This is the viewpoint put forward by Fan Zhen, a thinker of Song and Liang Dynasties in the Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties in China, in his book On the Extinction of Immortals. In the sixth year of Tian Jian (507), Ren Zhongshu Shi Lang officially published The Theory of Deity Extinction. He asserted that it is impossible to become a Buddha without being dead, that people's wealth and poverty are not innate destiny, and that what goes around comes around is sheer nonsense. Fan Zhen's "On the Destruction of God" "God is form, and form is God, so form is the existence of God, and form is the destruction of God." In other words, body and spirit are unity of opposites, and spirit (soul) is subordinate to body. When the body exists, there is a spirit (soul), and when people die, the spirit (soul) is destroyed. Moreover, form and spirit are unified, interdependent and inseparable.

For example, he said: the spirit is like a sword, and the body is like a blade. No sharpness, no blade, no blade, no sharpness. I've never heard of a sharp knife that still exists. Is there a truth that the body is dead and the spirit is still there? From this, he made a correct judgment on the relationship between form and God.

The relationship between form and spirit was a key theoretical issue in philosophy at that time, and it was also a watershed between materialism and idealism. Fan Zhen's monism system of "unity of form and spirit" and the combination of form and spirit are an important milestone in the history of the development of ancient philosophy in China.