CHAPTER XIV

The Science of Mind Healing

The science of Mind healing marks the greatest step in the spiritual unfolding of Intelligence in the human race since the birth of music and painting several centuries ago. As music and painting awakened the Light in man in their day to give birth to a higher culture, so is the Science of Mind command over motion hastening man toward his illumining in this day.

It has already lifted the whole human race one more rung up the ladder which reaches into the high heavens of omniscience, but the heavens are high, the ladder is long, and the human race is on its lower rungs.

This epochal Mind healing movement is in its infancy, however, and must grow logically and slowly, to be strong like the oak. Like the surgeon's scalpel which saves many lives it can cut both ways. It can kill when in the hands of the unknowing, as well as it can save when knowledge guides it.

That is the position of this God-power which one illu­mined woman placed into dynamic practice only half a century ago. It is true that she was instantly healed of a fever which might have caused her death. It is true that Jesus instantly healed men who were near death with lep­rosy and other dangerous ills. His healings were not mir­acles, even though they seemed to transcend Nature's normal processes. He had a power which no man has ever had nor can even comprehend.

It is true also that Jesus knew WHY and HOW he healed. Is it true that the thousands of Science of Mind healers of today know what Jesus knew, which alone gave him the power to reverse the death process to life? Is it true that they even comprehend what Jesus knew? It is true that Jesus said: "What I do ye can likewise do", but is it true that one can do what Jesus could do without knowing what Jesus knew and have his power?

Paderewski could have said to man: "What I do you can also do," and it would be just as true. But is it true that any man can do what Paderewski could do without knowing what Paderewski knew and gave a whole life in preparation for?

Perhaps it is right here, in the answer to these ques­tions, that the Mind healing movement is not the mighty power that it should be after half a century of growth. By this time the Mind healer should have the status of spirit­ual doctor and be working in close co-operation with the medical doctor, surgeon, chiropractor, osteopath and specialists--each one using his special knowledge in co­operation with the other. However, instead of that mu­tual co-operation we have a pronounced antagonism born of misunderstanding of the great value of the one to the other. Lack of basic knowledge always brings a lack of appreciation and respect.

In our world of today one surgeon, one doctor and one nurse are worth more in a hospital, or on a battlefield, than ten thousand Mind healers. This is not as it should be. Each should be of equal value. The Mind doctor is vitally needed as a great forward step in the unfoldment of spiritual man. The science of Mind healing should be as universally accepted as the science of medicine and sur­gery. This is not the status today, for if it became imperative that either one or the other had to be eliminated from human practice by edict of law, the choice would overwhelmingly be in favor of retaining the Doctors of Medi­cine and Surgery.

When perfect unity marries the two branches of heal­ing of unbalanced bodies, which have become unbalanced by unbalanced Mind decisions and actions, the mighty power which belongs to both will come as an epochal step forward in mind control of body, but not until. Such a marriage would be a great spiritual step in the unfolding of man.

The present antagonism which exists between these two benefactors of the race must undergo a complete transformation because they are not a separately opposed two. They are one. And there would be no reason for an­tagonism if logic and common sense were applied to the principle.

Every illness of man is both mental and physical, simul­taneously. There is no ill of man which is just of body alone--or just Mind alone. The physical doctor is trained to cure illnesses of bodies. His basic assumption is that bodies are composed of chemical elements which affect each other, favorably or unfavorably, as there may be lack or oversupply, or of foreign elements which do not belong to the human formula. Upon this assumption he has long treated bodies as he would treat elements in laboratories. He thus gives pills and liquids to make up deficiencies, or dissolve excesses, or destroy foreign elements or germs which have illegitimately trespassed upon the body normalcy. It has never been a part of the basic foundation of the medical world to think of Mind in relation to body ailments. A great many of the very wise medical practitioners are becoming strongly aware of the Mind rela­tion to bodily ills, however, and are taking it very seri­ously into consideration in their diagnoses.

