Immortality, is what the word says it is--godhood re-cognized in the
mortal. "Im" or, "Om"--the more general term--stands for the Changeless.
Birthless. Deathless. Unnamable Power that holds the worlds in space, and
puts intelligence into man.

Biologists, even though they were to succeed in reproducing life by
chemical processes from so-called "lifeless" (sterilized) _matter_, making
so high a form of manifestation as man himself, yet could never name _the
power by which they accomplished it_.

Always there must remain the Unknownable--the Absolute.

"Om," therefore, is the word we use to express this Omniscient, Omnipotent
and Omnipresent power.

The term "mortal" we have already defined. The compound immortal, applied
to individual man, stands for one who has made his "at-one-ment" with Om,
and who has, while still in the mortal body, re-cognized himself as one
with Om.

This is what it means to escape the "second death," to which the merely
mortal consciousness is subject.

This is the goal of every human life; this is the essence, the _substance_
of all religious systems and all philosophies.

The only chance for disputation among theologians and philosophers, lies in
the way of accomplishing this at-one-ment. There is not the slightest
opportunity for a difference of opinion as what they wish to accomplish.