March 21 ~ The Science of Mind in a Year

IMMORTALITY

Ernest Holmes

The Meaning of Immortality

"To most of us, immortality means that we shall persist after the experience of physical death, retaining a full recognition of ourselves, and having the ability to recognize others.  If our full capacities go with us beyond the grave, we must be able to think consciously, to will, to know and to be known, to communicate and to receive communications.  We must be able to see and be seen, to understand and to be understood.  In fact, if one is really to continue as a self-conscious personality beyond this life, he can do so only if he maintains a continuous stream of the same consciousness and self-knowingness that he now possesses.

Personal identity of course postulates memory, which binds into one sequence the old life and the new.  This means that man must carry with him - after the experience of physical death - a complete remembrance, for it is to this alone that we must look for the link which binds one event to another, making life a continuous stream of self-conscious expression.  To suppose that man can forget, and still maintain a self-conscious identity, is to suppose that one could cut off his entire past without destroying the logical sequence of personality.  Where is this faculty?  Cut a man into the smallest bits, analyze and dissect every atom of his physical being, and you will never find memory.  There is something about the personality which not only performs its functions, but also remembers what it has done, and which can anticipate future events.  What is it?  It is the thing we are talking about, the non-physical faculty of perception, the thing that knows...The Knower.  Individuality might remain without remembrance, but not so with personality for what we are is the result of what we have been, the result of what has gone before.

We are not content with the thought that immortality is merely the result of one's life and work, which he has left behind; for instance, that he immortalizes himself in his offspring - we still ask "What of the man?"  Man, then, if he is to have an immortality worthy of the name, must continue as he now is beyond the grave.  DEATH CANNOT ROB HIM OF ANYTHING IF HE BE IMMORTAL!"