Unfortunately this recognition of Mind and body re­lationship as the cause of all ills is not so generously shared by Mind doctors. If each branch of healers reached widely over into each others' fields of interest, as a hus­band and wife reach over into home and business affairs, the ideal of maximum help for humans in distress could be reached. Without that mutual sharing in a strictly mu­tual science the medical and surgical science will grow stronger and the Mind science weaker. Both are vitally needed, however, but only as a united ONE, and not as a separate and antagonistic TWO.

The Mind healer is trained to cure illnesses of the body upon the assumption that Mind is the basis of all ills and that God made man perfect. Upon this assumption a per­son who is ill can call a Mind healing practitioner on the telephone and, without diagnosis other than a brief de­scription of symptoms, receive an absent treatment for the cure of that ailment. God did make man perfect, but the body is not the man. The body is a chemical laboratory contained within a marvelous, very complex mechanical, electrically wired body which requires a great deal of knowledge to keep it supplied with its necessary foods.

No man has precise knowledge of how to operate his own body. That is why it is continually getting out of order. A man may become ill because he gives his body the wrong food, or an insufficiency of a necessary food. The resultant illness is due entirely to lack of knowledge of how to operate his body. If he then goes to a Mind healer to cure it by the usual practice and techniques, the Mind healer asks God to do for that man something which he should do for himself, and no possible good result can come from it.

God will work with man but not for him, and one of the great inconsistencies of Mind healers is that they con­stantly importune God to do for man what man should do for himself. If he has a splinter in his finger he must pull it out and God will heal it. If he breaks a bone he must set it in line for God to heal in line. Otherwise God will heal it as man left it. Mind healers who expect God to do man's part as well as His part leave many cripples to suffer through life.

I know a girl who would not go to a medical doctor or surgeon when she broke her ankle. She placed her entire reliance on a Mind healing practitioner. Consequently for years her ankle has caused her intense pain and the mis­placed bone causes frequent swellings. God did his part but her refusal to do her part is the cause of making her­self a cripple for life.

Tying up the broken limb of a fruit tree and setting the broken leg of a man are one in principle; yet man is not condemned for working with God when he ties up the broken limb to its normal position, but he is condemned if he works with God in setting his broken leg.

How often we hear healers say that: "If you have suf­ficient faith in God He will do it". It is true that He will do His part, but He will not do man's part. He will heal the broken fruit tree limb and it will bear fruit, even though it hangs to the ground. And He will heal the bro­ken leg, even though it stands at a wrong angle and makes a cripple of the man for life.

You have undoubtedly seen crippled birds whose legs have been broken and have been healed out of line by God. And you have seen dogs who were similarly crippled

--but where man has worked with God and put a splint on the dog's leg it restores the normal condition and keeps the dog from being a cripple.

If you have a splinter in your hand--or a dust particle in your eye--or cut an artery

--or puncture a tire on that extension of your body machine which is your car--or break a spoke of its wheel--or put your finger on a stove--you may affirm, or pray forever in faith and belief that God will work for you and remedy them without action by you, but it will be of no avail.

A woman who has a goiter because of drinking glacier water which lacks iodine must have iodine given in con­centrated form to make up the deficiency. The Mind healer condemns that practice on the ground that the ill woman is taking medicine. That is one of the greatest inconsistencies in Mind healing practice. They do not condemn a person for eating food yet all necessary medicine taken to balance body deficits is as much food as meat and potatoes are food. A Mind healer who would treat a goiter by Mind healers' technique could not possibly cure that goiter, for God will not do what man should do. A doctor who gave concentrated iodine and cured the goiter would be acting in obedience to God's law and the Mind healer who condemned such practice would be working against it. The doctor would actually be performing Mind healing because he was applying knowledge to the case instead of approaching it with faith which is not fortified by knowledge.

That illogical antipathy to medicine is one of the great­est factors in retarding the growth of Mind healing by preventing unity with skilled doctors and surgeons which would multiply the power of each.

