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But let us begin by observing that the fundamental contradiction which seeks to assure us of our immortality by proving our inevitable annihilation is not to be found in Buddha and that it is not true to say that he teaches in the same breath the illusion of the Ego and its periodical reincarnation. The doctrine of reincarnation is not Buddha’s. He found it ready-made; it existed before him and was so deeply rooted in his people that he does not even dream of disputing it. From the exoteric point of view, he tries only to disarm it, to deprive it of its sting, to render it harmless. He tries to reduce life to the point where it can find nothing wherewith to reincarnate itself. According to the exoteric doctrine, which is but a preparation for esoteric truth, life is naught but suffering; and its only aim is the redemption or the extinction of suffering. This extinction is to be found in Nirvana, which is not annihilation but the absorption of the individual into the universe. Ordinary death, by reason of the perpetual reincarnation of the same individual, cannot suppress suffering. We must therefore find a sort of superdeath, which makes any reincarnation impossible; and this superdeath can be obtained only by the man who has been striving to die all his life long and who has deliberately cut off all the ties that bind him to existence: all love, all hope, all desire, all possession. When, at the end of this systematic and voluntary superdeath, the actual death arrives, it will no longer find a living germ capable of achieving reincarnation. This superdeath, thus obtained, will precede by many centuries or millenaries purification, final redemption and the absorption into the absolute One.
It has been said that this is exactly the reverse of the doctrine of Christ. With Buddha, life is only the gate of death; with Christ, death is the gate of life. In reality, it is the same thing and everything ends by the absorption into the divine, for the doctrine of Christ is nothing more than a mutilated branch of the great trunk of the mother religion.
Here we have the solution offered to us by the most wonderful mind, the greatest sage that humanity has ever known; by one who knew things which we no longer know and which, it may be, we shall never recover. It is the foundation of the religion of five hundred millions of men. There is nothing nearer to the ultimate truth.