by Manly P. Hall

LIFE is more powerful then life and death itself” ~ by unknown

While in Manila I chanced to walk a short distance out into the country and stood for some time watching a slow-moving, mud-covered water bull dragging an antique plow through the ooze of a partly submerged rice field. Hour after hour the great animal waded through the mud, now and again shaking its massive head to free itself from the tantalizing swarms of flies. Behind the bull walked an aged Filipino, his tattered trousers rolled above his knees and his homespun garments bespattered with ooze and grime. To wade day after day through the half-inundated paddies constituted the life of the water bull; to follow with his hands upon the plow constituted the life of the man.

Sometime before, I had heard someone say that they wanted to live forever, and I wondered if it would be a blessing to prolong the existence of these two, one a man and the other a beast. Suppose that instead of living three-score and ten, the gray-haired native had to live a thousand years. Would he not plow the mud of the rice fields day after day? What would he know at the end of a thousand years that he did not know already? What would he do in the last of those centuries that he had not already done? With the animal the same. Slowly, ponderously, resignedly, the huge creature dragged the same plow he had dragged many times before, and would continue to draw through the sickening slime until at last death released him from his bond of servitude.

Once on a slippery street in one of our eastern cities I saw a heavily loaded van drawn by three huge white horses. A steep hill confronted the animals. They struggled in vain, their great hoofs sliding on the wet cobblestones. The driver, a heavyset, harsh looking man, was beating their dripping flanks with a great leather thong. Welts arose on the sides of the tortured animals but the labor was too great, and at last with an almost human cry one of the animals, falling, rolled over and lay panting amidst the broken harness. Many times in the past that horse had been beaten, many times in the future it would again feel the sting of the lash. There is no release for the beast of burden until it drops some day by the roadside to rise no more. Then the blows of the driver are in vain, and a tortured heart unable to understand its lot is released from an unresponding form predestined to plod its way with iron-shod hoofs through the span of life.

There is but a step from the beast to the man. The world is largely composed of human creatures hitched to the plow of necessity – creatures who drag vans and trucks after them and feel upon their backs the whiplash of privation and necessity. But struggle on they must because of those dependent upon them until, like the beaten horse, they drop in their tracks.

We live in a very workaday world. One by one we are drawn into the wheels of that great human machine which we call civilization. Our dreams are shattered, our ideals collapse before necessity, and all too often we become rutted. Day after day we do the same thing, until we lose the power to do anything different. That individuality which God has given us we lose. We become just parts of the great machine; we think as we are told to think; we do what we are told to do. A harness is placed upon us, the blinders over our eyes, and we become burden-bearers, valuable only for our pay check at the end of the week.

There is no telling what would happen if man were allowed to keep on crystallizing, daily becoming more enmeshed in the narrowing confines of crystallization and materiality. Generation after generation he would continue to drag the plow of necessity in ever-narrowing circles, were it not for the fact that periodically he is withdrawn from his environment and the clay mold shattered and cast to the winds. Death is his liberator, for he can no longer free himself from the responsibilities and environments in which he has become enmeshed.

For ages we have hated death or, more accurately, we have feared death, and what we fear we hate. Yet the wise of all ages have recognized in death a liberation. It is a breaking down of walls and bars; it is the great equalizer; it comes to all, great and small; it visits the mansions of the mighty and the hovels of the poor. None are exempt; it is the doom of all living things to die, and all things fulfill their destiny. Some approach the great mystery in fear and trembling; others pass through its portals strong and erect. The wise men and women of the world have never feared death but have entered upon its mystery as eager children, seeking to know that which lay behind its somber portal. One of the Greek philosophers told his disciples that death was the great initiation, and those who faced it most bravely were most truly dignified by their immortality.

