Another plausible explanation of what goes on "on the other side."

** An excerpt from “Life,” a sermon by Mary Baker Eddy

(As reprinted in the Christian Science Sentinel, Feb 2, 1918)

Since ever we investigated metaphysics and traversed in freedom the realm of Mind, we have been careful not to overrate our discoveries, or to state what we had not first understood. We have not demonstrated the actual state of man's existence beyond the limits of the observation of our senses, and only as we reason from deduction is it possible to define this state. Any hypothesis beyond this conclusion, presupposing the condition of the departed is fully understood, is a vain conjecture, unsupported by reason or revelation.

From facts apparent to the understanding and gathered from the Science of Soul we know that man is immortal, and that the shadow we call death is but a phase of mortal belief. No change has been wrought when we say, “My friend has just died;” that friend is saying in the full consciousness of existence and with its same surroundings, “I never died. It was but a dream I had; for life is going with me the same as before. I am not spirit; yet I am as much flesh and bones as I ever were [was]; the only change to me is, I cannot communicate with my friends,—and why? Because they do not understand me now. They call me spirit, but I am not; they say I died, but I did not; they do not know what I am, where I am, or what I am pursuing. I shall not be spirit until I lose all limits; they have lost their evidences of me through their personal senses, because they have said I changed, I died; their mistaken views of life have parted us; their belief that life ended with me, or took upon itself a new form, has prevented their under standing the reality of my present existence,—hence our separation through these opposite beliefs and our opposite conditions as the result thereof. Further communication between us is impossible, until their belief changes through the footsteps that mine has done and becomes like mine. This change will be named death, but that is their belief of it, not ours who have rent the veil that hides the mystery of a moment.”

Yes, we shall know each other there; we shall love and loved; we shall never lose our identity, but find it more and more in its order, beauty, and goodness. Men claim to know that pain is a fact, although it is unseen; they need know that peace and bliss are greater facts and that this world is the veil of brighter glory that lies beyond it.