A baby whose bones are too soft needs more calcium and vitamins A and D. It must have these or become bow legged, or worse. If a Mind healer deeply desires to help that baby she would give it calcium instead of absent treat­ments. If it were her own baby she would be as guilty for not properly feeding her baby as its own mother was. A medical doctor would quickly diagnose the case and give it calcium in larger doses than milk could supply in time to harden its bones properly. It would cure the baby, for the doctor would be fulfilling the law by working with God. The Mind healer would condemn this lawful prac­tice on the ground that the child was taking medicine, in­stead of necessary food to repair a damaged body.

If a man has scurvy it is because he did not give his body enough green vegetables. When a doctor gives the neces­sary chemicals to a body to make up that food deficiency he is condemned for giving medicine, but he cures his patient where it would be impossible for a Mind healer to help him. God will not set aside His law. He will do His part in working with man but man must do his part in working with God.

Mind healers can be a great boon to mankind by deal­ing with mental attitudes which cause ailments, but where there is no unbalanced mental attitude, and they are called upon for what is purely a repair job on a dam­aged human body, or food deficit, they should either make that repair as a garage mechanic would repair an automo­bile, or work in co-operation with a physician who knows body structure.

There is a tremendous field for Mind healers in their own legitimate field. This need is everywhere, but the greatest concentration of that need is in hospitals, on battlefields and in homes and industries where mental attitudes are obviously the cause of distress. Thousands of lives are being ruined because of unbalanced mental attitudes. Frustrations are driving people to escape from themselves through alcoholism in this gloriously beauti­ful world of abundance and expressions of love in all things. Thousands of homes need not be broken up if Mind healers give loving service to these needs.

When a Mind healer changes one's mental attitude from discouragement to aspiration by awakening ambi­tion, he is doing to that one what Jesus did in giving a cup of cold water and a kindly word to the wayfarer, or what He meant by the story of the good Samaritan. When you awaken the Light of the Spirit in man by transmuting his anguish to joy, you are reversing the chemistry of his body from the death process to the life process.

That is what Jesus did in every healing He ever made. He made others heal themselves by extending His own balance to them to reverse their destructive body chem­istry to a constructive basis. This principle is basic in Mind healing. It can best be understood by the simple instantaneous Mind healings which constantly take place in life, such as the giving of your courage to a very discouraged man, or even in making a lonely and frustrated one happy.

Everyone knows how the old family doctor's cheerful assurance drove illness out of the window and made the sick one "take up his bed and walk". These are Mind healings, for they transform one's body processes chemi­cally from death to life. Doctors are, themselves, prac­ticing Mind healing more and more as they discover the healing effects of joy and happiness and their power in re­storing normalcy. It is the office of doctors to repair bodies, however, with their skills and knowledge of body structure and the many things which can happen to bodies. It would be an untold blessing to them if Mind heal­ers would join with them and effect work upon mental attitudes while they work upon body repairs.

If they would do this the resistance which much of the world has against Mind healings would be removed. There is a great deal of justification for this resistance which would also be removed if Mind healers always worked with physical healers to prevent so many needless deaths, due to Mind healers who believe that God will do the things for man which man should do for himself. A woman died, under treatment of Mind healers, who had merely a stoppage of the colon. A nurse could have saved her life in five minutes. There was no more reason why God should have performed that purely physical action than that God should have washed her face. God always does His part but when man desires anything from God and does not follow up his desire by action in doing his part, God will not do his part for him. Wishful thinking is no substitute for co-operative action.

Mind healers might take a valuable lesson from Luther Burbank's method of healing a cactus of its thorns. He did it by knowledge followed by right action. He worked with God and God worked with him to do it. There was noth­ing of the faith and belief idea in his method, nor did he spend his time in wishful thinking and expect God to do his part of the work.

It may be that too much dependence is placed upon faith and belief, instead of knowledge followed by action. It is said that faith and belief could move mountains, but no mountains have ever been removed by faith and be­lief without knowledge and action. Many mountains have been moved, however, by those who had engineering knowledge and of the skills and techniques of steam shovels, bulldozers and explosives.

The gravity of this exalted profession demands that those who practice it have the required knowledge to practice it. The clergyman needs years of preparation after he hears the Voice of God calling him to serve man. The doctor and the surgeon, likewise, spend hard and earnest years before taking the responsibility of life and death of other men. Even the genius musician, composer, painter and sculptor who already have power within them, give years of loving preparation to equip them­selves to give out the power that is in them.

