Of exactly how this inhibition of Thought may be practised, and of all its collateral results and implications it would be out of place to speak now.[40] Sufficient at present to say that with the completion of this inhibition, and the realization of the consequent change of consciousness—even if it be only for a time—the ordinary mental self, with all its worries, cares, limitations, imperfections, and so forth, falls completely off, and lies (for the time) like a thing dead; while the real man practically passes onward into another state of being. To experience all this with any degree of fulness, is to know that you have passed through Death; because whatever destruction physical death may bring to your local senses and faculties, you know that it will not affect that deeper Self. I mean that having already become aware of your real self as pervading the life of other creatures, and moving in other bodies than your so-called own, it clearly does not so very much matter whether the one body remains or passes. It may make a difference certainly, but not a fatal or insuperable difference. The vast ocean of the consciousness into which you have been admitted will not be profoundly affected, even by the abstraction of a pearl-shell from its shore. We have spoken of the Protozoa more than once in these connections; and it has been said that the Protozoa have been considered immortal because, though they divide into separate cells or organisms, the life remains continuous; and because though some of the descendant cells may die yet the life goes on—so that even in the hundredth generation the self or ego of a particular cell may be identical with that of the first parent. And in the case we are considering we have something similar, for when the common life of souls is once recognized and experienced, it is clear that nothing can destroy it. It simply passes from one form to another. And we may perhaps say that as the Protozoa attain to a kind of immortality _below_ death, or prior to its appearance in the world, so the emancipated or freed soul attains to immortality above and beyond death—passing _over_ death, in fact, as a mere detail in its career.