It is strange but true that Christians fear death more than any other religious cult. In spite of their great claims to faith, they seem afraid to launch their souls into the presence of their heavenly Father. A great mystic on his deathbed told his children that he had lived all his life in the realization of the infinite goodness and the infinite wisdom of God, and now that he was journeying to a distant land he knew he could not go where God was not. He also said that where the Father was there could be no evil, and trusting in the infinite wisdom of the Creator he consequently had no fear of death; for since God had ordained it, it was good. This attitude, often accepted as an intellectual concept, for some unknown reason seldom satisfies the so-called Christian, who faces eternity with fear and trembling. It was Walt Whitman who glorified the spirit of death. He viewed the somber angel as the spirit of release, the one who gave freedom from the bondage and limitation of sense and faculty.

St. Paul said, “I die daily.” Sleep is death and death is but a sleeping, a period of rest for the weary. As the trusting child lies down to sleep, so man, really but a child, must lie down at the end of life to rest a little while.

To the mystic, life and death are inseparable. One predestines the other; each is dependent upon the other. One is an in-breathing and the other is an out-breathing. At birth we are breathed out into time; at death we are absorbed back into eternity. One is an inhalation and the other an exhalation. In reality, birth is death, for when we come into the world we assume coats of skin. We pick up a cross and start to walk with it up a rocky hill; we climb onward until at last, weak and weary, we sink down beneath the weight of our load.

At birth we come into a world of uncertainty, a world beset with problems. Our spirits, clouded and veiled with their vestments of flesh, lose sight of their inherent immortality. So, at physical birth, we are really born into death – the state of separateness and limitation. Here we stay a little while, striving to orient ourselves in the midst of internal and external confusion, until at last, weary with the unequal struggle and having exhausted the vital resources brought with us, we slip off this mortal coil to rise freed from the fetters of substance.

Thus again and again the soul escapes the snares laid for it by men. The prisoner in the dungeon cell escapes only when he drops the mortal coil, but the thing within him cannot be confined, nor is it subject to the whims of other men. So death is a birth, birth into a larger vista. Here for a moment man sees his own immortality; here he discerns what lies beyond the narrow confines of his earthen shell. Let us consider for a few moments the mystery of life and death as taught in the Mystery Schools and studied by the wise minds of the ancient world, who rose triumphant, phoenix-like, from the ashes of mortality.

To the mystic this thing we call life is not all of life. It is merely a day in school, and in order to secure an education the child must go to school many days. Day after day the soul of man assumes its garments of clay and comes downward into the schoolroom of experience, which we call physical life. In this great chemical laboratory of nature the student soul carries on its experiments – combining the mysterious forces of nature and learning to control one by one the subtle elements of creation. Then, as the tired boy gathers up his books and shuffles slowly home, so man, having exhausted his vital resources in his quest for knowledge, returns home again to rest for a little while.

The story of life and death is told in the allegory of the diver in his diving suit. There are those whose business is to search for the treasure lost in the bottom of the sea. When the time comes for them to go to work they put on a heavy rubber suit and shoes with soles of lead, and finally over their heads they clamp a helmet with a glass window in front. Into the helmet runs a rubber tube which is connected with the air pump on the surface and furnishes air to breathe. To the diver’s body is also fastened a rope by which he is drawn up at the end of his work. The leaden shoes are so heavy that he can hardly walk when on the boat’s deck, but when he goes overboard the pressure and density of the water compensate for the added weight and enable the diver to get around with comparative ease. Down on the bottom of the sea he searches for lost treasure, or it may be that he is in quest of pearls.

Man is like the diver, for the heavy diving suit is the physical body and the sea the ocean of life. At birth man assumes the diving suit, but his spirit is always connected by a line to the light above. Man descends into the depths of the sea of sorrow and mortality that he may find there the hidden treasures of wisdom. For experience and understanding are pearls of great price and to gain them man must bear all things. When the treasure has been found, or his hours of labor are over, he is drawn back into the boat again, and taking off the heavy armor breathes the fresh air and feels free once more.

Wise men realize that this incident we call life is only one trip to the bottom of the sea; that we have been down many times before and must go down many times again before we find the treasure. The philosopher knows that the spirit of man is immortal, that it will never die; but like a wanderer who moves from city to city in his quest for knowledge, so the spirit passes from body to body in its search for understanding.