As long as Mind healers are attempting to repair dam­aged body mechanism they should either have as much knowledge of bodies as doctors and surgeons have, or work in unison with them. It is fundamentally logical that every man must have knowledge of his own particu­lar art or profession. It is as fundamentally illogical for a Mind healer to attempt to repair a ruptured artery in a brain by Mind healing techniques as it would be to repair a short-circuited electrical generator that way. They must realize that God will not change any effects, at the request of man, as long as their cause continues, yet they accept countless cases where they attempt to "cure" effects while their patients continue the cause of them. That is as fruit­less and futile as praying to God to stop wars while man continues to make wars.

That is why more knowledge is necessary than the few months that is required to secure authority to practice Mind healing. Lawyers, doctors, engineers, painters, sculptors, musicians, and pilots of planes need years of training in skills, and accumulation of knowledge, to be­come proficient in their work. There should be no exception to this rule for so noble a profession as Mind healing which assumes as much responsibility for life and death as the doctor or plane pilot assumes. In other words of deep meaning, no man can give out of himself more power than he has in himself to give.

The entire case for the future of this epochal step in man's spiritual unfolding rests upon this one undebatable fact. Knowledge alone gave Jesus His power. He had the unlimited knowledge of a complete Illuminate. The fact that He did not diagnose the condition of a sufferer does not warrant a Mind healer from not diagnosing it for He knew the condition without diagnosis. It would be help­ful to the growth of Mind healing to relate some of the things which He knew that gave Him his power. To demonstrate how much He had to give out of Himself I will tell you three things He knew which are unknown even to this day.

1. He knew that there is an entirely different chemical action to the generoactive electrical pulsation which po­larizes and vitalizes bodies into life than the chemical reaction of the radioactive pulsation which depolarizes and devitalizes bodies toward death. He was thoroughly aware of the construction of matter in this curved wave universe. He knew that the multiplication of power to vi­talize matter into stronger life was electrically expressed (centripetally) in the spiral direction of gravity, and that the opposite (centrifugal) spiral direction led to disap­pearance in death. Knowing how to obey these two op­posing processes by living in conformity with them, He could command them to reflect His image in them.

He thoroughly comprehended that a reversal of the death process would cause an instantaneous "healing" of anything which is dying, by making it live. He knew the electrical nature of that process, which is a forever turning inside-out and outside-in series of centrifugal and centrip­etal interchangings which compress and expand sequen­tially. His instantaneous healings are proof that he not only knew the process but could command it.

2. He knew that perfect mental and physical balance is impossible without perfect symmetry. There are only two perfectly symmetrical forms in Nature--the cube and the sphere. All other forms are sections or multiples of these two forms. God made the sphere for the physical universe and the cube for the invisible universe, which is divided into wave fields of cubic form. He knew that every normal healthy body is composed of perfect spheres and that the symmetry of those spheres is controlled by the polarity of invisible cubic wave fields. A human body is composed of countless billions of spheres, as perfect in shape as our sun is perfect, if the body is vital and alive. If the body be­comes devitalized these spheres begin to flatten like our earth which has begun to die. When that happens the chemistry of death reverses the chemistry of life. The symmetry of the sphere begins to change to the symmetry of the spheroid and the ellipse. The cube symmetry which controls the sphere now lengthens gradually until the cube entirely flattens and disappears into the zero stillness of its birth. When that happens the chemistry of death takes over from the chemistry of life. Cube symmetry is no longer possible. That means that the billions of spheres which comprise a vital body begin to flatten and wobble on their axes like dying tops.

His knowledge of such processes in the construction of living and dying matter gave Him the power to extend His own balance to the unbalanced one and reverse his po­larity from the direction of death to the direction of life. He did this by becoming one in Mind with the one he healed. He who was ill thus healed himself. No one can heal another. He can but make the other heal himself by reversing his thinking.

