The Conquest of Death E-Book

Helen Wilmans

• Herausgeber: Andura Publishing
• Kategorie: Ratgeber
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2020

Beschreibung

Experience the life-changing power of Helen Wilmans with this unforgettable book.

Leseprobe

The Conquest of Death

Helen Wilmans

CONTENTS

Preface

Can Death Be Overcome?

The Writers of the Bible Believed That Death Could Be Overcome

Immortality in the Flesh Rests Upon the Fact That the Highest Always Has Power to Control All Below It

From the Standpoint of Personal Experience

The Effort of Jesus to Overcome Death

How I Tried to Bolster Up My Hope by Searching For Others Who Would Believe in It

The Growth of Public Opinion in the Direction of the Conquest of Death

Every Hope is the Sure Prophecy of its Own Fulfillment

The Endless Creativeness of the Human Intelligence

All Growth is a Revolt Against the Claims of the So-Called Law of Gravitation

The One Mighty Factor in Race Growth is Thought

Man Has No Fetters But Those of His Own Ignorance, and Nothing But His Own Intelligence Will Liberate Him From Them

Desire, the Organizing Principle

Beliefs, Both Fixed and Unfixed

The Law of Attraction

The Ego

Endless Progression: Its Retardation by Fear

Man’s Power to Speak the Creative Word: Evolution of the Ideal

Health and Strength and Beauty And Opulence Are to Be Found in Greater Fullness in This New and Wonderful Thought Than In Anything Else In The Whole World

The Study of Man

The Body Built the Brain: But Now the Brain is Leaning How to Build the Body: The Action Between Brain and Body is Going to be One of Reciprocal Interchange

Man is One and Indivisible: He is in the Likeness of the Universe: It is Impossible to Divide Him Into Two Parts, and the Attempt is Death

The Life Principle Yields Its Power to Man in Proportion as Man Comes Into an Intellectual Understanding of it: There is No Limit to the Supply: There Need Be No Limit to the Demand

From This Chapter man may See How it is That His Destiny is Always in His Own Hands: And He May See Why it is That He Can Shape His Future as He Pleases

From Selfishness to Selfhood

Expectation

Doubt

A Conquest of Fire by the Human Body

Thought as a Force Has Scarcely Been Tested: It is Only Now Beginning to be Believed in: Its Power is Something Not Dreamed of at This Time

The Power of Thought in the Development of the Will

Without the Will There is no Individuality: And in Proportion as the Will is Strong or Weak, So is the Individual Strong or Weak: The Will is the Individual

The Conquest of Death: The Greatest Effort of the Age: Coming to Florida to Create a Nucleus for the Growth of this Idea

Honor is to Him First Who Through The Impassable Makes a Road

Come Up Higher

The Uses of Beauty

The School of Research

A Bit of History

Our Location

Courage

Length of Life is Increasing

Life Must be Expressed in Action

To Know Truth is to be Redeemed by It

Believing

How to Grow

The Substantiality of Thought

Mental Science is the True Interpreter of the Bible

Man a Magnet

Whatever Is, Is Right

Preface

The strangeness of the title of this work, The Conquest of Death, will doubtless prompt some, into whose hands it may chance to fall, to lay it down without reading; for the conquest of death, they say, is impossible. Yet, who knows if it be so or not?

The author of this work has discovered that the conquest of death is altogether within the law, and has sought herein to give some reasons for her belief, which she knows to be worthy of the highest consideration of all the people.

—Helen Wilmans

Can Death Be Overcome?

To many, probably the majority of people, the question, “Can death be overcome?” will appear a foolish one, and a person a foolish person who would, in seriousness, ask it, expecting a serious answer. Yet the question has been asked in all seriousness by some of the greatest minds the world has known, and one whom the Christian world regards most highly has answered it affirmatively, if not with absolute directness. He said, “The last enemy that shall be overcome is death.”

Where is one to whom has been given rightful authority to interpret this saying of St. Paul as meaning other than what he says—that when man should have overcome all other enemies, should have learned the law of the lightning and have harnessed it; when the winds and the waves had become his servants, and did his bidding; when on land and on sea man commanded the forces in nature, and was master over the elements, which, in his more ignorant state, he conceived to be engines of the gods, who used them in their anger for his destruction—who has authority or where is the reasonableness in saying that Paul did not mean to express that when man had thus far conquered he should also conquer death? I insist that the language quoted can, in reason, be given no other meaning, and has been otherwise construed simply because the mass of humanity has been unable to conceive of the possibility of immortality in the flesh, and so has been compelled, since it felt that it might not reject the saying, to attribute to it a meaning other than that which it was evidently intended by its author to convey.