Sometime during life everyone finds himself in the presence of the empty house of a loved one who has slipped away from the scene of his labors to rest a little while. At a time like this they must ask themselves the question: “Which was my friend? Was it the thing I saw and which I still see lying before me, or was it that conscious, living, invisible, spiritual entity which felt, knew, understood, and sympathized, merely using this clay as a vehicle for expressing its divinity? If the first, then indeed my friend is dead and his personality is food for worms. But if it were the latter it cannot die, for it was not born. It came in and out again, like a breeze through the leaves of the trees. I was glad when it came; let me also be glad when it goes, for it left something else to come to me and in leaving me it goes to something else. It has been my friend and I give my friend to another to be his friend also.”

In the universe there is no relationship other than friendship. Friendship glorifies all relations, and without it all relationships fail. When we remove the sense of possession we remove with it the sense of loss; and when we remove selfishness we remove the sense of possession if we truly love our friend. We want our friend to do that which is best for him. We would not hold him when he should go, nor call him back when he has departed. The perfect test of love and friendship is the willingness to serve and sacrifice for the thing we adore. In unselfish service, one to the other, we glorify the finest sentiments of human life, and none reach true spirituality who cannot give up as gladly as they take; for life is made up of giving and taking. Life is made up of coming and going. Every minute of the day someone dies; every minute of the day someone is born. In they come through the door marked entrance and out they go through the door marked exit. You come and go with them, for in this game none are spectators but all are players.

All over the world there are people who have not yet awakened to the uselessness of attempting to possess. Nearly every misery that man brings upon himself follows an attempt to dominate or to domineer. The words “my” and “mine” are sadly overworked. When we try to possess other human creatures, to overshadow their lives and to control their actions we assume a tremendous cosmic responsibility. Every day we meet men and women who are failures in life because they were overshadowed during their early training. There is nothing more tragic than a person whose will is broken. They have lost the power of decision; they become merely parrots, echoing the thoughts of others. Death is often the only release for these overshadowed souls who have never been permitted to live their own lives but have always bowed to some strong, dominating intelligence which made all the important decisions of their lives. This is often true with certain parents who never allow their children to grow up.

In every walk of society we find powerful, objective intellects radiating decision and positiveness, with negative, receptive, undecided people revolving around them in the same way that electrons revolve around the positive nucleus in an atom. Very often when you hear John Doe speak you know very well that he is not expressing his own mind, for he has no thoughts of his own. He is merely repeating the thoughts of some powerful intellect that is controlling his life. In this fashion parents marry off their children and dominate the lives of future generations, forcing posterity to perpetuate the same idiosyncrasies and fancies by which they have been governed.

These dominated minds become driftwood upon the sea of life. Like rudderless derelicts they follow the tide or scuttle before the winds. Other persons not observing enough to realize that these unfortunates have no mind of their own, are often influenced by these human wrecks. As the derelicts will sometimes strike and sink another ship really headed for some port, so these ruined lives often ruin others who might have accomplished had they not encountered the drifting wreckage. Even at death often the dominating mind will not let go but will try to control the soul of the thing it desires to possess, even after the mortal coil has returned to dust.

The great tragedy is that in the majority of cases the ruling mind, the obsessing intellect, really loves the thing it controls; it really desires to serve and do good, but has overstepped its bounds in not permitting the thing upon which it showers its devotion to have the same freedom that it expects for itself. Very often people do not realize that true love is unselfish, giving to those around it the privilege of carving out their own destiny.

Very often when death has made that dominance impossible in the physical world, the strong mind reaches out into eternity and still controls through love or will the thing which has gone on. Very often their weeping and wailing retards the liberated soul in its pilgrimage through space. Again and again, the departed one is drawn back by the selfish emotions of those left behind. In this way spiritualism is capable of doing a great deal of harm. While the realization of life after death and the continuity of consciousness after disintegration of the physical body has helped many to face eternity unafraid, it has also led thousands of people to interfere with the destiny of the dead by drawing them back again and again to move Ouija boards, draw pictures on slates, play tambourines, and perform similar phenomena.

