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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).