BEING & BECOMING 2

Wikipedia Commons

Illustrations to Blair's The Grave 

Death of the Good Old Man 

There is no trauma when the Good Old Man dies. His sons and daughters give thanks for his life and legacy. His Identity is stripped of the accidents which accumulated in his passage through life in the body. He is free to continue his life in the Spirit which assumed a physical body to live in the physical world. The good and creative deeds of his earthly live are not lost but  achieve immortality with him as aspects of his Identity. Lost only are his failures and misdeeds which have no place in the heavenly realm.  

Second Timothy 4

[17] Notwithstanding the Lord stood with me, and strengthened me; that by me the preaching might be fully known, and that all the Gentiles might hear: and I was delivered out of the mouth of the lion.
[18] And the Lord shall deliver me from every evil work, and will preserve me unto his heavenly kingdom: to whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen.

 Fearful Symmetry, by Northrop Frye, Page 247 :

"The real man, therefore, is the total form of the creative acts and visions which he evolves in the course of his 'Becoming' life. The latter exists in time and space, But his 'Being' or real existence is a work of art, and exists, like the work of art, in the unity of time and space which is infinite and eternal. The imagination or Being, then, is immortal, a form constructed out of time but existing in what Paul calls the 'fullness of time.' We arrive at the conception of immortality as soon as we grasp the idea of the reality which is not merely a part of an indefinite persistence of an indefinitely extensive physical world. But for that very reason immortality cannot mean the indefinite survival of a 'Becoming' life arrested at some point in its development...as in most conceptions of an immortal personality. What is immortal about the man is the total form of his creative acts, and these total forms are the characters, or 'identities,' as Blake calls them, of the men who made them, the isolating of what is eternally humane in them from the accidents of Becoming. ...those good deeds are the eternal reality of Everyman, the spiritual form of Everyman."

Galatians 4:4-7, English Standard Version

⁴ But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, 

⁵ to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons. 

⁶ And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, “Abba!Father!” 

⁷ So you are no longer a slave, but a son, and if a son, then an heir through God.

Jerusalem, Plate 77, (E 232) 

"What is
Mortality but the things relating to the Body, which Dies? What
is Immortality but the things relating to the Spirit, which Lives
Eternally! What is the joy of Heaven but Improvement in the
things of the Spirit? What are the Pains of Hell but Ignorance,
Bodily Lust, Idleness & devastation of the things of the
Spirit?" 

Vision of Last Judgment, (E 556)

"In Eternity one Thing never Changes into
another Thing Each Identity is Eternal"

Annotations to Swedenborg, (E 604)

 "Essence is not Identity but from Essence proceeds
Identity & from one Essence may proceed many Identities as from
one Affection may proceed. many thoughts   Surely this is an
oversight
     That there is but one Omnipotent Uncreate & God I agree but
that there is but one Infinite I do not. for if all but God is
not Infinite they shall come to an End which God forbid
     If the Essence was the same as the Identity there
could be but one Identity. which is false
     Heaven would upon this plan be but a Clock but one & the
same Essence is therefore Essence & not Identity"

Laocoon,  (E 273)

"The whole Business of Man Is The Arts & All Things Common"