When a child is in school studying his lessons you would not think of sending every fifteen minutes for him to draw pictures or materialize flowers. You would realize that his education is very important – is, in fact, of paramount import. You would leave him to his studies so that later he could assume a proper position in society. The dead are as much in school as the living. We have no right to take them from their various labors. In moments of sorrow it is difficult to be philosophical, but sorrow is the test of philosophy. Anyone can apply his principles when everything goes the way he wishes it, but in the face of disaster only strong men are brave. Strength lies not in boastfulness but in courage, calmness, and conviction in extremity. When one we love is gone, let us remain strong, for our strength is often his strength, because a soul facing eternity is a stranger in a strange land. It is still more or less conscious of the environments it has left behind, and is not fully awake to the new world that lies ahead.

We do not realize that our sorrow goes forward with those whom we love. If we love them enough we will send them forward with a smile, so that the soul, passing on to other labors, will look back to see the loved ones left behind smiling even though their hearts be sad, as the aged mother smiled when her boy rode away. When our loved ones pass into the Great Beyond, our strength is their strength; for as we loved them they loved us, and our sorrow is shared by them. Blessed are the dead who have been able to go their way, realizing that those behind understand and carry on cheerfully and earnestly the work that they have had to leave unfinished.

We can do but three things for the dead whom we have loved. The first is to let go of them and send them on their appointed way, freed from all control, forgiven for their mistakes only as a friend who has been with us a little while and then journeyed to another land. The second thing we can do is to take up their labor, or if we cannot, at least see that no evil comes from the misuse of things they have left and the ideals they have had. The third thing is to think of them sometimes and send them a godspeed. Give them up, let them go, and hope that future generations will do as much for you.

One of the most difficult problems to be confronted by those who have lost a dear one is loneliness. When our friend is removed by death, something is taken out of our lives. We wander alone where before we walked together, and there is nothing more terrible that can sweep over a human soul than the sense of aloneness. But time will mend broken ties, and the pain of parting will have its balm in the beauty of remembrance. In our soul’s eye we can see our friend ever near us, and we can dream of his progress through space to ultimate accomplishment. Let us cease to dream of being with them again, waiting for death ourselves that we may be reunited. Let us rather realize that they are about their Master’s business in their world; that we are about our Master’s business in our world; that those worlds are not so very far apart; and that the greatest bond which holds the souls of men together is common labor for a common end.

Let us look upon those about us more and more as individuals and accord to each the right of unfolding his own destiny. Let us extend a helping hand when we can, even uniting with others that each may assist the other in the completion of their joint tasks. But let us look upon all our loved ones as belonging first and fundamentally to themselves. Let us respect the individuality – the innate divinity that is within them, even as it is within ourselves. Let us realize that there is but one existing relationship in nature: brotherhood, which is objectified in its fullest sense in friendship; one God, the Father of all life; one creation, the objectification of God; one humanity, the manifestation of the humanity of God; one nature, the organs and functions of the Divine One.

No thing exists without the presence of divinity within it. God is the life of its life, the light of its light, the source of its entire expression. This divinity can no more be controlled than God can be subjected to his creation. To attempt to turn this divinity from its appointed ends is a great crime in nature. In the frontal sinus between the eyes and just above the bridge of the nose is the holy of holies of man. Here within and shrouded by the blue veil of Isis dwells the Incomprehensible One, the divine germ, which man has learned to call I AM. Unseen by any mortal eye, unmeasured by any mortal sense, incomprehensible to any mortal comprehension, the Eternal remains forever shrouded by its own mystery. Enthroned in the midst of its parts and members, the “I” beholds that which lies beyond the limitations of personality and individuality. This “I” can never belong to anything but itself; it can never be enslaved, although its personalities and vehicles may be loaded with chains and shackles.