3. Jesus had the full range of extrasensory perception. He did not need to diagnose a case for that reason. He thoroughly knew the nature of the ailment and its cause without questioning the ailing one for symptoms, better than the most skilled doctor could ascertain them by the many methods used for that purpose. He could diagnose an ailment of a person at a distance, even though He had never known him, as well as though the man were present. Moreover He knew the thoughts of anyone, anywhere, upon whom He might focus.

There has been one case of extrasensory perception in recent human history, of a man who could diagnose symp­toms of ailments of distant, unknown people, but during the periods of such diagnoses, the normal sense range was sacrificed to make the extended range possible. This man was Edward Cayce of Virginia. Hundreds of names and addresses of men in different cities were given to him. In each case he severed his seat of sensation from his Con­sciousness sufficiently to project his conscious awareness to that person and dictate a complete analysis of the ail­ment. In every case the diagnoses he gave was found to be accurate. Some may have been incomplete, but that which he gave was always accurate. The condition he was in while losing a personal sense of existence was what is known as the trance state.

The knowledge which Jesus had, as partially given above, will some day be taught in the schools which grad­uate those who desire to emulate Jesus. It is necessary knowledge to have in order to perform such seemingly miraculous healings as those He made. To the best of one's ability, one should acquire as much knowledge as possible of God and His ways and processes of Creation under His Mind control. An earnest application of what­ever knowledge one can acquire, however, will make it possible to make marvelous healings of such a nature that one may fully comprehend the cause as well as the effect.

Man should be taught what he should do for himself. God will work with a man who desires a potato crop by using all the power of His universe in growing and ripening the seed which man puts into the earth, but God will not put the seed into the earth. Every service which man gives in planting the seed and cultivating the soil, God will match equally by making the seed grow into fruition.

Man must thus work with God in the care of his own body. He must provide food for his body, put it into his mouth and masticate it. God will supply the mechanism for digesting it and converting it into blood, but He will not do both. Likewise, man must do everything which is physical effort to take care of the body mechanism by nourishing it, cleaning it, giving it necessary exercise and repairing it. God will do His part of the healing of wounds, digestion of foods, and other creative necessities of growth, but He will not fill one's teeth, wash one's face, make eyeglasses for him, set his broken bones or any such service that man should do for himself. It is readily understandable, though, how commonly this fundamen­tal is ignored by people who expect that God will do both parts.

I feel that this new spiritual unfolding is still so new that many more things should be explained which are extraneous to the purpose of this book, but the mystery of what is known as instantaneous healings should be more succinctly clarified, lest a lack of understanding may lead to believing that it means that cancer or leprous scales will immediately drop off the body if they are instantly healed. When any foreign body, which is living upon the dying flesh of a living man, is destroyed by reversing the chem­istry of the man, Nature gradually eliminates the dead particles. It takes time to "grow" them off in the reverse process of their growing on. They are no longer living, however, and can no longer be nourished by man's body. All changes in Nature follow the process of integration and disintegration by the motion-picture technique of projecting one changing picture after another into a liv­ing body to integrate it, or into space to disintegrate it. The time element is as imperative one way as the other.

Scales on a tree are a more familiar example. When the tree is sprayed the chemistry of the scales is reversed in­stantly, but it may take weeks for the scales to disappear. This explains instantaneous healings in bodies which are damaged by other than their own normal growths. If the Mind healer understands the conditions he can command that "abnormal" body to disappear by changing the atti­tude of Mind of the patient so that he can heal himself, if there is time left to do it. Even though an instantaneous healing can take place the body can eliminate just so much and no more. The surgeon should then remove it, but how often he will say: "If you had only come two years ago this operation would not have been necessary".

As a contrast to this kind of healing, where a surgeon should co-operate with the practitioner, I will describe an instantaneous healing where a man was near death without having any discernible physical ailment.

