"PASSING ON"

New Zealand Listener, Volume 31, Issue 784, 30 July 1954, Page 5

"PASSING ON"

Sir,-Death is but an incident in the age-long life of the individual. It marks the end of one cycle and the beginning of another, but the real man, the self within, is virtually unaffected by the laying aside of the physical body. J. Malton Murray raises some interesting points. He says: "At death body and mind .cease to function." It would be more correct to say body and brain, but the analogy he uses is a good one, for just as a motor ceases to function if the power be cut off, so does death occur when the link between the spiritual self and the physical body is broken, and the body is cut off from its source of life and power. The life which informs the lower kingdoms teturns to the aggregate life of that kingdom modified by the "experiences" gained. Only man survives as an individual. Things in themselves are not immortal, but the life force, the tremendous energy locked up in the atoms of even so-called inanimate things, is immortal and indestructible. Both mind and matter are expressions of the Logos "in whom we live and move and have our being," and matter is no less divine than mind. Finally, the world of the life after death is not an "undiscovered country," for it is our normal field of activity during sleep (aptly called the twin brother of death), nor is it a place "from whose bourne no traveller returns" since the urge for further experience will cause the self to assume another personality in due time or, as our poet laureate puts it, "the old soul takes the road again."

H M.

THORNTON

(Auckland).