The race has been hypnotized with the idea of Death. The
common usage of the term reflects the illusion. We hear
those who should know better speaking of persons being 'cut down
by the grim reaper;' 'cut off in his prime;' 'his activities
terminated;' 'a busy life brought to an end;' etc., the idea
expressed being that the individual had been wiped out of
existence and reduced to nothingness. In the Western world this
is particularly true. Although the dominant religion of the
West teaches the joys of the hereafterh in such strong terms
that it would seem that every believer would welcome the
transition; although it might well be supposed that relatives
and friends would don gay robes and deck themselves with
bright flowers in token of the passage of the loved one to a
happier and brighter sphere of existence-we see just the
opposite manifestation. The average person, in spite of his
faith and creed, seems to dread the approach of 'the grim
reaper,'
and his friends drape themselves in black robes and give every
other outward token of having forever lost the beloved one. In
spite of their beliefs, or expression of belief, Death has a
terror which they seemingly cannot overcome.
To those who have acquired that sense of consciousness of the
illusion of death, these frightful emotions have faded away.
To them, while they naturally feel the sorrow of temporary
separation and the loss of companionship, the loved one is seen
to have simply passed on to another phase of life, and nothing
has been lost - nothing has perished. There is a centuries old
Hindu fable, in which is told the tale of a caterpillar, who
feeling the approach of the langour which betokened the end of
the crawling stage of existence and the beginning of the long
sleep of the chrysalis stage, called his friends around him. It
is sad, he said, to think that I must abandon my life, filled
with so many bright promises of future achievement. Cut off
by the grim reaper, in my very prime, I am an example of the
heartlessness of Nature. Farewell, good friends, farewell
forever.
Tomorrow I shall be no more. And, accompanied by the tears and
lamentations of the friends surrounded his death.bed, he
passed away. An old caterpillar remarked sadly:'Our brother has
left us. His fate is also ours. One by one we shall be cut
down by the scythe of the destroyer, like unto the grass of the
field. By faith we hope to rise again, but perhaps this is but
the voice inspired by a vain hope.
None of us knows anything positively of another life. Let us
mourn the common fate of our race.
Whereupon, sadly, they departed. The grim irony of this little
fable is clearly perceived by all of us, and we smile at the
thought of the ignorance which attended the first stage of the
transformation of the lowly crawling thing into the glorious
hued creature, which in time will emerge from the sleep of death
into a higher form of life. But, smile not, friends, at the
illusion of the caterpillars - they were but even as you and I.
For the Hindu story teller of centuries ago has pictured human
ignorance and illusion in this little fable of the lower forms
of life. All occultists recognize in the transformation stages
of the caterpillar-chrysalis-butterfly a picture of the
transformation which awaits every mortal man and woman.
For death to the human being is no more a termination or
cessation than is the death or sleep of the caterpillar. In
neither case does life cease for even a single instant. Life
persists while Nature works her changes. We advise every student
to carry with him the lesson of this little fable, told
centuries ago to the children of the Hindu race, and passed on
by them from generation to generation.
Strictly speaking, from the Oriental point of view, there is no
such thing as Death. The name is a lie Tthe idea an illusion
growing from ignorance. There is no death.there is nothing but
Life. Life has many phases and forms, and some of the phases are
called deathh by ignorant men. Nothing really dies though
everything experiences a change of form and activity.
As Edwin Arnold so beautifully expressed it in his translation
of the Bhagavaad Gita:
Never the spirit was
born;
The spirit shall cease to be never.
Never was time it was not;
End and beginning are dreams.
Birthless and deathless, and changeless,
Remaineth the spirit forever;
Death hath not touched it at all,
Dead though the house of it seems.
Materialists frequently urge as an argument against the
persistence of life beyond the stage of death, the assumed fact
that everything in nature suffers death, dissolution, and
destruction. If such were really the fact, then indeed would it
be reasonable to argue the death of the soul as a logical
conclusion.
But, in truth, nothing of this kind happens in nature. Nothing
really dies. What is called death, even of the smallest and
apparently most inanimate thing, is merely a change of formand
condition of the energy and activities which constitute
it. Even the body does not die, in the strict sense of the word.
The body is not an entity, for it is merely an aggregation of
cells,
and these cells are merely material vehicles for a certain form
of energy which animates and vitalizes them. When the soul
passes from the body, the units composing the body manifest
repulsion for each other, in place of the attraction which
formerly held them together. The unifying force which has held
them together withdraws its power, and the reverse activity is
manifested. As a writer has well said: The body is never more
alive than when it is dead. As another writer has said: Death
is but an aspect of Life, and the destruction of one material
form is but a prelude to the building up of another. So the
argument of the materialist really lacks its major premise, and
all reasoning based thereon must be faulty and leading to a
false conclusion.
But the advanced occultist, or other spiritually developed
person, does not require to seriously consider the argument of
the materialists, nor would he even though these arguments were
a hundred times more logical. For such a person has
awakened within himself the higher psychic and spiritual
faculties whereby he may actually know that the soul perishes
not when the body dissolves. When one is able to leave the
physical body behind, and actually travel in the regions of the
other side as in the case of many advanced individuals, any
purely speculative discussions or arguments on the realty of
glife after death take on the appearance of absurdity and
futility.
If an individual, who has not as yet reached the stage of
psychical and spiritual discernment whereby he is given the
evidence of the higher sense on the question of the survival of
the soul, finds his reason demanding something akin to 'proof,'
let him turn his mental gaze inward instead of outward, and
there he will find that which he seeks. For, at the last, as all
philosophy teaches us, the world of the inner is far more real
than is the world of the outer phenomena. In fact, man has
no actual knowledge of the outer.all he has is the report of the
inner upon the impressions received from the outer. Man
sees not the tree at which he is gazing.he perceives but the
inverted image of that tree pictured upon his retina. Nay, more,
his mind does not even see this image, for it receives only the
vibratory report of the nerves whose ends have been excited
by that image. So we need not be ashamed of taking mental stock
of the inner recesses of our mind, for many of the deepest
truths are recorded there.
In the great subconscious and super.conscious regions of the
mind are to be found a knowledge of many fundamental truths
of the universe. Between two of these truths most strongly
impressed there are these (1) the certainty of the existence of
a Supreme Universal Power, under, back of, and supporting the
phenomenal world; (2) the certanity of the immortality
of the Real Self.that Something Within which fire cannot
destroy, water cannot drown, nor air blow away. The mental
eye turned inward will always find the 'I' with the certainty of
its imperishability. It is true that this is a different kind of
proof from that required regarding material and physical
objects, but what of that? The truth sought is a fact of
spiritual inner life, and not of the physical outer
life.therefore it must be looked for within, and not without,
the soul itself. The objective intellect
concerns physical objects alone.the subjective intellect, or
intuition, concerns psychical and spiritual objects; the one the
body of things, the other the soul of things. Look for
knowledge, concern either class of things in his own appropriate
region of
your being.
Let the soul speak for itself, and you will find that its song
will ring forth clearly, strongly, and gloriously: There is no
Death;
there is no Death; there is no Death; there is naught but Life,
and that Life is Life Everlasting! Such is the song of the soul.
Listen for it in the Silence, for there alone can its vibrations
reach your eager ears. It is the Song of Life ever denying
Death.
There is no Death. There is naught but Life Everlasting,
forever, and forever, and forever.
