Immortality
Ernest Holmes
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Immortality copyright 1952 by Ernest Holmes
Immortality has no meaning unless we continue to live after we have left this
world, retaining a full recollection of the self and with the ability to recognize our
environment; to know and to be known. We must be able to see and be seen, to
understand and be understood; in fact, unless one continues as a conscious being
there is no real immortality. Remembrance is necessary to this continuance
because memory is the link which binds the sequence of our lives together in one
continuity. Real immortality means the continuance and ongoingness of the
individual life, forever expanding.
All who have passed the meridian of this earthly experience have as many friends
on one side as on the other. We like to feel that "with the dawn their happy faces
smile which we have loved long since and lost awhile." Is there anyone who,
standing at the bier of a departed friend, can possibly believe he has ceased to
exist? We all have an inner sense which causes us to know with Tennyson that:
Thou wilt not leave us in the dust;
Thou madest man, he knows not why,
He thinks he was not made to die;
And thou has made him; thou art just.
When the disciples of Jesus asked him what is God's relationship to the dead,
Jesus answered as we would expect a great spiritual or logical genius to answer.
He said, "He is not a God of the dead but of the living, for in his sight all are alive."
In other words, Jesus was explaining to his disciples that God is life. Life cannot
produce death; life continues to be life. Robert Browning perceived this when he
said:
. . . All that is, at all,
Lasts ever, past recall;
Earth changes, but thy soul and God stand sure;
What entered into thee,
That was, is, and shall be;
Time's wheel runs back or stops;
Potter and day endure.
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Immortality is not something we purchase from the Almighty, nor is it a bargain
we make with the universe. Immortality either is a principle in nature and common
to all men or it has no existence whatsoever. There are no good men or bad men
in the sight of that living Spirit which can know only perfection. "He causes the
rain and the sun to come alike on the just and the unjust." Jesus said to the thief
who passed from this world by his side, "Today shalt thou be with me in paradise."
We may be grateful to the divine wisdom that if we are immortal, and we most
certainly are, there was nothing we personally could have done to make it this
way. Nor could we do anything to destroy the eternal stamp of individualization
which an almighty will has sent upon us. We may not be doing the best possible
thing with our immortality but we should remember that "To err is human; to
forgive, divine."
But, some man will say, "How is it that the dead are raised up and with what body
do they come?" This question was asked nearly two thousand years ago. For
thousands of years before that, there had been a teaching that this physical
universe is but a counterpart, reflection or emanation of an invisible pattern which
contains the image of this physical universe. "The pattern of earth is found in
heaven." "As above, so beneath; as beneath-so above." "What is true on one
plane is true of all." This teaching was, and still is, that for everything in this
physical universe there is a corresponding reality in a mental and spiritual world.
The Bible says that "the invisible things of God from the foundation of the world
are made manifest by that which is visible."
This is what the man meant when, after asking how it is that the dead are raised
up and with what body do they come, he answered himself by saying, "There are
bodies celestial and bodies terrestrial; so also is the resurrection of the dead." The
body is sewn in weakness, it is raised in power-it is sewn a natural body, it is
raised a spiritual body.
It is now being demonstrated in our psychological laboratories that we possess
mental faculties which reproduce the activity of our senses without using the
organs of these senses. In other words, they are demonstrating that we can see,
hear or think at a distance, or receive thought from a distance. While this
phenomenon is no new thing in the world, it is only recently that it has been
investigated by recognized scientific and academic circles.
It is now demonstrated that the faculties of the senses can be duplicated in mind
alone. This means that the soul can operate independent of the physical body.
Nature has provided that we can live without this physical instrument. Nature, who
leaves no gaps and provides for all emergencies, would not have done this unless
these non-physical faculties were someday to be used transcendently of this
physical environment.
While it is true that the soul needs a physical body on this plane, it will certainly
not need it on the next. Jesus said, "In my Father's house there are many
mansions." He also said that flesh and blood do not inherit the next plane; they
must be left behind. The soul is only lightly connected with this body even while
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functioning through it; it is really independent of it at all times. This body is
merely its physical organ. It is the body that dies and not the soul.
Nay, but as one who layeth
His worn-out robes away,
And, taking new ones, sayeth,
"These will I wear today!"
So putteth by the spirit
Lightly its garb of flesh,
And passeth to inherit
A residence afresh.
-Song Celestial
We should remember that we are spirits functioning on this plane but transcendent
of it. We are fourth dimensional beings functioning in, but not confined to, a three
dimensional world.
Our birth is but sleep and a forgetting;
The Soul that rises with us, our life's star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting
And cometh from afar;
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come From God, who is our home.
-
Wordsworth
Jesus, on the eve of his departure, said that he would no longer drink from the
fruit of the vine until he did so in his Father's house. At first this seems like a
materialistic concept, as though we would have the same kind of natural form in
the next life as we have here, but such is not the case. Jesus knew, as the great,
the good and the wise have always known, that which Plato, Emerson,
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Swedenborg, Whitman and Browning taught-that the pattern of the earth is in
heaven; that there is an invisible cause for every visible effect.