In the dawn of time this divine spark was born from the friction of the Great Wheel. It was cast into immortality, for it was made of the substance of immortality. “Never was time it was not. It shall cease to be never.” It is not yours nor is it mine, although we all have it in common. It dips into creation and becomes a stone; later it grows and becomes a plant; then it moves and becomes an animal. Later it thinks, and behold, it is a man. Yet it is not a man, plant nor animal. It is all these things and more. They are its definitions, but it is indefinite. They are its manifestations, and yet it is more than all definitions and manifestations. It is the seed of worlds and universes, and within its presence are all things yet to be. This germ of immortality, this ever-existing thing, as ancient as eternity yet as recent as the moment and as new as futurity, comes and goes. It enters the vision of our consciousness for a moment and we see it is new. It stays a little while and then departs, and we say it is old. And yet in it the past, the present, and the future are absorbed into the eternal and ever present Now.

This thing that was within the presence of the Father before the mountains and the seas were made; that walked the earth when the flames and lava of prehistoric creation tinted the mists of the dawn with lurid flames – this thing which grew with the growth of worlds and has stored within it the memory of antiquity, comes for a day into our presence. A little, chubby, pink-faced bundle of love appears, and great rejoicing comes with it. It seems to be brand new; it just could never have been before, nor will there ever be again a squirming personality so perfect, so magnificent, or so important. IT IS OURS. Such is the coming of little Willie, our Willie, and from the day he sticks one chubby toe into his mouth he controls the destinies of those who love him. Yet if we could look long and earnestly into those little eyes peering up into ours we would see that they are very old. Eternities speak out from that little face for while the clay is fresh the fingers that molded it are very old. Many times before they have built bodies from the earth; many times before they have scattered the dust back from whence it came. This stranger from afar has come into our keeping. As opportunity was furnished to us, so by the law of compensation it was furnished to others. This little life is in trust; our duty is to aid it to gain control over its faculties and functions, and prepare it to assume its position as an individual part of the Great Plan. We are the doorways through which it comes into creation, but the door does not own the creatures that pass through it.

It is interesting to speculate concerning the impersonality of nature. Hundreds of times we have come into the world and an equal number of times we have departed from it. The child of today is the parent of tomorrow. The next time we come these little ones may be the parents and we the children, for in one of the sacred books it was said, “Behold a man is a son of his own son and a child of his own children.” It would be a wonderful thing if we could view that little life coming to us as something that had always been and always would be, and that we were merely mediums for its manifestation; that it was our privilege to help something which, although its form is merely a tiny infant in our arms, is as old as we are – perhaps older in experience; that it is here as we are here to gain experience and to adjust itself with the mysteries of life. This thought might make us more impersonal, more helpful. It might make us realize that in connection with this little life, we possess but one thing, and that is an opportunity. We should not say, “This is my child.” We should say, “This is my opportunity to pay the debts that I incurred when I came into the world.”

The years pass. The cooing infant becomes the prattling child, and slowly the form passes through Shakespeare’s Seven Ages, until at last it goes back again through the same door by which it came. From the invisible it was launched into the visible; from the visible it is cast back to the causal unseen. Its coming was met with rejoicing, although everyone who congratulated realized that the life was being launched into uncertainty, almost certain sorrow and struggle. When the long fight is over and the weary life seeks rest and escape from its uncertainty, we all weep and hate to see it relieved of its responsibilities even for a day. Such is human inconsistency.

In ancient times when a well-loved citizen passed out, there was feasting and rejoicing and the kegs were broached. The first to go under the table was considered the best friend of the deceased. The day will soon come when weeping and mourning and the hanging of crepe will cease and we shall say goodbye to our friend and congratulate him on his well-earned rest, realizing that in the eternity of things we have met and parted before and will meet and part again, but whereas now we but partly comprehend, some day we shall know each other in full understanding.

There are those who by special preparation have fitted themselves to understand the cycle of life around which man passes from birth to death and from death to birth. In the words of the great Krishna, India’s Divine Shepherd: “Sure is death for the living, sure is birth for the dead. Over the inevitable, why shouldst thou grieve?”