As a precedent to this story I repeat two salient facts which apply to all such healings:

1. A man becomes what he thinks. He is constantly re­making himself into his own image.

This means exactly what it says. Every thought and ac­tion, from one moment to the next, is instantly recorded upon his body and changes it constantly to the pattern of every changing mental attitude. A joyful attitude of Mind brings a smile to one's face to tell the world of the change from two minutes before, when he may have had an impatient or even angry attitude. Every changing attitude of Mind immediately affects the chemistry of his body. It simultaneously starts to work changing the man's body to conform to his own changing image.

2. Every man can command matter in the measure of his ability to obey the laws governing the construction of matter.

This also means exactly what it says. Our power is lim­ited to our knowledge of the Source of power and the law governing the balanced interchange between the two expressions of that power. It means also that we can extend our own power to others in the measure that we have it to give, and in the limited measure of their desire to have what we have to give. To command matter means to re­flect our power to it so that it reflects our image in it. It then becomes what we think, as we become what we think.

And now for the story which demonstrates the above principles.

A surgeon told a patient that he would surely die un­less he was operated upon within a year, and even then he could give but little assurance that he could survive the operation.

"If you think I might die by the operation, and I have about a year to live, and as you mentioned your belief in prayer, do you think that I would have a chance to live if I prayed"? the patient asked.

"I am more and more inclined to believe that you could, if you know how to pray. Many of us doctors and surgeons see so many things happen to patients whom we give up that we are beginning to feel that there is much beyond our physical bodies which we do not understand. I will tell you of one of my own cases.

"I had a man patient who was so near death that we expected it hourly. What is more, he did not seem to want to live, for he gave every symptom of being in utter despair. He had not touched food for three days, and when he last tried he could not keep it down. Then a strange thing happened. A woman came in and cried over him and went away. Two hours later that dying man sat up in bed and asked for food.

" 'What miracle is this?' I asked of him.

" 'It is no miracle at all', he replied in a strong voice. `My wife wants me to live--says she loves me and will come back to me if I will live. So now I want to live. Un­til now I wanted to die'.

"I have seen so many things like that happen to those we doctors have given up, that I suggested it to you, whom I had also given up.

"I told you also that you must know how to pray, al­though this man did not pray, nor did his wife pray, or at least I did not see her pray. When she left, however, he became instantly reborn to life instead of being close to death.

"I believe that the power of love was at the bottom of it somehow. While he was in despair he was really a very ill man, but hope and happiness made him well instantly. We have no medicine or process which will do that. I cannot understand it. I would give much to be able to com­prehend what really happened".

What actually happened was that the wife transferred the love which was in balance in her to her husband to restore his balance, therefore reversing his desire to die to a desire to live. This immediately caused a reversal of his body chemistry which always builds a body in the image of the thinker.

This is the underlying principle of all of Jesus' heal­ings for He made others to heal themselves by extending His balance to them.

Love is a moment to moment wordless prayer, for it is desire expressed in silent communion with God. Desire of Mind is the only energy in the universe. Desire to live is manifested in motion by the polarizing force of vitalized action. Desire for rest from action is equally strong, how­ever, and is manifested by cessation of action. That is what we so erroneously think of as death. There is no death in God's living universe. There is naught but Life in action and also in the rest--which man calls Death.

Death has been the greatest mystery of the ages. "Where do I go when I die"? is one of the great unsolved questions of the ages. Since early pagan days the after-death condi­tion of man has caused many false concepts to come into being regarding this question. These many primitive and pagan conceptions, inherited from primate days, have never been modified because of lack of real knowledge among the masses. Intellectual, scientific and cultural people have cleansed their minds of such thinking but have never substituted another logical or scientific answer to replace the old pagan concepts.

Let us give consideration to this question and demon­strate that there is no basis whatsoever for these ancient pagan beliefs of after-death identities of bodies. Every one of these various concepts is founded on the false premise that the body is the person, the identity, the being. As the body is not the person, or the identity, these concep­tions fall apart by sheer logic.

The question: "Where do I go when I die"? has two answers. It has one answer for the idea that the body is the person, and another answer for the idea that the Mind is the person. Let us answer the last question first. The an­swer is that you do not die. You are a Soul--which is a unit idea of immortal Mind. You are an Identity within The Universal Oneness, but you are that Oneness. You are the thinking of the Thinker who centers a body which records the thoughts of the Thinker.

