Text of the meditation
Immortality is here and now, and is not a speculative something beyond the grave. Immortality does not belong to time, and will never be found in time: it belongs to Eternity; and just as time is here and now, so is Eternity here and now, and a person may find that Eternity and establish themselves in it, if they will overcome the self that derives its life from the unsatisfying and perishable things of time.
While a person remains immersed in sensation, desire and the passing events of their day-by-day existence, and regards those sensations, desires and passing events as of the essence of themselves, they can have no knowledge of immortality. What such a person desires, and mistakes for immortality, is persistence; that is, a continuous succession of sensations and events of time.
Persistence is the antithesis of immortality.
James Allen (1864–1912), Book of Meditations for Every Day in the Year (1913) – public-domain text, gently modernised.
The original 1913 text is in the public domain.