The Mystery of Death
Nona L. Brooks
Mysteries,
1924.
Divine Science Federation
Int’l
3rd Printing, 1977.
Copyright Material
Reprinted by Permission
Men have
been so engrossed in watching process in
the visible that they have missed the
vision of the invisible; contemplation of
the part has taken the place of
meditation upon the whole. Men have
believed that because their comrades
passed out of the radius of the senses
that there must be a mystery about their
abiding place. "If we cannot see and
touch our loved ones in this body which
we have always known, where are they?"
This question is asked over and over
again. It is easily seen why a mystery
arose around the experience men called
death. They have been in bondage to the
world conception of death as the opposite
of life.
The New
Revelation is changing our conception
about many things; best of all we are
coming to know the reality of the seen
and the unseen; we are seeing these as
one. We are seeing life and the
experience called death according to a
clearer vision as we free ourselves from
the bondage of world conceptions and look
directly through appearances into
reality. The light of truth is revealing
to us that there is only one experience
of death: this is when men die in sin and
in ignorance. Limitation is death,
because it is the opposite of freedom. He
who frees himself from these
limitations--sin, sickness, and
fear--shall not taste of death. We are
coming to see that just as bondage to
wrong belief is death, so is the belief
of separation from God. In fact the man
who separates himself from God in his
thinking and from his fellow men in his
doing is experiencing one form of
death.
A
consideration of the experience of death
from the standpoint of Divine Science
will bring an answer to the question,
"Who are the dead?" The so-called dead
are those who conceive themselves apart
from Life--God in action. In this
God-Plan of eternal progression there is
no death. The process of life is that of
resurrection, continuous unfoldment.
Divine Science sees resurrection as an
eternal process; we rise out of
limitation daily. This is living. We rise
out of the belief in death or separation
into the realization of unity and
cooperation. To rise we must train our
thought to see the true and the
beautiful--God in action--instead of the
false and the ugly, men’s opinions
from the standpoint of duality.
It is
interesting to trace the differing
attitudes toward death that have
characterized the expressions of our
fellow men. The Christian has faced it as
a calamity with fortitude and
resignation, while he has resisted death
and mourned it as the worst of evils; for
to him it was synonymous with separation
of loved ones and the ending of earthly
life, but it was the will of God.
Has the
dread and fear of death, as we call the
experience of transition, passed out of
the thinking of those who call themselves
followers of New Thought? With many
resistance to the experience still
remains; it is considered an evil,
because they think it is a sign that
truth has failed. Divine Science is not
willing to admit that the incident in
life that men call death is an evidence
that truth has failed. We believe that
God does not know death, for God is Life.
What, then, is the origin of the belief
that prevails concerning the experience?
It is a condition in your thinking and in
mine. Natural science tells us that death
is an acquired habit of the race, and
that since men have taken it on, men must
throw it off. Divine Scientists know that
there is only one place in which to
overcome death; this is in your thinking
and in mine. Natural science tells us
that men are potentially able to throw
off this acquired habit; we believe that
the race is able to rise out of the
misconception that men must die. Wise men
have told us that death is the last enemy
to be overcome, and this is a reasonable
assertion, for the race habit of the
thought of death is deeply embedded in
our subconscious mind. It will take
consecrated effort to root it out. We all
recognize the difficulties attendant upon
weeding our gardens, especially in
keeping weeds out even after much
effort.
Let us keep
our thinking true to the principle of God
and God in action as the basis for our
thinking. God and God in action, then, is
the Universe. Eternal evolution is the
law of Being. We have within us the power
to unfold continuously in the realization
of God-Consciousness. We are alive in
God, the eternal Creator expressing as
Creation.
Men resist
what they fear; hence, they have resisted
death. What is the ground for a fear of
death in the light of the New Revelation?
Think for a moment. How can we fear if we
believe that law is God in action, and
that this experience called death comes
by law, and is an incident in a living
process? In life there can be no
cessation of activity, no instant when
God is not. Why fear? In the concept of
Omnipresence there is no place for the
absence of life. Fear is a belief in
separation; a misconception that there is
life and that there is death. We have
thought in terms of activity and
inactivity; whereas there is only one
state, God in action.
We have
thought of a beginning and an end.
Reflect for a moment. We have accepted
Omnipresence--God everywhere--how can
there be a beginning and an end in God?
You will agree with me that the
limitation is in our thinking, not in the
universal plan of which there is neither
beginning nor end. It is only human
experience that conceives death and calls
it an ending; in the infinite plan what
we call death is only transition, one of
our opportunities for higher
development.