To most people the unseen universe about us, divided from our consciousness by the limitations of our perceptions, is a hazy, poorly formed, and barren space, peopled only with angels and demons. They do not realize that the invisible world is as real and understandable as the narrow environment which we have in space. Man has four bodies, of which the physical is the lowest and most dense. When he casts off the mortal coil he merely transfers his consciousness to his finer vehicles, which he continues to use in the invisible worlds. One after the other he drops the four, so that in reality he dies four times in each life and is born four times before he appears again in the physical world.

Our idea of heaven and hell is rather warped and totally inadequate. I have a rare volume in my library which shows the New Jerusalem being let down through a hole in the sky on four ropes and a derrick. The great minds of the world, however, are beginning to realize more and more that heaven and hell are not geographical locations but states of consciousness. In one sense, we may say that heaven is the realization of accomplishment and hell the recognition of failure.

In the Catholic Church they have an after-death state called purgatory, which really means the place of purging or cleansing. Purgatory is part of the emotional sphere of nature; consequently only creatures with emotional natures are capable of producing those causes which would react as consciousness in that plane of substance. Therefore children who pass out before the twelfth or thirteenth year, before the emotional nature is born (which occurs at about the age of fourteen), have no consciousness in the purgatorial world. In purgatory man merely faces the reactions of his own actions. It is not a place of eternal damnation where he must burn forever and ever. It is merely a place of settlement where he adjusts the accounts of his life and is confronted by his debits and credits. Here he understands why his actions resulted in sorrow for others. He is confronted with the misery that he has caused, and must purge his nature by honest repentance and sincere endeavor to make right the wrongs which he has done.

The average adult spends about twenty-five years of earth time in purgatory, and then passes onward into higher and finer worlds where he is rewarded for the good that he has done, and incorporates into his spiritual nature the fruitage of his experiences in the physical world. The invisible planes are places where man assimilates and digests the experience which he stored up in his objective intellect during life. He may in some cases learn new things, for a great Greek once said: “The living are ruled by the dead.” This statement may be taken in several ways.

I have often heard it said by people in discussing the problem of reincarnation. “If I ever go out of this world, there is nothing that can bring me back. When I am gone, I am through.” This is not unlike the small boy who has been playing very hard and at last, exhausted and sleepy-eyed, crawls into bed, murmuring just before he goes to sleep: “I’m going to sleep forever or at least a week.”

But the next morning it would be impossible to keep the youngster in bed. When the sun comes up the lad realizes that today is the day of the big football game and to keep him to his statement of the night before would make him the most miserable creature in the world. It is the same with man. After a long life he seeks rest, but after a long rest he again desires new labors and greater accomplishments. So after a period (which averages at our present time about twelve hundred years) the spirit assumes the flesh again and comes into the world to continue its search for experience, knowledge, and understanding. This is the gamut of life: To sleep, to wake, to sleep again.

We do not want it to be understood that we view death as an escape from life. Rather it is a little rest to break the tediousness of the journey. Occasionally some seek to escape their responsibility by destroying their own lives. To these death is but further misery, for the suicide wanders between heaven and hell. He is held to the world by the same responsibilities he has sought to shirk, but is divided from the world by the lack of the body which he has destroyed. In a very remarkable play called Outward Bound, which had a great success in England and America during the last few years, the suicides are called “Halfways” – they are neither dead nor alive. During the medieval period in Europe when magic dominated the minds of the people, suicides were symbolized by agonized figures weeping by their tombstones. Man cannot escape his responsibilities, but he is never given more than he can bear although often he is tested to the uttermost.

If we could view life and death as the ancient world viewed these mysteries, facing each with a realization that all things work together for good, we could remove from our lives the blight of fear and foreboding that takes much of the joyousness out of our lives. Man’s great mistake is to assume life too seriously. We often lose sight of the fact that we are here to study the chemistry of life and that we do this best when we remain free from the entanglements of our experimentation. We become so involved in our problems that we lose sight of the fact that we are here to study problems, for we cannot study successfully when we permit the personal equation to enter into the conclusions reached.

The Masters of Wisdom have told us that we can never gain initiation or true spiritual insight so long as we dabble in psychism of any kind. If we would know the Truth we must refrain from idle speculation and useless phenomenalism. And what is infinitely more important, we must learn to stand on our own feet.

