For if not true, they are well imagined... - Arthur C. Clarke

There were other thinkers, Bowman also found, who held even more exotic views. They did not believe that really advanced beings would possess organic bodies at all. Sooner or later, as their scientific knowledge progressed, they would get rid of the fragile, disease-and-accident-prone homes that Nature had given them, and which doomed them to inevitable death. They would replace their natural bodies as they wore out — or perhaps even before that — by constructions of metal and plastic, and would thus achieve immortality.

Even though you were once a goddess, Kalidasa's heaven was only an illusion.

“Very ingenious, like all your theories,” said Stormgren. “I wish you’d give them Opus numbers so that I could keep up with them. The objections to this one—”