Dissolution, Not Death

- NINTH BOOK -

THAT NONE OF WHAT

TRULY EXISTS CAN BE LOST, BUT

THAT MAN MISTAKES

TRANSFORMATION FOR

ANNIHILATION AND DEATH

1. HERMES: With regard to the soul and the body let us now discuss, my son, in what way the soul is immortal and of what nature is the force that holds the body together and causes it to disintegrate.

2. Death has nothing to do with these things. Death, or mortality, is only a concept derived from the word immortality, whether as an invention or because man has dropped the first syllable and begun to speak of mortality.

3. Death is annihilation, but nothing that exists in the world is annihilated. Since the world is an immortal being, it is impossible for even a single part of it to perish. Everything in the world constitutes part of the world, and above all, Man, the being equipped with reason.

4. Before and above everything is God: the Eternal One, the Uncreated One, the Creator of All Things. The second one, the world, has been created by Him in His image; is maintained and nourished by Him, and is endowed with immortality since, as an immortal being which has proceeded from the Eternal Father, it possess everlasting life.

5. To live in eternity should be clearly distinguished from what eternally is, for the Eternal One has not proceeded from any other being, and even if He had been brought into being, He would have been brought into being by Himself. But He has never been brought into being, but brings Himself forth in eternal genesis. So the Universe has everlasting life out of the Eternal One, but the Father is eternal of Himself; so the world is everlasting and Divine through the Father.

6. He formed the body of the world out of all the matter which He had destined for this purpose. He gave it a spherical shape, determined the qualities that were to adorn it and endowed it, since the matter was Divine, with eternal materiality.

7. After the Father had radiated the qualities of the species into the sphere, He locked them up in it, as in a cave, because He desired to adorn His creation with all characteristics.

8. He surrounded the whole body of the world with immortality so that, if matter sought to break away from the body's cohesive force, it would not return to the chaos peculiar to it.

9. When matter had not yet been formed into body, my son, it was in a state of chaos. It even now gives evidence of this, to a certain extent, by its ability to increase and decrease, an ability which men call death.

This disorder, this return to chaos, only occurs in earthly creatures. The bodies of heavenly beings maintain the order assigned to them in the beginning by the Father. This order is indestructibly preserved for the return of each of them to the State of Perfection.

11. The return of earthly bodies to their former condition consists in the disintegration of the force of cohesion, which turns them back into bodies which cannot be disintegrated, or in other words, into immortal bodies. So there is indeed a falling away of the consciousness of the senses, but no annihilation of the bodies.

12. The third living being is Man, who has been created in the image of the world and, in accordance with the Father's will, is above all the other earthly animals in that he possesses reason. He is not only closely connected with the second God but also approaches, in his inner contemplation, the essence of the first God. With his senses, he perceives the second God as a body, while his insight causes him to recognize the first God as bodiless and as Spirit, as The Good.

13. TAT: Is this living being then not subject to annihilation?

14. HERMES: Rejoice, my son, and understand what God is, what the world is, what an immortal being is, and what a being is that is subject to disintegration. Realize that the world, born of God, is in God; that Man, born of the world, is in the world; and that God, the Origin of the All, contains and preserves all things in Himself.

Ninth Book of the Corpus Hermeticum - The Egyptian Arch-Gnosis, Vol 2 - Jan van Rijckenborgh
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