Very often people allow others to do their thinking for them, and when their mentors are taken the ones left behind are incapable of solving the problems that arise. They forthwith broadcast S.O.S. calls into the unseen, begging the dead to solve the problems concerning which they, the living, are ignorant. When a person has so overshadowed the life of another that that other individual can no longer live without him, it is often necessary for nature to divide the two. Man is being taught self-reliance; and when he leans, the law knocks the props out from under him. Those chosen for advancement in the Mysteries are those who think for themselves and not for other people.

There does come a time in man’s development when he is assigned the labor of directing the destiny of those incapable of directing their own; but one who assumes this mission must be very certain of his ground, and have wisdom surpassing that of most mortals. In most cases we do not know what people really need; we only know what we want to do and very often our knowledge concerning the thing next to be done is very inadequate. Consequently, when the blind lead the blind both fall into the ditch. One of the great handicaps of religion today is that the preacher, in many instances, knows no more than his congregation concerning the weighty matters of the soul. When someone who has just been bereaved says: “Oh, what shall I do, John’s gone?” that tells a very sad story – it means that John has carried the responsibility for two, and that one never thought. The wise man says: “Everything objective has vanished, but I AM; therefore, all that is important remains.”

Let us remember that death is equivalent to change, and change is the thing by which interest is maintained in nature. Environments are constantly changing, and these changes encourage nature to adjust itself to new problems and conditions. By such means growth is made possible. People who wish to live forever should read the story of The Wandering Jew, who was forced to live forever. They would then realize that this world is a great stage and that nature has at her command an endless number of scene shifters, by which the settings are arranged for those little dramas which we call life. In a theater they always lower the curtain when the scenes are changed; otherwise the makeshift crudities of the scenery would detract from the illusion of the drama. So God in his infinite mercy and wisdom withdraws individuals, nations, and races from the darkened theater while the scenes are being changed. This results in a conservation of energy and preserves the atmosphere of fantasy, which is a necessary part of the play. When the new scenes are laid and the curtain goes up, we assume our new roles, after which the stage is rearranged for other players.

We come into life buoyant with youth and optimism, but our spirits are bent and often broken by the years of struggle. Not infrequently we are soured and narrowed, and if left here indefinitely we would learn but little after a certain point. There is a period in everyone’s life where mentally and spiritually dies, and after that the sooner physical death follows, the better. Man really dies when he no longer has a future to look forward to and lives only in his past. He dies when he no longer has an interest in life; he dies when he can no longer dream; and most of all, he dies when egotism sets in and he can no longer learn. He might then exist ten thousand years, but he would never be anything but an encumbrance upon the face of nature.

We are told that between each life drama there is a moment when to man is revealed the meaning of it all. It is forgotten, however, as he assumes the unresponsive bodies that form his personality. But this moment of realization is the life-giving moment of the soul, when injustice and inharmony are swept away and man, standing free in space, secures the sweeping impersonal outlook that is inclusive and not exclusive. Then for a moment he sees the plan, stupendous, irresistible; he sees his place in the plan; he recognizes the inevitability of his ultimate accomplishment; he knows his God and is bathed in the effulgence of the divine reality. In the physical world he may have been an atheist, but in this supreme moment he sees, for in this moment mortality is absorbed in immortality. He transcends the mold of creation and recognizes both his origin and his ultimate. To those left behind who knew both his virtues and his faults, his broadness and his limitations, this is a great comfort; for they realize that in that moment he will know himself as he really is, and lay plans for future greatness far surpassing any achievement of the past.

As a closing paragraph to this article, none seems more fitting than Benjamin Franklin’s epitaph, which he wrote himself and asked that it be placed upon his grave:

The Body
of
Benjamin Franklin
(Like the cover of an old book,
Its contents torn out,
And stript of its lettering and gilding),
Lies here food for worms;
Yet the work shall not be lost,
For it will appear once more
In a new
And more beautiful edition
Corrected and amended
By
The Author.

Excerpt from Death To Rebirth