You are desire in Mind to manifest Mind. You are the Universe, manifesting the whole universe at one pin­point Soul of all the universe. That which you manifest at your one pinpoint of the universe is remanifested in all of the universe. You cannot manifest separateness for there is no separateness to manifest.

You are divinity dwelling in the impenetrable dark of motion for long ages of seeking to penetrate the dark. You are the genius who has penetrated the dark to henceforth dwell in the Light. You are Conscious Mind, fully know­ing the Light of your immortality, fully commanding your thinking and the body which images your thinking.

Let us now reconstruct the question to read: "Where does my body go when it dies?" The answer to that ques­tion is that your body does not die. It lies down to rest periodically for the purpose of renewal but its life and the body pattern, and the record of every thought you have ever given birth to, is enfolded in your Soul seed.

If you will but realize that your living body is but a machine which performs the work decreed for it to do by the Mind Intelligence which centers it, you will not have any concern about what happens to it. The only reason you have concern about your body is because of the long habit of thinking of your body as you.

Another thing which confuses you is that you think of your body as it is today. All you see of it is that part which is still living today, which weighs about 150 pounds. You never think of those parts of your body which are not liv­ing today. Every day of your whole life your body has been dying while you were constantly renewing it with more of your body than you took from the ground with which to renew it. You call it nourishment, but it is a con­stant renewal and repair process. That part of your body which has died has to be renewed with living tissue. That part of your machine which has worn out has to be re­paired with new material.

One or two pounds of your body dies every day and is eliminated by its various processes. If you are seventy years old your body would weigh about twenty tons if parts of it had not died. Over nineteen and nine tenths of your body has already died. There are only one hundred and fifty pounds left of your body.

Why should you be more concerned about what hap­pens to the few pounds of your body which are going to die, than you are concerned about the many tons of your body which have already died? The parts which have died have been returned to the ground. The small part which still remains should be returned to the ground in order that your new body and other bodies can be reborn from it.

Why should you be concerned about a few pounds of calcium, iron, manganese, iodine, nitrogen and other ma­terials which built your body? They are not you. They are not your identity. They are the house you live in, but the house can burn down without affecting you. You can build another house to live in. That is what you do when your house of clay dissolves into its clay. You build an­other house of clay, another body. You are never without a body except during those periods of rest when you are repairing and replacing worn-out parts of your body, or building an entirely new one when the old one becomes too worn-out to renew or repair.

Let us look at it from this angle. It is a new angle of thought which should give you an entirely different idea of your body than the generally accepted one. Instead of thinking of your body as living and dying, think of your eternal Soul which is eternally living. Your Soul extends its life to your body to manifest the life which your Soul is. The body regives to the Soul that which has been extended to it. That is neither life nor death of the body. It is eternal life of the Soul expressed as two directions of life by the body.

You must, therefore, learn to think of life as action, and death as rest from action. Every day of your life is divided into action and rest from action. You are awake and active all day. Your body is thoroughly aware of its existence. But you rest each night and your body is as thoroughly unaware of its existence as though it were dead. The only reason you rest at night is to renew and repair your body. When your body is entirely worn-out you rest a longer time between periods of full renewal than between partial renewal. During those periods of acquiring an entirely new body, it is also unaware of bodily existence for a long period, instead of just one-night periods.

Nature tells the story of rebirth of bodies in very plain language. When you plant a seed in the ground for a flower, for a tree, or for a field of grass, these forms unfold from their seed into bodies. You think of these bodies as growing, dying and disappearing, but it almost escapes your notice that as every body unfolds from its seed it re­folds back into it. For every branch and leaf of the oak tree you see with your eyes there is another branch and leaf which you do not see. What does that mean? It means that whatever unfolds from the seed to become a part of the visible universe, simultaneously refolds into its seed to disappear into the invisible universe. The Soul does not wait to take your body back after it is all dead, it takes it back as fast as it gives it out. There is your answer to what happens to your body when you die. Your Soul is your Self. You extend your body from your Soul-Self sev­eral billion times each second, and you return your body to your Soul-Self for rebirth at that same speed.

