as soon as possible, and thus avoid the unpleasant experience of
countless death-throes. You see, Ned, an error in the premise will
appear in the conclusion. Now you are starting with the premise that
the human 'you' is real. That premise is not based upon fact. Its
basis is rank error. All that you reflect of divine mind will
endure permanently, but whatever you reflect of the lie regarding
that mind will pass away. Human beings know nothing of their origin,
nor of their existence. Why? _Because there is nothing to know
about them; they are entirely supposititious!_ Paul says, in his
letter to the Romans: 'They which are the children of the flesh, these
are not the children of God.' The birth of the children of the
flesh is wholly a human-mind process. The infant mentality thus
produced knows nothing whatsoever of itself. It has no knowledge; is
not founded on truth. It will later manifest hereditary beliefs,
showing the results of prenatal mesmerism. Then it will receive the
general assortment of human thought and opinion--very little of it
based on actual truth--which the world calls education. Then it
learns to regard itself as an individual, a separate being. And soon
it attributes its origin to God. But the prenatal error will appear
in the result. The being manifests every gradation of human thought;
it grows; it suffers and enjoys materially; it bases its very
existence upon matter; it manifests the false activity of human
thought in material consciousness; and then it externalizes its
beliefs, the consentaneous human beliefs, upon its body and in its
environment; and finally, the activity of the false thought which
constitutes its consciousness ceases--and the being dies. Yes, its
death will be due to sin, to '_hamartio_,' missing the mark. It
never knew God. And that, Ned, is human life, so-called.

"Death is not in any sense a cessation of life. The being who dies
never knew what it was to live. Death is the externalization of
human, mortal beliefs, which are not based upon real knowledge, truth.
And so, human birth is itself death. Paul said: 'They that are after
the flesh do mind the things of the flesh; but they that are after the
spirit the things of the spirit.' In other words, mankind are striving
terribly, desperately, to keep alive a sense of material, fleshly
existence. But they can't do it. They are foredoomed to failure,
despite the discovery of antitoxins. In the book of Job we read: 'The
spirit