Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 2.djvu/74

 2. If by transplanting himself into this state of abstraction, this perfect solitude, this renunciation, nothingness, a man attains to this, that he is undistinguishable from God, eternal, identical with God, then the ideas of immortality and transmigration of souls enter as an essential element into the doctrines of Foe, of Buddha. This standpoint is, strictly speaking, higher than that at which the adherents of Tao are supposed to make themselves Shan, immortal.

While this is given out as the highest destiny of man, namely, to make himself immortal by means of meditation, by returning into himself, it is not at the same time asserted that the soul in itself as such is persistent and essential, that the spirit is immortal, but only that man makes himself for the first time immortal by this abstraction, this exaltation, that he ought, in fact, to make himself such. The thought of immortality is involved in the fact that man is a thinking being, that he is in his freedom at home with himself; thus he is absolutely independent; an “Other” cannot break in upon his freedom: he relates himself to himself alone; an Other cannot give itself valid worth within him.

This likeness or equality with myself, “I,” this self-contained existence, this true Infinite, is accordingly what, in the language peculiar to this point of view, is immortal, is subject to no change; it is itself the Unchangeable, what is within itself alone, what moves itself only within itself. “I,” is not dead repose, but movement—movement, however, which is not called change, but is eternal rest, eternal transparency within itself.

Since God is known as the essential, is thought of in His essentiality, and since Being-within-itself, and self-contained Being or Being-with-itself is a true determination, so in relation to the subject this Being-within-itself, this essentiality is known as its nature, the subject being inherently spiritual. This essentiality attaches to the soul, to the subject too; it becomes known that the soul