Death is everywhere and universally understood to mean the dissolution of a bodily form. Where form does not exist there can be no dissolution, no death. It is absolutely certain, then, that when the apostle used the word, he did so because of the meaning which attached to it, and must, therefore, have meant one of two things—either that men would eventually learn the law by which life could be perpetuated in these bodies indefinitely, or that there existed spiritual bodies which were subject to dissolution and death, but which might be some time, though they were not yet, able to overcome death.

This latter supposition, that the spiritual body, of which the theologians make so much, is subject to death, is altogether antagonistic to the teachings of every religious organization founded upon the Bible; and, since there are but two horns to the dilemma, it is to be hoped that in deciding between them theology will accept the former and concede that which is altogether the most reasonable; namely, that Paul intended to be understood as referring to our present fleshly bodies when he said death should finally be overcome.

The writer of this is not a theologian—not, at least, in the commonly accepted meaning of the word. She does not believe that all wisdom resided in those men who lived two thousand years ago, or that it died with them. She does believe, however, that there were minds in those days, as in more recent times, whose grasp of natural law so far exceeded that of the mass of humanity as to make their utterances unintelligible to other than the very few. The same condition of things exists today, though in a much less marked degree, the general diffusion of knowledge and the commingling of men and of nations having lifted the race to a plane so much above that upon which it stood two thousand years ago, as to have gone far toward obliterating the line between the most illumined of minds and the many.

But, though the line of demarcation is less distinct, it still exists, and exists largely because of the tendency of the race to cling to old ways and old habits of thought, rejecting the new, simply because it is new, and which, because it is new, appears strange and improbable.

The tendency toward investigation, due to the wonderful discoveries and inventions made within the last half of the century, has, however, so increased in all directions and among all classes—even the most stubborn adherents to ancient lines of thought—that no one need longer fe3r being considered mad who advances a new idea, provided he can sustain his proposition by a fair show of fact or logic; and it is because of this fact that I anticipate at least a respectful and thoughtful consideration of my work at the hands of the public. Conceding that I am off main-traveled roads, I yet insist that I am not only traveling in the right direction, as designated by the compass of reason, backed by logic, and not unsupported by fact, but that the way has been blazed by others who have preceded me in other centuries. I would not have it understood that I care very greatly whether anybody has ever passed along this way before, for I do not value truth because of its long residence among men; but I wish to give credit where credit is due, and, further, I am not above quoting precedent, if thereby I can gain a more attentive audience. I believe most sincerely that heaven is a condition, and not a place, and that it cannot be attained while the fear of death exists; death, which is nothing less than the removal by force, and without their consent, or of that of their friends, of human beings from all their associations and interests just when they are best prepared to be of most service to themselves and to the world.

If the reader likes, he may consider these writings as a protest against such a condition of things; but I would wish him to first ask himself if he is satisfied with such conditions, and if he knows to an absolute certainty that the power through which he came to exist as an individual is incapable of continuing, or has any settled objection to his continued existence.

The author of this work believes it entirely possible for the human race to overcome death. She believes that Jesus believed it, and that both before and since his time there have been others who believed in and sought for the overcoming of death, and that it will yet be attained. That it has not been is no argument to prove that it will not be. A very great many things that have not yet been proven will be some time. We knew little about steam or steam engines, electricity or magnetism, or sound waves or the ether a century ago. And the most we now know about some of them is that there is much more to be learned than we yet know. We are only just beginning to get under the blanket beneath which Nature has hidden her secrets; just beginning to learn a little something about her and about ourselves. We are her children, the eldest and best beloved of our mother—the immortal, the deathless. Shall she not impart the secret of life to us, if by diligence in searching and faithfulness in obeying we prove worthy?

Most implicitly do I believe so.

When I say I believe it possible to overcome death and continue to live in our bodies, I do not mean that our bodies must, necessarily, continue exactly as they are. It is reasonable to suppose that they will gradually refine and become more beautiful, and that other senses than the five we now possess will develop, and men become more perfect in every way, physically, mentally and morally. This will be a growth, as all things else are, but growth will be much more rapid, though endless, when the fear of death has been removed through a knowledge of the law whereby life may be sustained indefinitely.

The Writers of the Bible Believed That Death Could Be Overcome

If we are to give credit, as I suggested, to those who before us sought to blaze the way to continued existence in our present bodies, we must begin with the author of the Book of Genesis. Turn now to that book of the Bible, and read that man was, according to the account there given, created immortal; that for eating of the forbidden fruit he was condemned to die. Death must here refer to the body; if not, then it could only mean annihilation—the absence of any future life whatever. If this latter construction be put upon it, it would utterly annihilate every proposition put forward by the theologians, and remove every stone of the foundation upon which rests the Christian church; nor would the Mohammedans fare better.

