12    The divine Mind maintains all identities, from a blade Real and unreal identityof grass to a star, as distinct and eternal. The questions are: What are God’s identities? 15What is Soul? Does life or soul exist in the thing formed?

71:1    Nothing is real and eternal, — nothing is Spirit, — but God and His idea.

Soul is synonymous with Spirit, God, the creative, governing, infinite Principle outside of finite form, 9which forms only reflect.

    What is man? Brain, heart, blood, bones, etc., the 24material structure?

    When you say, “Man’s body is material,” I say with Paul: Be “willing rather to be absent from the body, 30Personal identityand to be present with the Lord.” Give up your material belief of mind in matter, and have but one Mind, even God; for this Mind forms its 217 217:1own likeness. The loss of man’s identity through the understanding which Science confers is impossible; and 3the notion of such a possibility is more absurd than to conclude that individual musical tones are lost in the origin of harmony.

6    When the supposition, that Spirit is within what it Individualizationcreates and the potter is subject to the clay, is individualized, Truth is reduced to the level 9of error, and the sensible is required to be made manifest through the insensible.

    What is termed matter manifests nothing but a material 12mentality. Neither the substance nor the manifestation of Spirit is obtainable through matter. Spirit is positive. Matter is Spirit’s contrary, the absence of Spirit.

Man is spiritual, individual, and eter-21nal; material structure is mortal.

    Human reason and religion come slowly to the recogni-27tion of spiritual facts, and so continue to call upon matter to remove the error which the human mind alone has created.

All creations of Spirit are eternal; but creations of matter must return to dust. 6Error supposes man to be both mental and material. Divine Science contradicts this postulate and maintains man’s spiritual identity.

9In Science, Truth is divine, and the infinite Divine allness God can have no unlikeness.

Breaking away from the mutations of time and sense, you will neither lose the solid objects and ends of life nor your own iden-27tity. Fixing your gaze on the realities supernal, you will rise to the spiritual consciousness of being, even as the bird which has burst from the egg and preens its wings for a 30skyward flight.

    We should forget our bodies in remembering good and the human race.

    Error presupposes man to be both mind and matter. Divine Science contradicts the corporeal senses, rebukes 9God and His imagemortal belief, and asks: What is the Ego, whence its origin and what its destiny? The Ego-man is the reflection of the Ego-God; the Ego-man 12is the image and likeness of perfect Mind, Spirit, divine Principle.

    The one Ego, the one Mind or Spirit called God, is 15infinite individuality, which supplies all form and come-liness and which reflects reality and divinity in individual spiritual man and things.

18    The mind supposed to exist in matter or beneath a skull bone is a myth, a misconceived sense and false conception as to man and Mind.

3    The material body and mind are temporal, but the real man is spiritual and eternal. The identity of the Identity not lostreal man is not lost, but found through this 6explanation; for the conscious infinitude of existence and of all identity is thereby discerned and re-mains unchanged. It is impossible that man should lose 9aught that is real, when God is all and eternally his.

let us remember that 15harmonious and immortal man has existed forever, and Definition of manis always beyond and above the mortal illu-sion of any life, substance, and intelligence 18as existent in matter. This statement is based on fact, not fable. The Science of being reveals man as perfect, even as the Father is perfect, because the Soul, or Mind, 21of the spiritual man is God, the divine Principle of all being, and because this real man is governed by Soul instead of sense, by the law of Spirit, not by the so-called 24laws of matter.

18God is individual, incorporeal. He is divine Prin-ciple, Love, the universal cause, the only creator, and The universal causethere is no other self-existence. He is all-21inclusive, and is reflected by all that is real and eternal and by nothing else. He fills all space, and it is impossible to conceive of such omnipresence and in-24dividuality except as infinite Spirit or Mind.

    The individuality of man is no less tangible because it is spiritual and because his life is not at the mercy of 18matter. The understanding of his spiritual individuality makes man more real, more formidable in truth, and en-ables him to conquer sin, disease, and death.

    The universe of Spirit is peopled with spiritual beings, 265 265:1and its government is divine Science. Man is the off-spring, not of the lowest, but of the highest qualities of 3Godward gravitationMind. Man understands spiritual existence in proportion as his treasures of Truth and Love are enlarged. Mortals must gravitate Godward, 6their affections and aims grow spiritual, — they must near the broader interpretations of being, and gain some proper sense of the infinite, — in order that sin and mortality 9may be put off.

    This scientific sense of being, forsaking matter for Spirit, by no means suggests man’s absorption into Deity 12 and the loss of his identity, but confers upon man en-larged individuality, a wider sphere of thought and action, a more expansive love, a higher and more permanent 15peace.