He said he believed new self was always coming into the universe, and old self going out.
“Where would it come from, where would it go?” asked Virginia.
I said: “There is nothing but the universe. Everything is in it.”
He answered that he believed in progress, progress toward unity and understanding, but it passed from one person to another; it would not be himself.
“How could the whole of Self be complete unless you were there?” I asked.
“I can’t believe it,” he said. “I don’t see how it could be. It would not be myself.”
“No, not you, in any definite sense, but self, and yourself in that. But it does not matter whether you disagree, if you can really go onward with us, and believe with us, without believing you are immortal. For all that matters is how we live now. It is not necessary to know the future, unless you need it for the present. When I say ‘immortal’ I mean we are immortal, now, because the universe is here.”
Ruth thought that life would be meaningless if we were not immortal; that all progress, all goodness would have no sense. She said: “One might live to do good, just to be kind to others, who were also mortal. But if that were the end, there would be no meaning in it.”
Henry agreed with her, and most of the others expressed similar ideas. I said this did not prove we were immortal. But I, too, felt a limited life to be meaningless. Still, I wanted to know the truth.
Alfred saw he could not consistently believe in race immortality, but he wanted to.