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SON OF THE SUN you think that young marine who finally smiled, and is trying to overhear what we say, feels the same way? Most of us intuitively sense that same logic, regardless of how joyful or how tragic a situation may be. We always know that ‘this, too, shall pass’. Only life and eternity do not pass away. A person is either intelligently aware of some infinite purpose, or a person is a mere animated volume of nothing. We are so concerned about eternity, which must be spent somewhere, either on earth or elsewhere. And does not eternity concern the final truth of all things, material or 1a» spiritual?” Adam leaned forward toward me, his brow wrinkling. Something I had said had an impact upon him. “What,” he asked, “do you mean, that life does not pass away?” I replied with an ease which surprised both him and me. “Well, I mean that life never passes away. Because of the very prevalence of life you and I are here. It passes from individual bodies, true enough, and it may even vanish from an entire solar system. But there will still be life throughout the universe. “Oblivion has only one condition, Adam. It is the same state that prevails with absolute zero, and in probing oblivion we find that it does not exist, just as absolute zero does not exist. By the same line of reasoning we find that life also has only one condition, and that is consciousness. In the physical world we find nothing but that which we call matter and motion. Nothing is 1 1 “Absolute zero, Adam, does not exist. Oblivion can neither be felt nor described, and certainly not imagined. Therefore oblivion does not exist, any more than does absolute zero. But consciousness is felt by all creatures in the same frame of description. All life could be whittled down to one entity, or distributed to an infinite number, but there would be no addition or subtraction of consciousness.” Therefore Adam smiled. His lips tightened a little as he rolled his eyes upward, straining hard to get the picture clear in his mind. 26 at absolute rest.