Since nature has equipped us with bodies here, she will undoubtedly do so
hereafter. It is not difficult to conceive that there is a matter more subtle than the
kind we are in the habit of handling. It is not difficult to conceive that there can be
a body within a body. The resurrection body will be as definite and tangible as this
one, a fit instrument for the future evolution of the soul. This does not mean that
the body we now have is evil or corrupt; it merely means that it belongs to this
plane only. Divine wisdom has provided another body for another plane. "In my
Father's house there are many mansions." As Edwin Arnold says in "He Who Died
at Azan":
Faithful friends! It lies I know
Pale and white and cold as snow;
And ye say, "Abdullah's dead!"
Weeping at the feet and head,
I can see your falling tears,
I can hear your sighs and prayers;
Yet I smile and whisper this:
"I am not the thing you kiss.
Cease your tears, and let it lie;
It was mine-it is not I."
"It is written that no man has seen God at any time, only the Son has revealed the
Father." We do not see the invisible cause; what we see is the visible effect. This
effect reveals the cause. No artist has ever seen beauty, yet beauty is revealed
through his work. Beauty is the subject, art is the object; one is subjective or
invisible, the other is objective or visible. No one has ever seen Spirit, the invisible
cause of everything, yet the very fact that things exist demonstrates or proves the
reality of the invisible.
All the biologists who ever lived, rolled into one, have never seen life. All the
psychologists who ever lived, combined, have never seen the mind, and all the
theologians who ever lived, put together, could not tell us what the Spirit looked
like. Is it so difficult, then, to believe in the invisible? Jesus said, "I thank thee, O
Father, Lord of Heaven and Earth, because thou hast hid these things from the
wise and the prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes." When we stop all
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argument we know that we are forever one with the invisible cause. This is what
Whittier meant when he said:
And so beside the Silent Sea
I wait the muffled oar;
No harm from Him can come to me
On ocean or on shore.
I know not where His islands lift
Their fronded palms in air;
I only know I cannot drift
Beyond His love and care.
That faith which we possess through intuition is the Mind of God within us forever
proclaiming its own being. We may trust its inspiration; it is nothing less than the
proclamation of the Infinite in our own soul.
Man is born of eternal day. Not because he wills or wishes it, not because he
labors or strives toward it, not because he earns it as a reward, but simply
because Spirit has breathed life into him and the Spirit which has breathed the
breath of Its own life into man cannot unbreathe it.
If we would only forget our theological complexities and let our soul commune
individually with the universe, it would tell us all these things, because we already
know them inwardly. We must not become confused by the morbid conceptions of
the hereafter that theology has mistakenly laid before us.
Why waste time and effort trying to correct the Divine plan and attempting to run
the universe after our own poor patterns? All men are incarnations of God and the
soul can no more be lost than God could be lost. What more can life demand of us
than that we do the best we know how and try to improve? If we have done this,
we have done well and all will be right with our souls, both here and hereafter.
It seems logical to suppose that our place hereafter will be what we have made it.
We certainly cannot take anything with us but our characters. If we have lived in
accordance with the law of harmony here, we shall continue to live after this
Divine Law. If we have lived any other way, we shall continue to live the other way
until we wake to the true facts of our Being. We are free to work out our salvation,
not with fear or trembling, but in peace and confidence.
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What may we take into the vast Forever?
That marble door
Admits no fruit of all our long endeavor,
No fame-wreathed crown we wore,
No garnered lore.
What can we bear beyond the unknown portal?
No gold, no gains
Of all our toiling, in the life immortal
No hoarded wealth remains.
Nor gilds, nor stains.
Yet fearless toward the midnight, black
and hollow,
Our footsteps fare;
The beckoning of a father's hand we follow,
His love alone is there,
No curse, no care.
-Sill: Man, the Spirit
When we came into this life, we were met by loving friends who cared for us until
we were able to care for ourselves. Judging the future by the past, and going from
the known to the unknown, we can believe that when we enter the larger life there
will be loving hands to greet us and loving friends to care for us until we become
accustomed to our new surroundings. Nature looks after everything and provides
for herself at every turn of the road. We may confidently expect to meet friends on
the other side and to know and be known when we shall meet.
It seems that our work in the next world will be a continuation of our work in this
one. We should not look forward to a heaven where there will be nothing to do,
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but to a place where our work will be done in greater harmony with the Divine Law
because of a better understanding of it.
Death loses its sting, the grave its victory, when we realize the eternity of our own
being. Nature will not let us stay in any one place too long. She allows us to stay
just long enough to gather the experience necessary to the unfolding and
advancement of the soul. This is wise, for, should we stay here too long, we would
become too set, too rigid, and too inflexible. She demands the change in order
that we may advance. When the change comes, we should welcome it with a smile
on the lips and a song in the heart.
It is human to grieve over the loss of dear ones. We would not wish it to be
otherwise. We love them and cannot help missing them. But a true realization of
immortality and the continuity of the individual soul will rob our grief of any sense
of hopelessness. We shall know that loving friends have met them and that their
life still flows on with the currents of eternity. We shall feel that we have not lost
them. They have only gone before.
Let us learn to view eternity as a continuity of time, forever and ever expanding,
until time as we now experience it shall be no more. Realizing this, we shall see in
everyone a budding spirit, a becoming God, an unfolding soul, an eternal destiny.
We are born of Eternal Day and the Spiritual Sun shall never set upon the glory of
our being, for it is the coming forth of God into self-expression. Every man is an
incarnation of eternity, a manifestation of the Infinite.
No man need prepare to meet his God. He is meeting Him every day and each
hour in every day. He meets Him in the rising sun, in the flowing stream, in the
budding rose, in the joy of friendship and love, and in the silence of his own soul.
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