βIt is a slightly arresting notion that if you were to pick yourself apart with tweezers, one atom at a time, you would produce a mound of fine atomic dust, none of which had ever been alive but all of which had once been you.β β from A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson (a “slightly arrested” atheist), whose book is better titled A Short History of Nearly Everything According to the Five Personal Senses; in other words, a brief exercise in futility.
On the other hand, “the material origin, growth, maturity, and death of sinners, as the history of man, disappears, and the everlasting facts of being appear, wherein man is the reflection of immutable good.” (Unity of Good, Mary Baker Eddy, p. 50-51)
Jesus said to his learned, materially minded persecutors, “Ye are from beneath; I am from above: ye are of this world; I am not of this world.” (John 8:23).
The man from above said to his disciples: “In my Father’s house [consciousness] are many mansions [higher ‘houses’ — increasingly higher states and stages of consciousness]. I go to prepare a place for you. Where I go you cannot come as of now. But I go to prepare that place … that where I AM [above], there ye shall be also [in other words, you shall dwell in the consciousness that is above all. Thus, as they grew in grace, the disciples no longer thought of the Father’s house according to their own ideas of it, but thought, spoke, and acted from it.]
“Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life; and I will dwell in the house [the consciousness] of [LOVE] for ever.”
(Science and Health, Mary Baker Eddy, p. 578:16)