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The Self-Defeating Fantasy
sculptor replied, in a thousand years time, whether these
are their features or not? [24, pg. 399]. Indeed. On the day
jazz great Duke Ellington died, John Chancellor began his
nightly television newscast by saying that Edward Kennedy
Duke Ellington died this morning of cancer of the lungs and
pneumonia. Later in the program well hear him play for us
(pg. 76). [25] Idealized in stone or vinyl, the great achieve
immortality not in themselves but only in their leavings, an
immortality that supplants, and hence defeats, the self.
St. Paul promises us that here on Earth
we see through a glass, darkly; but then [after Judgment
Day] face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I
know even as I am known (1 Cor 13:12).
This notion of ideal knowledge in eternity is not limited to
the Western world. The voice in Brihadaranyaka Upanishad,
pleads:
Lead me from the unreal to the real! / Lead me from
darkness to light! / Lead me from death to immortality!
(Bartlett 56:20) [3]
But who is this me? Who is this I? When Moses asks on
Mt.Sinai to see God face to face, God, who favors Moses,
withholds this favor for there shall no man see me, and live
(Gn 34:20). St. Paul understood this, too. Speaking of the
resurrection after Judgment Day, he says
Behold, I shew you a mystery; we shall not all sleep, but
we shall all be changed. In a moment, in the twinkling
of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound,
and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall
be changed. For this corruptible must put on incorrup-
tion, and this mortal must put on immortality (1 Cor
15:5153).