SIXTH MEETING
Immortality
I. Importance to Us of an Opinion Concerning Death and Immortality:
a. We know we must die soon:
1. Speak of the numberless generations of life.
b. We live according to our expectations:
1. Relation throughout history of beliefs concerning immortality and of the morality of peoples.
2. Good and bad effects of belief in heaven and hell.
II. Knowledge Concerning Immortality:
a. What is Knowledge?
1. The relativity of all knowledge.
2. Knowledge through conviction loses force when there is disagreement.
3. Knowledge through analogy is like circumstantial evidence.
b. We know:
1. That matter and force do not die.
α. We know of nothing that is positively mortal.
2. That life works in a certain direction.
3. That death and re-birth are the means of moving in that direction, i.e., of progress.
4. That this progress is of the spirit or self.
5. That we are forever a part of the world, related to the whole.
6. As we know nothing but consciousness or self, we believe it must be immortal, though we have no proof.
III. The Theory of Race-immortality as an Ideal:
a. It is more improbable than self-immortality.
1. All planets die.
2. The last generation, dies, too.
b. It is not true immortality:
1. The thing we cannot transmit is the Self which loves and seeks.
IV. Memory and Personality:
a. Admission of ignorance and indifference. Why?
1. Everything is a memory and a prophecy, since everything exists forever, and advances.
2. The body is a memory.
3. Memory must continue at least in its results on the self, if not more definitely.
b. Love and Meeting:
1. Love may have other satisfactions than we dream of.
2. We are all one, and cannot be separated.
V. “I Am” Expresses Immortality:
a. Each least thing is eternal and universal.