Spiritual Authority and Temporal Power in the Indian Theory of Government c2.s1.76

c2.s1.76

the man, whether in natural or in supernatural generation, sows himself, and from which he springs up again (John XII. 24, "Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground *and die*, it abideth alone, : but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit"). Now, just as the natural insemination is a death and a regeneration (JUB. III. 8. 10 and 9. 1, etc.), so is the supernatural, where the sacrificial fire is the womb and it is inasmuch as the Sacrificer "inseminates himself" (*ātmānaṁ siñcati*) therein that he comes to birth in yonder Sun and is possessed of two selves (*dvyātman*, JB. I. 17. 6, cf. AB. VI. 29 and ŚB. VII. 2. 1. 6), of which the second is, of course, the "new man," the *anyám ātmánaṁ* of ŚB. IV. 3. 4. 5. And just as in natural generation the newborn son is a rebirth of the father, so here that "other self" of the "new man" is a regeneration of the "old man" that was sacrificed ("made holy") together with the deity, who is the sacrifice. It is the "old man's" evil, not himself that is slain; the "death of the soul" is not a destruction of anything but its evil, nothing but the annihilation of what is already negative; in the agricultural symbolism it is only the husk of the grain that is left behind, not the germ that springs up again. The new man that thus springs up is at once the son of the old man and a son of God; and it is with reference to the first of these affiliations (both implied by St. Paul's σύμφυτοι) that Eckhart, distinguishing the accidental features of the natural man from the essence of the other and new man, says that "*He who sees me, sees my child*" (Evans, I. 408; Pfeiffer, p. 593). But to see that Self requires other eyes than those of the flesh (cf. Hermes, *Lib.* XIII. 3 and *S.* I. 23).