We are all
seeking truth; those who seek faithfully
find. The men of natural science are
hardheaded, patient men working
carefully, persistently, accurately,
definitely, to discover more and more of
the facts about life. They are careful to
make no mistakes; integrity and accuracy
are their standard. We are careful to
make no mistakes--our Basis is eternal
truth. As they declare the fact of life
everywhere, so we affirm the truth of
their declarations by asserting that
God-Life is everywhere. Natural science
teaches that everything in the universe
is active; there is nothing static. The
truth of this statement is affirmed in
Divine Science by the declaration--God
and God in action is all there is.
The world as
we see it is factual; the animal,
vegetable, and mineral kingdoms are
facts. Form is a fact; process is
evident. The fact is the temporal; truth
is the eternal. The fact is the
phenomenon, the thing that is evident;
the truth is the meaning back of the
phenomenon. We seem to see when we
consider only the phenomenon, the
beginning and the end of process. Hence,
there arises in the individual a peculiar
dread of the end of things; the end of
what we call the world process seems to
us vital. Let us turn the inner eye upon
the eternal Process; even though to you
and to me there may seem to be a
cessation of the process in the visible,
so far as we can see with the eyes of the
senses. Are we learning to think through
facts into truth? Is life in the light of
truth made up of phenomena alone, or of
the Cause and the phenomenon? There is an
answer to this question in the teaching
of Omnipresence; for Life is Omnipresent
Spirit, and process is
God-Expression.
We seem to
have dwelt upon separation until we have
come to think in terms of duality; this
side, meaning the manifest world, the
other side, meaning the unmanifest. It is
the unmanifest or the unseen that we
persist in veiling in mystery. Humanity
has clung to the visible and the
tangible; the factual has held men firmly
in its grip. They have been sure of the
visible, so they thought, and
correspondingly unsure of the invisible.
The invisible was thought of as that
which is coming next, instead of that
which is now. All sadness in relation to
the experience we call death passes when
we understand the truth of the universe
of form--that everything from the atom to
the solar system is alive in God. All is
Life; all Life is God-Life. Where can we
go from Life? We leave Life only in our
thinking; and then we think that we are
no longer one with God.
Let us never
get away from the truth of an orderly
universe of form. Everything comes by
law; and everything that comes in the
process of law is progression. The eye of
faith looks straight across the gulf of
seeming separation, and see that every
experience is good, and means progress
for the individual, and that what we have
called death is only a transition, an
evolutionary step. I can almost hear you
say, "What about the sadness of
separation from our loved ones in the
life of the home? Why is one whose life
is so full of promise taken out of this
sphere of action?" When we are at one
with the truth of law as God in action
and when we put that which we know into
practice in our daily lives, we shall see
that there is no separation, and shall be
able to make practical use of this great
truth. Our loved ones are in the One
Presence. Let us turn away from any
concept of cessation of activity in
relation to the incident we call death.
No experience can retard our development;
it is only our attitude toward the
experience that limits us.
The prodigal
son was progressing all of the time that
he was in the Far Country; he was
satisfied when he had seen the meaning of
husks, to return to his Father’s
house. His journey proved a worthful one,
in that it showed to him the glory of
that which he had left. So it is with us;
we journey away often, and make mistakes
the world calls evil, but as we begin to
live truth, we rise from our dream of
sense satisfaction, and go back in our
thought to Spirit. How wonderfully the
law works. We find that we have not
really been away at all; we have only
conceived separation in our thinking. In
other words out thoughts have been in a
Far Country; we have been emphasizing the
part instead of the whole.
How many of
us have expected to find our satisfaction
in the outer only to discover that all we
wish for is already fulfilled within. Our
eyes have been turned in the wrong
direction. We have seen lack and
imperfection, and through our
misconceptions these things looked real
to us. The experience itself has neither
meaning nor effect until we endow it by
our mental attitude, with the power to
cause results in our lives.
The question
comes to all of us sometime in our lives,
“What must I do to be saved from
all of these misconceptions?” We
find ourselves getting under conditions
of sickness, lack, fear. We become
disheartened; the need seems very great.
The responsibility is still yours and
mine. It is left to us to take the step
that leads to salvation. We must clear
our vision, and turn our thought within
to the true Source of help; then shall we
see life rich and filled with blessings.
