Its Relation to Life. Its Immortality. Its
loving purpose. Its Relation to Evolution.
“To die, to sleep,—To sleep! perchance
to dream! ay there’s the
rub.”—Shakespeare.
In preceding chapters I have so frequently
made the statement that life and death are one
and the same, that it seems almost superfluous
to say another word on the subject. But I am
willing, even at the risk of seeming pedantic,
to re-state the argument, which is not only
simple and easy of comprehension, but at the
same time both scientific and rational.
Without desiring to enter upon the realm of
metaphysics in this book, it will be sufficient
to say that we use the term Life in its fullest
sense, and not in the restricted one of consciousness.
Consciousness itself being but
one expression of life.
Two Irishmen walking along a road came
upon a turtle. It had been decapitated and
its head lay some distance away from its body.
“Begorra,” says Pat, “he’s dead sure enough.
His head’s cut off.” Mike picked up a stick
and punched the turtle’s feet, who immediately
withdrew them inside his shell. “No,” says he,
“he’s aloive. See him move.” “You’re a fool
Mike,” says Pat. “He’s dead I tell you. Don’t
you see his head’s cut off.” “He’s aloive,”
said Mike, “you can see him move.” The argument
became heated, Mike insisting that a
dead turtle couldn’t move, and Pat being equally
insistent that no turtle with his head cut off
could be alive. The matter was about to be
referred to the Irishman’s court of last resort,
when a Dutchman, passing along, an armistice
was established, and the matter referred
to him for decision. The Dutchman examined
the turtle and discovered it had been killed in
a supposedly most effective manner by having
its head cut off. Mike’s test with the stick,
however, revealed the ability on the part of
the turtle for pretty lively activity. He then
arose and delivered himself, “Gentlemen, dot
turtle iss dead all right,—but it don’t know
it.”
Every area of being,—of the universe, is
eternally alive. It doesn’t always KNOW it.
We repeat, there is one—can be but one—Be-ing.
This being is not mind, nor its product
matter. Ether is only a refined form of
matter. Mind is adjudged to be a still more
refined form of that same matter. But being
is Substance. You may call it Spirit (or meaning)
or you may call it God. Paul called it
Faith, and said “by it and of it the worlds were
made.”
We call it Electricity. Every infinitesimal
electron of this substance, as we have stated,
is by-polar or sexual. Attracting and repelling,
embracing and separating. This eternal,
inherent or natural law of their being is Life,—energy,
activity. The resultant of these activities:—the
worlds and all that in them is.
Suppose a great mass of type moved by an
inherent, automatic, continuous impulse. Its
integral component letters forever arranging
themselves into words, phrases, sentences, etc.
For illustration: The letters E-V-I-L create
the word Evil. Rearrange the same letters
and your word Evil disappears and the word
L-I-V-E, Live, appears, or is born, created,
evolved, whatever. The energy, the auto-activity
would be one and the same. The disintegration
and disappearance of one word, and
the re-adjustment of letters and appearance or
creation of another word being equally the resultant
of the same letters, with their same
inherent energy and impulse. You might call
one part of the process Creation and another
part Destruction, but the process is one and
continuous. Your division is merely hypothetical,
or assumed. What is destroyed?
The letters remain, and their inherent energy
or impulse remains—all there was at any
time.
The integral, component particles—electrons—of
the one only eternal substance, are the letters
comprising the universe. Their inherent,
automatic, eternal energy, activity—Life—forever
spelling out words and sentences, etc.,
that go to make up the Book of Life. They
arrange themselves as earthquake or pestilence,
famine, murder, birth, disease, old age,
death, sunshine, flowers, music, painting,
sculpture, art, laughter, tears, whatever. What
are these terms but names for the varied activities
of life? Life is all there is. What is called
death is equally life. Life and death are the
two impulses of this one universal force.
In certain of its phenomena, now classified
as electrical, this dual impulse is noted and its
action is called “closing the circuit” and
“breaking the circuit.” This same dual impulse
or tendency to embrace and separate—embrace
and separate—obtains throughout the
entire cosmos, proving the universality of electrical
action. Ether, fire, air, water, earth,
sound, sensation, light, form, color, smell, food,
thought are all known to be modes of motion—rates
of vibration. Motion of what? Rate
of vibration of what?—Of the infinite, integral,
component electrons of the one universal substance.
All movement, or action, or impulse, is in a
straight line, and in a circle. The movement
in a straight line is the repulsion, the departure,
the separation. Motion in a circle is the
attraction, the return, the embrace. This is
polarity. This is sex. This is Eternal Life.
This is Eternal Death. The Two Immortals—or
the One (bi-polar, bi-sexual) Immortal.
We repeat, all the substance there is is Electricity.
All the force there is, therefore, is
electrical. There being but one substance—synthetic
being—all force must be electrical.
This electrical force is a unit, but has two impulses,
positive and negative, attraction and
repulsion.
All organic forms contains these impulses.
For illustration, take a human entity. The
positive we call man, the negative woman.
Through the embrace of certain electrons
thrown off from the organism of each (physiologically
termed the spermatozoa of the male
and the fecundating fluid of the female), there
is established the basis of a future organism for
manifesting consciousness and conscious or intelligent
activity. A journey is begun. Life
and death are one and move side by side. Their
eternal impulse ever active. If what is called
harmony or health prevails a vigorous entity is
evolved and continued. When the negative
tendency or inharmony prevails in this continued
struggle for supremacy, beyond a certain
limit, the organism becomes de-harmonized,
dis-eased, disabled, unconscious, disintegrated.
Such is this restless energy we call
life. The circuit completed, life and death (the
positive and negative impulse), move together
side by side, but the tendency to break the circuit—as
well as to close the circuit—always
obtains. When this occurs there is a re-adjustment
of conditions, out of which new forms of
life appear.
There can be no antagonism in a unit.
There is only a restless energy and impulse to
effect changes; to continue the work of creation
or evolution. I want my readers to recognize
death as a friend, and not as so many regard
him, an enemy. He has been and is our
constant companion—he is ourself, and is entitled
to fuller and kinder recognition. We
scandalize death and caricature and abuse him,
not realizing that we are abusing ourselves.
When the tired organism craves only rest, how
readily we should welcome his loving embrace.
We cannot love life without loving
death, as they are one and inseparable, being
the unit—which is all there is. What is true
of this ceaseless energy or electrical impulse
as manifested in organic forms, is also true
in inorganic forms. It generates all vegetables,
and fruits and flowers, giving them beauty and
fragrance and flavor. And we note the same
spherical growth in all, demonstrating the
electrical nature of all creation. Each cell is
rotated into form by this dual impulse. We
see the same spherical formation in our forests.
The same “dissolution” or change takes place
in in-organic as in organic life. As the “speck”
or decayed spot appears on the apple we know
the circuit has been broken and the negative
tendency becoming the stronger. Everywhere,
everything is the circle, and everywhere the
tendency to break that circle or circuit. In the
celestial bodies called worlds, it is the same as
in the flower. Astronomers agree that there
is an ultimate limit to the so-called “life” of
all planetary bodies. This is true. They
have been evolved and devolved for aeons and
aeons of time. And the eternal electrical impulse
and energy will continue its sport of creation
and of destruction throughout the ages
yet to be.
Life is. Without beginning—without duration—without
ending. Such is the meaning of
the word Eternity.