Christian Science, like Sri Aurobindo, sets up the goal of physical immortality. Neither has yet succeeded in turning this from a theoretical into a demonstrable achievement. I believe, with the Buddha, that neither of them ever will. But this is something which the future must settle. What we can settle with certainty now is that the goal is inconsistent with the general teaching. For in the case of Christian Science, matter is ardently proclaimed to be unreal. Why then all this bother to immortalize a material body? Why should any consistent Christian Scientist be so attached to an admittedly false concept of his own consciousness as to wish to perpetuate it for all eternity? And in the case of Sri Aurobindo, the arch-exponent of yoga, we ask why, if the attainment of the divine consciousness is the declared goal of yoga, death should not be regarded as being the failure to seek this consciousness and true immortality as being its successful realization? It is perfectly true, as Christian Science asserts, that there is a world of being where error, evil, and sickness are quite unknown and also true that man can penetrate and dwell in this world. It is, however, quite untrue to assert that he can thereby abolish his life in the lower world where error, evil, and sickness do exist all around him. He will, in fact, have to carry on a double-sided existence. Within, all will be harmony, goodness, health. Without, much will be discord, baseness, and disease. He can liberate himself from the flesh and its environment, but only in his attitude towards them. Both will still be there. He can, by intense inward concentration resulting in a trance-like state, think them out of his existence completely for a time, but not for all time. Nor can he change their character; that is, he cannot convert the body into a tree in actuality, nor a tree into a river.
-- Notebooks Category 10: Healing of the Self > Chapter 1 : The Laws of Nature > # 46