Everywhere in Nature you see rebirth of roses, of trees and of grass. Last year you picked an apple from this branch. This year you behold another apple where you plucked one last year, and the next year, and the next you can still pluck one. And if you open one you will find the same apple that you are going to eat all folded up in the seeds of other apples not yet born that will repeat the bodies of the apples which have long been born. That is Nature's eternal process of repeating eternal life. She di­vides eternal life into eternal repetitions of life. We call them life and death, but both of them are opposite ex­pressions of life. Is not that a wonderful thing to know? Is it not wonderful to know that every day you live in the visible world of bodies, your every thought and action is also simultaneously repeated and recorded in the invisible world of Mind?

During all the ages of your unfolding as an individual entity you have repeated your own Self in each new body and every experience which has progressed or retarded you is also repeated. Whatever progress you now make in this life makes your next life expression easier for you. You continually advance as you learn new lessons.

You do not remember the nonessentials of each life, for that would be a terrible punishment. You would but live a life of continual remorse if you had to relive the experi­ences of the hard struggles which brought you out of the jungle into today's pleasant meadows. You do remember the essentials, however. If you have been a musician for several lives, and have thought music more than any other thought during those lives, you will undoubtedly think music again in succeeding lives. It is quite understand­able why a musical prodigy exhibits such great musical talent at four or five years of age, if one thinks of it that way.

It is also quite understandable why some people are ahead of others and some so far behind. When you look over the human race you see many who exhibit the qualities of masters and leaders, while many more are but fol­lowers. That does not mean that some are "older Souls" than others, it simply means that some have made more of each life than others.

The great and wonderful thing about life is to learn to live it by profiting by every experience one must have on the long journey from body realization to Mind knowing, which also means from physical man to divine Spirit within man. The more you learn in each period of un­folding the more speedily you become aware of the king­dom of heaven within you as the goal of life. From that moment on the road is clear, for knowing the glory of life each period of it leads nearer and nearer to full illumina­tion of Divine Consciousness in that Light.

SUMMARY

The first part of the journey of man from the dark of complete ignorance to the Light of Omniscience is en­tirely centered upon the import of his body. He knows naught else but body and requirements for body survival. His body works for him, fights for him, and provides him with its varying sensations and emotions.

After the dawn of Consciousness in him he acquires knowledge which he thinks of as being a part of his body. He believes that his brain is that part of his body which thinks and knows. He builds a concept which links his identity and personal powers to his body. Together with that concept he thinks that body is reality and that all reality is limited to what the senses of the body can detect. This growing concept of early man gradually built up a reverence and concern for his body. When he died he thought that his identity died with him. His reverence for his dead self led him to build great tombs and sepulchers--even to such monuments for the dead as the great pyra­mids of Egypt.

As spiritual man unfolds, he gradually loses his sense of body reality until that great day of his awakening to Mind Consciousness when he loses all body reverence as full knowledge of its unreality dawns upon him. The highest moments of exaltation of the genius are those of complete forgetfulness of body. It must never be forgot­ten, however, that our bodies are marvelous instruments given to us to manifest our spiritual identity and as such should be revered and cared for as a means of expressing the beauty of God's Creation. The more we know how to care for it and keep it in balance with God's law, the more we can forget it to express Mind creativeness.

We are still in the early stages of human unfolding when we revere our dead bodies and have deep concern for them. Many still feel that their identities are buried with their bodies, and believe that "when you're dead you're dead". But practically all still ask, "Where do I go when I die"?

As the divinity of man awakens in him and he knows his Self as Mind which centers motion, his concern as to what happens to his body will wholly pass away from him. That will be the great day of real knowing, the day when power in man is purely spiritual, the day when inner vision can see reality in the invisible CAUSE of the visi­ble. This unfolding will some day come to man. He can­not avoid it, but the knowledge given herein will hasten its too slow unfolding by the hard way of paying for it through painful experience. It could save man many reincarnations by thus illumining his dark road with new Light.