WHAT'S ON YOUR "to do" list today? I need to go to the office, pick up the dry cleaning, catch up on my correspondence, think about immortality, buy some carrots for supper, and . . . . Yes, it's sort of like those multiple choice questions where you're asked, "Which one doesn't fit on this list?"

Think about immortality? Why would anyone seriously do that? Yet, it is surprising the number of people who do; though some people may not talk about it and others may not use that word. Lots of people never admit to being older than thirty-nine. Some people feel driven to have children, not so much out of love for children but for posterity, to keep the family name alive. Some swear by the life-lengthening virtues of yogurt. Then we read those semi-science fiction articles on cryogenics, where people have their bodies frozen in the hope that they can be thawed and restored in the future. And it's hard to realize that it's not really science fiction anymore.

The idea of cloning human beings is still science fiction, but barely. And then recently someone sent me an article from the November 1999 issue of Scientific American that discusses the possibility of eternal life. It blithely makes this observation: "While futuristic, the idea of shedding our bodies presents no fundamental difficulties. It presumes only that consciousness is not tied to a particular set of organic molecules but rather can be embodied in a multitude of different forms, from cyborgs to sentient interstellar clouds" ("The Fate of Life in the Universe," pp. 62–63).

That's all rather a mouthful, but the only true drawback to eternal life, in these authors' views, is whether there would be enough energy available in the universe to support it.

So what is immortality?

Is it living longer, indefinitely?

As I wondered about this, I was intrigued by the account of a father and son in Genesis, the first book of the Bible. It tells briefly of Enoch and his son Methuselah (see Gen. 5:21–27). You've probably heard the expression, "as old as Methuselah." It's reputed in the Bible that he lived 969 years.

So is immortality merely like living that long—969 years and then some? I hope not. Can you imagine Methuselah retiring at sixty–five and going down to Florida to fish? How long before that becomes boring? Fifty years? A hundred? Then what? Methuselah lived a long time. But that was it. It was simply a long time.

His father, Enoch, lived 365 years. Yet the Bible records something different about his experience "And Enoch walked with God: and he was not; for God took him" (Gen. 5:24). Enoch was translated. That is, he had such an intimate relationship with God that, like the prophet Elijah, he did not go through the experience of death.

Enoch walked with God. Here is a strong clue to the basis of immortality. From the Bible account, we don't know that Methuselah did any more than pursue his day-to-day life. Enoch, on the other hand, woke up to his relation to God. The things of God entered more and more into his thought. He evidently became so wrapped up in the ideas of God that he finally dropped all sense of materiality.

He must have known what it was to be the image and likeness of God, Spirit, and this rid him of the sense of being defined by a material body. He spent his time with God and was freed from the sense of living in a matter-based, matter-controlled, universe. It was quite a walk.

Immortality isn't a longer life in a better-running body. Nor is it a matter-reliant consciousness that is liberated from the body, as mentioned in the article from Scientific American. Christian Science explains that the realization of immortality comes from the growing discovery that life is Spirit-based, not matter-based. Immortality is eternal life, wholly spiritual life, with God.

Christ Jesus confirmed this. In the Gospel of John, Jesus is recorded as praying, "O Father, glorify thou me with thine own self with the glory which I had with thee before the world was" (John 17:5).

Jesus never lost his sense of oneness with his Father. In Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, Mary Baker Eddy writes, "Jesus of Nazareth taught and demonstrated man's oneness with the Father, and for this we owe him endless homage" (p. 18). Later on she brings out this further point: "He claimed no intelligence, action, nor life separate from God" (p. 136).

The Master points out the way for our own spiritual development. His example compels us to think about our own oneness with the Father. If God is our Father, then Spirit, not matter, is our origin. If God is the source of our life, spiritual, not material, laws govern us. As we gain our ideas of being from Spirit, and act on them, we are learning to walk with God. We are finding our way out of the limitations and failings of matter. We discover that there is much more to us than vulnerable matter or undependable mortal bodies. We begin to discover our immortal spiritual identity.

Jesus prayed that his identity be restored—the glory he had with God before the world was. He prayed to be utterly free from any consciousness of matter, or any sense of mortality intertwined with his identity. He was moving toward the glory of his pure likeness as God's perfect, incorporeal idea, the blessed Son of God.

Jesus did not cling to a mortal sense of himself. He was forever at one with God, eternal Life, and his whole career served to help us see what that means. Sickness, sin, and death were destroyed. The sense that they were a power that could harm, limit, or destroy life was totally refuted by his ministry. His life, forever one with God, exterminated the evidence of mortality. Those who were dying were healed. Those who were dead in sin were regenerated.

While doing this, he refused to allow people to worship him. He resolutely turned them to his Father. He urged people to think of God as their Father, and to acknowledge God's will, His power, and goodness. Jesus showed that the love of God is ever present, and that wherever it is known and acknowledged, man's immortal nature as the child of God becomes more apparent.

Jesus told Philip that those who saw him, saw the Father (see John 14:9). He did not say that he was God. But that God's will, God's love, God's power, were so evident in all that he did, that anyone who saw Jesus' works, and viewed his life, would see the nature of his Father. We might conclude that Jesus did much more than walk with God. His whole being was at one with God.

His example, as brought out through Christian Science, teaches us how to walk with God as Enoch did. It shows us the way of immortality. It brings us ever closer to the spiritual truth of being. As we walk with God—as we learn more about the immortal nature of being—healing and regeneration become natural. We stop walking with the symptoms of disease or frailty and give our full attention to Spirit. We become dissatisfied with the pleasures of the senses, and long for the satisfaction that comes from Spirit's revelation of Truth and Love.

As we walk with Spirit, give the ideas of Spirit our full attention, sickness and sin disappear from our consciousness and thus from our lives. Spirit feeds us with the idea of our own oneness with God. Christ, Truth, acts in human consciousness and reveals our true, indestructible nature. Goodness, love, health, vitality, spiritual understanding, purity, and fidelity constitute the real substance of every individual's life. They are the elements of our immortal identity. They are never sick, and so our true being can't be either. As we walk with God, as we turn away from a mortal, impaired, or limited sense of life in matter and give God our full attention, our perfect identity as the likeness of God is revealed to us. We realize that God is our Life, our perfect, immortal Life, now and always.

As we overcome sickness and sin, longevity naturally increases, and we have increasing opportunity to know God and our true selfhood in His likeness. As Science and Health states, "Being is holiness, harmony, immortality. It is already proved that a knowledge of this,even in small degree, will uplift the physical and moral standard of mortals, will increase longevity, will purify and elevate character" (p. 492). From a spiritual and scientific standpoint, immortality demonstrates our oneness with God. It is learning to commune with God and to allow God's love to be more evident in our day-to-day lives. Then, our example helps others to find their way to God and to experience the divine healing and saving power.

Doesn't this sound better than only revamping the body to extend life a few hundred more years or in fusing our identity into "interstellar clouds"? Fishing with Methuselah in Florida isn't all bad, but wouldn't you rather discover what it is like to walk with God?