ETERNAL CREATURES This also answers our fifth inquiry. We asked: How is it possible that from the Eternal will emerge transient creatures that come into being and cease to be? The answer to this question is now clear. For we emerged from before Him in a manner that is appropriate for His eternality; [we emerged] as eternal and entirely perfect creatures.
This eternality necessarily requires that the husk of the body, which was given to us only for service [of God], be temporary and cease to be. For had it [the body] remained in eternality, God forbid, then we would remain eternally separate from the Life-Force of the Living. We have already stated (see 13 above) that this form of our bodies, the selfish desire to receive, is not at all present in the eternal plan for creation.
There [in the eternal], we have the [perfected] forms of the third stage. Still, we must exist in the second form [for a time] in order to enable the repair, as discussed.