What do you retain in existing?

To originate a thought or to impress your thoughts on another requires the possession of an intelligent soul-germ or spark of the divine essence.

Once given, you become possessed of an independent individuality, which you can never lose, and while you may cast off envelope after envelope―or sink into grosser and still grosser forms of matter, you can never cease to exist once endowed with soul-life.

In existing, you retain the individuality of your nature and the responsibility of your actions.

This is also true of the intelligent soul-principle, as manifested in animals or lower types of soul existence.

Whenever the power to reason and act on such reasoning is manifested whether in the individual or in animals, you may know that a soul exists and it is only a question of degree of purity of soul-essence. 

Both alike have a conscious individual immortality, differing, however in the type and degree of true essence―animals, as well as individuals, having an immortal future for development before them, and both are found in a more advanced state of development than they were in their earth existence.