It will be proved to us that all process
is worth-while and has a deep meaning, if
we see Life as a Divine Process. We are
here to develop; let us welcome
experiences as means to an end; not as
ends in themselves. We shall not fear the
process, when we understand that it is
all progress. Then we shall cease to see
experience detached from progression.
When we fail to catch the relation of
experience to a progressive plan, it
assumes undue proportions, because we are
thinking of what the experience can do to
us, instead of what we can do with the
experience.
In the light
of the new understanding it is revealed
to us that it is unnecessary to go
through a hard experience of suffering
and separation which the world calls
death in order to attain freedom from
limitation; but if we have not outgrown
this conception, when death comes, we
should see that it comes by law when it
is best for the individual. We move from
house to house, from city to city,
without fear; yes, even from country to
country. In fact, the experience of
change is a pleasurable one. Why, then,
should we dread journeying from one plane
of activity to another? Life is a school;
when you and I have done the work in one
grade satisfactorily, we are promoted to
the next higher; so it is that when we
have learned the lessons in one stage of
development in the process of education,
we are pronounced worthy of the next.
Promotion in the school of life is
eternal. As we progress we are needed
somewhere else in the eternal plan; and
you and I go on when it is best for us as
individuals. The law of progress is
perfect at every point.
Sometimes we
fall into narrow grooves of thinking and
doing; these are called ruts; and without
doubt, retard our development. Ruts offer
to us the line of least effort; and when
we become mentally lazy or when we feel
that we have reached the final word of
knowledge, and refuse to progress of our
own accord, we must be jostled out of the
rut. Blessed is the law that moves us out
into greater opportunities for
progression.
There are so
many questions connected with a
discussion of this subject of death that
it is difficult to find the most
pertinent; I think, however, that one
engrossing question in the thoughts of
those who doubt and of those who believe
is: Where do those who have passed
through the experience known as death go?
They seem to drop the body; hence, the
world belief has wrapped the departed, as
they are called, in a veil of mystery.
Can they function without the tangible
body which has seemed to identify them as
individuals here? Think of the little we
have learned of the infinite universe of
form around us; the laws of the solar
systems are no more difficult to
understand than are the laws of the
tiniest flower that grows. There is so
much that is still in the invisible in so
far as we are concerned. Our senses
register much that is vital in the
universal plan, as it functions, but
these also miss much that is wonderful.
The universe of form is active in myriad
ways that our senses are unable to
comprehend; however, we see that these
phenomena are the results of an infinite
Cause. Can we not see that the Infinite
Intelligence which is ever creating the
universe of form is equipped to take care
of the individual? Are we trusting it?
The law of love is unfolding you and me
into ever greater awareness of truth.
Life is continually enlarging for us, as
we live it with understanding.
Do you
believe in God? If you do, you must see
that death is only a name for an event in
Life Eternal. The law of Life is good;
hence, the event is good. When we have
learned how to live, the experience that
we speak of as death will not be preceded
by difficulties, suffering, and sadness;
we shall simply go on. There is no
weakness in the process of Life; it is
only our attitude toward the experience
that is wrong. The same is true of the
event known as death; it is our attitude
that is wrong. There is without doubt a
possibility of reaching a state of
consciousness in which we shall be
translated without pain and sadness.
"Enoch walked with God, and was not."
Moses, Elijah, and Jesus all reached the
degree of consciousness which has proved
to us that death is only an event in
life. Jesus rose from the dead; for to
him all was Life; he ascended over the
beliefs in limitations; and he proved to
us that he did this through faith in the
law of Life.
Death is no
longer to be thought of in the old ways.
It does not mean an end or in itself the
way to attainment; for the event of the
passing on does not open all
possibilities to us at once. Law is
working; there are no leaps into untried
spheres; there is orderly progression.
Heaven is here; it is in our thought, and
we need not pass through the gates of
death in order to enter the kingdom of
heaven, as the older creeds taught. As we
unfold we rise into the heavenly state,
for we are dropping our limitations of
fears and beliefs. There is no other
life; there is only Life. The word,
other, must have come into use to meet a
need of those who taught the dualistic
concept. It has no meaning in the New
Revelation.
There is no
joy aside from knowing God. In the
greater freedom of the thought of the one
who knows God there is opportunity to
develop in ever richer ways. There is no
finality of expression; phases of the
Infinite Life to live. The law of love
transfers us from our good. Let us trust
it for ourselves and for others. It is
our faith that makes us whole. See Life,
not death. Think of the joys of eternal
progress, and you will rejoice in every
process. There is Life, Life, Life! There
is no death--hence, there can be no
mystery.
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