The pure, incorruptible substance of Spirit, built by the transforming power of the Christ into the organism through true, pure, spiritual thought and word, makes the body incorruptible and eternal. As the mind changes from error to Truth, corresponding changes take place in the body, and the ultimate Page 344 of these changes is perfection and wholeness in every part. Therefore those who are trying to lay hold of eternal life have ground for their faith in the promise that they will be saved from the grave. Knowing that spirit, soul, and body are all necessary to man and that he cannot truly be said to live except in their conscious union and expression, the error of believing that death is the open door to a higher life, the gateway to heaven, is easily seen. There is no progress in death.
Death is negation.
The idea of progress in death has its origin in the mortal mind, which reasons from its own limitations instead of from absolute Truth. The mortal mind desires to preserve eternally the personal consciousness and all personal relations. Man therefore attempts to make and to people a heaven, or spirit world, where all the old family relations are as he knows them in his present life. He clings to this belief with a tenacity worthy of a better object, and it is usually only after hard experience that he is willing to drop the personal. Eternal life cannot be Page 345 demonstrated in personal consciousness.