Why should you be concerned about a few pounds of calcium, iron, manganese, iodine, nitrogen and other materials which built your body? They are not you. They are not your identity. They are the house you live in, but the house can burn down without affecting you. You can build another house to live in. That is what you do when your house of clay dissolves into its clay. You build an- other house of clay, another body. You are never without a body except during those periods of rest when you are repairing and replacing worn-out parts of your body, or building an entirely new one when the old one becomes too worn-out to renew or repair.
Let us look at it from this angle. It is a new angle of thought which should give you an entirely different idea of your body than the generally accepted one. Instead of thinking of your body as living and dying, think of your eternal Soul which is eternally living. Your Soul extends its life to your body to manifest the life which your Soul is. The body regives to the Soul that which has been extended to it. That is neither life nor death of the body. It is eternal life of the Soul expressed as two directions of life by the body.
You must, therefore, learn to think of life as action, and death as rest from action. Every day of your life is divided into action and rest from action. You are awake and active all day. Your body is thoroughly aware of its existence. But you rest each night and your body is as thoroughly unaware of its existence as though it were dead. The only reason you rest at night is to renew and repair your body. When your body is entirely worn-out you rest a longer time between periods of full renewal than between partial renewal. During those periods of acquiring an entirely new body, it is also unaware of bodily existence for a long period, instead of just one-night periods.
Nature tells the story of rebirth of bodies in very plain language. When you plant a seed in the ground for a flower, for a tree, or for a field of grass, these forms unfold from their seed into bodies. You think of these bodies as growing, dying and disappearing, but it almost escapes your notice that as every body unfolds from its seed it refolds back into it. For every branch and leaf of the oak tree you see with your eyes there is another branch and leaf which you do not see. What does that mean? It means that whatever unfolds from the seed to become a part of the visible universe, simultaneously refolds into its seed to disappear into the invisible universe. The Soul does not wait to take your body back after it is all dead, it takes it back as fast as it gives it out. There is your answer to what happens to your body when you die. Your Soul is your Self. You extend your body from your Soul-Self several billion times each second, and you return your body to your Soul-Self for rebirth at that same speed.
Everywhere in Nature you see rebirth of roses, of trees and of grass. Last year you picked an apple from this branch. This year you behold another apple where you plucked one last year, and the next year, and the next you can still pluck one. And if you open one you will find the same apple that you are going to eat all folded up in the seeds of other apples not yet born that will repeat the bodies of the apples which have long been born. That is Nature’s eternal process of repeating eternal life. She divides eternal life into eternal repetitions of life. We call them life and death, but both of them are opposite expressions of life. Is not that a wonderful thing to know? Is it not wonderful to know that every day you live in the visible world of bodies, your every thought and action is also simultaneously repeated and recorded in the invisible world of Mind?
During all the ages of your unfolding as an individual entity you have repeated your own Self in each new body and every experience which has progressed or retarded you is also repeated. Whatever progress you now make in this life makes your next life expression easier for you. You continually advance as you learn new lessons.
You do not remember the nonessentials of each life, for that would be a terrible punishment. You would but live a life of continual remorse if you had to relive the experiences of the hard struggles which brought you out of the jungle into today’s pleasant meadows. You do remember the essentials, however. If you have been a musician for several lives, and have thought music more than any other thought during those lives, you will undoubtedly think music again in succeeding lives. It is quite understandable why a musical prodigy exhibits such great musical talent at four or five years of age, if one thinks of it that way.