If the body is a mental concept, as we learn in Christian Science, it includes not only the physical frame but the body of one's human experience, including human ties, interests, responsibilities, joys, and sorrows. Christ Jesus said, "He that loveth his life shall lose it; and he that hateth his life in this world shall keep it unto life eternal." John 12:25; One turning from the body toward his spiritual identity as the child of God begins to experience a change of values. He comes to recognize some of the truths taught in Christian Science: that Spirit, God, is All, that the real man is Spirit's image and likeness, that therefore the material sense of self and one's dependence upon material circumstances and things are actually false beliefs.
This change does not come all at once but by degrees: first, with a recognition that spiritual qualities are more dependable, more substantial than material conditions; then a glimpse here or there of the actual nothingness of some condition that seemed necessary to happiness but no longer is. But there is no void; the space is filled with spiritual substance.
Self-immolation, in Christian Science, is never the elimination of something real but of what never had any reality, although from a material standpoint it may have seemed to be one's whole self. Human ties are not to be forcibly undone, but with a clarification of one's relationship to divine Mind as this Mind's idea, the binding limiting aspects of these ties begin to undo themselves, and relationships take new, more harmonious forms. Likewise, personal interests naturally change from those centered on self to those which better express the nature of divine Love. Responsibilities that burden are found to be unnecessary, and new responsibilities that are more expressive of the love and care of divine Truth appear. Joys that are temporal give way to joys that go on forever.
