Immortality - W D S Brown

By immortality most people probably mean survival of the death of the physical body. In fact, at the zenith of the recent materialistic wave the possibility of such survival was so mercilessly challenged that even this bare belief called for no ordinary exercise of faith. The result was that the phenomenon of death diverted attention from the nature of the life beyond. It was assumed that, if only that apparent end of all things could be tided over, there would remain no question of a future dissolution. On the other hand, the information regarding the next world that came from spiritualistic sources, though comforting to many in positive doubt, failed to attract the larger number of spiritually minded people, to whom the glowing accounts of a Summerland appeared to be anything but final satisfaction.

At first sight also the theosophical teaching of rebirth often seems to make matters worse for such people, so that one continually hears the objection: ‘But I don’t want to come back.’ And yet on further reflection this teaching really brings home the conception of immortality to an experience possible in the physical body amid all the changes of physical surroundings.

© "The Theosophist" (September 2002) published by The Theosophical Society, Adyar, Chennai 600 020. Website: www.ts-adyar.org. Reprinted with permission.