect as energies; and passion and desire withdraw unto that nature which is void of reason.

(1) But why am I prolix about these particulars? For I have abundantly shown, in what has been before said, the transcendency of divine above human divination. It is better, therefore, in compliance with your request, “ to point out to you the way to felicity, and show you in what the essence of it is placed .” For from this the truth will be discovered, and at the same time all the doubts may be easily dissolved. I say, therefore, that the more divine intelligible man, who was formerly united to the Gods by the vision of them, afterwards entered into another soul, which is coadapted to the human form, and through this became fettered with the bonds of necessity and fate. Hence it is requisite to consider how he may be liberated from these bonds. There is, therefore, no other dissolution of them than the knowledge of the Gods. For to know scientifically the good is the idea of felicity; just as the oblivion of good, and deception about evil, happen to be the idea of evil. The former, therefore, is present with divinity; but the latter, which is an inferior destiny, is inseparable from the mortal nature.

(4) So it is with the individual souls; the appetite for the divine Intellect urges them to return to their source, but they have, too, a power apt to administration in this lower sphere; they may be compared to the light attached upwards to the sun, but not grudging its presidency to what lies beneath it. In the Intellectual, then, they remain with soul-entire, and are immune from care and trouble; in the heavenly sphere, absorbed in the soul-entire, they are administrators with it just as kings, associated with the supreme ruler and governing with him, do not descend from their kingly stations: the souls indeed are thus far in the one place with their overlord; but there comes a stage at which they descend from the universal to become partial and self-centred; in a weary desire of standing apart they find their way, each to a place of its very own. This state long maintained, the soul is a deserter from the All; its differentiation has severed it; its vision is no longer set in the Intellectual; it is a partial thing, isolated, weakened, full of care, intent upon the fragment; severed from the whole, it nestles in one form of being; for this, it abandons all else, entering into and caring for only the one, for a thing buffeted about by a worldful of things: thus it has drifted away from the universal and, by an actual presence, it administers the particular; it is caught into contact now, and tends to the outer to which it has become present and into whose inner depths it henceforth sinks far.

With this comes what is known as the casting of the wings, the enchaining in body: the soul has lost that innocency of conducting the higher which it knew when it stood with the All-Soul, that earlier state to which all its interest would bid it hasten back.

It has fallen: it is at the chain: debarred from expressing itself now through its intellectual phase, it operates through sense, it is a captive; this is the burial, the encavernment, of the Soul.

But in spite of all it has, for ever, something transcendent: by a conversion towards the intellective act, it is loosed from the shackles and soars- when only it makes its memories the starting point of a new vision of essential being. Souls that take this way have place in both spheres, living of necessity the life there and the life here by turns, the upper life reigning in those able to consort more continuously with the divine Intellect, the lower dominant where character or circumstances are less favourable.

All this is indicated by Plato, without emphasis, where he distinguishes those of the second mixing-bowl, describes them as "parts," and goes on to say that, having in this way become partial, they must of necessity experience birth.

Of course, where he speaks of God sowing them, he is to be understood as when he tells of God speaking and delivering orations; what is rooted in the nature of the All is figuratively treated as coming into being by generation and creation: stage and sequence are transferred, for clarity of exposition, to things whose being and definite form are eternal.

(15) The souls peering forth from the Intellectual Realm descend first to the heavens and there put on a body; this becomes at once the medium by which as they reach out more and more towards magnitude they proceed to bodies progressively more earthy. Some even plunge from heaven to the very lowest of corporeal forms; others pass, stage by stage, too feeble to lift towards the higher the burden they carry, weighed downwards by their heaviness and forgetfulness.

As for the differences among them, these are due to variation in the bodies entered, or to the accidents of life, or to upbringing, or to inherent peculiarities of temperament, or to all these influences together, or to specific combinations of them.

Then again some have fallen unreservedly into the power of the destiny ruling here: some yielding betimes are betimes too their own: there are those who, while they accept what must be borne, have the strength of self-mastery in all that is left to their own act; they have given themselves to another dispensation: they live by the code of the aggregate of beings, the code which is woven out of the Reason-Principles and all the other causes ruling in the kosmos, out of soul-movements and out of laws springing in the Supreme; a code, therefore, consonant with those higher existences, founded upon them, linking their sequents back to them, keeping unshakeably true all that is capable of holding itself set towards the divine nature, and leading round by all appropriate means whatsoever is less natively apt.

In fine all diversity of condition in the lower spheres is determined by the descendent beings themselves.