him with force. After death, _the God effects his own release
from the man_ by departing from the animal body. As man
carries within him this divine consciousness, it is his task
to battle with his animal inclinations, and to raise himself
above them, by the help of the divine principle, a task which
the animal cannot achieve, and which therefore is not
demanded of it.[11]

The "man", using the word in the sense of personality, as it is used
in the latter half of this sentence, is only conditionally immortal;
the true man, the evolving God, releases himself, and so much of the
personality goes with him as has raised itself into union with the
divine.

The body thus left to the rioting of the countless lives--previously
held in constraint by Prâna, acting through its vehicle the etheric
double--begins to decay, that is to break up, and with the
disintegration of its cells and molecules, its particles pass away
into other combinations.

On our return to Earth we may meet again some of those same countless
lives that in a previous incarnation made of our then body their
passing dwelling; but all that we are just now concerned with is the
breaking up of the body whose life-span is over, and its fate is
complete disintegration. To the dense body, then, Death means
dissolution as an organism, the loosing of the bonds that united the
many into one.


THE FATE OF THE ETHERIC DOUBLE.