It would mean the rankest of materialism; for, if to die meant the death of what remained after the dissolution of the body, there could be nothing upon which to base a theory of salvation, since there would be nothing to save. Hence, when it was said to our first parents (as reported in Genesis, chap. 2: v. 17), “But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it, for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die,” it must have referred to the death of the fleshly body. If he did not eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil—that is, if he did not violate the law of his being, and so become conscious of being out of harmony with it, he would continue always to live; if he did do this, he would die.

I am not now arguing the inspired character of the Bible, nor do I intend to do so in any part of this work; let that be as it may, and let each student of it judge for himself. Whether it is divinely inspired or not is not a vital issue in this connection. Neither is it of vast importance that we agree as to who wrote the Book of Genesis, or when or where it was written. What I am seeking to point out is, that whoever the author may have been, and whether divinely inspired or not, he conceived man to have been possessed, at his first appearance upon earth, of the power to continue in the body indefinitely; that he lost this power through ignorance or failure to obey the law laid down for him; that thereafter he could have regained immortal life in the body and become as the gods, had he but eaten of the tree of life; i. e., gained such knowledge of the law of his being as would have put him in harmony with the one universal life. Put into plain, everyday language, the Bible statement is that in ignorance mm violated the law of life and became subject to death; but that if he had known more; if he had known enough to eat of the tree of life, which would have been to come into an understanding of the law of his being, he could have continued in the body as long as he wished, and could then have shaped things to his liking, as the gods were supposed to do.

That this is the thought which the authors of Genesis intended to convey is made doubly apparent, when we consider the fact that nowhere in the Old Testament is it made clear that its authors believed in an existence of a soul after the death of the body. This being the case, there is no other possible construction to be put upon the language in Genesis other than that its authors, whether inspired or not, conceived it possible that men might acquire the knowledge which should enable them to command the life forces, and so continue to live in their present bodies as long as they wished.

The authors of the Old Testament, then, were the first to suggest the possibility, if not to point the way, to immortality in the flesh through a victory over death. That Jesus of Nazareth believed also in immortal life in the flesh is evident in the restoration to life of Lazarus and others, and in declaring that he himself would return to life (restore life to his body) on the third day, and in the repeated healing of diseased bodies, which, if not healed, must speedily have succumbed to the disease by which they were affected.

And now I wish to ask the reader’s thoughtful consideration of this proposition. I ask it because of the magnitude of the interests involved, and because I believe that any who may have read this far will have become sufficiently interested to, at least, be willing to give the author a hearing, and the subject of which she treats a thoughtful consideration.

The question I wish to ask is this: If by any purely mental process health can be restored to a diseased body, is it not reasonable to suppose that the process can be continued indefinitely, and health, which means continued life, made permanent? In other words, if there is a law by the application of which disease may be eliminated from the system for a time, may it not be that the effect can be made continuous, and disease prevented from ever causing the dissolution of the body?

I do not forget that many—perhaps most people who believe that Jesus really did heal the sick—believe that he possessed miraculous powers; but I would call the attention of all these persons to his assertion that those who believed on him, or as he did, should do greater works than he had done. If he had considered his acts as outside of natural law, and due to some special relation which he bore to Godhead, he would not have declared that others who bore no such special relation should do greater things.

Let us be logical. The interests at stake are the greatest possible to conceive of, and no one among us can afford to do less than to bring to bear the best reasoning power of which he or she is possessed. Jesus did not claim to heal the sick by a power which might not be attained by anyone who would follow his instructions, and he did say that others who should come after him should do more than he had been able to do.

Again I ask, if there exists a law by which, through purely mental processes, and without the use of drugs, diseases of the body can be removed, does it not follow logically that when we have a fuller understanding of the law by which this is done, we shall be able to remove all disease and continue life in the body indefinitely?

Dismissing as not vitally essential to the matter in hand at this moment the question of whether or not Jesus healed through an understanding of natural law, or by virtue of a special relation to a supreme power, I appeal to the ten thousands of giving witnesses—people who are alive today because they have been healed by mental processes purely, after all efforts at healing by drugs administered by the most noted physicians had failed; I appeal to these witnesses to prove the existence of the law for the healing of disease, and claim that in their evidence is conclusive proof of the existence of a law, which, if understood and applied, will annihilate disease and give the victory over death.

Immortality in the Flesh Rests Upon the Fact That the Highest Always Has Power to Control All Below It

I am far from being alone in my search for immortal life in the flesh, or in faith that it can be accomplished, though all who search and hope have not the courage to declare their purpose. Eminent physicians talk of “increasing the tenure of life in man,” and of “a renewal of youth” after old age shall have stiffened the joints and lessened the flow of the vital forces. Today, as I laid aside my pen to scan the papers I found in two dailies of wide circulation and influence a half page in each devoted to accounts of declared discoveries, by a noted professor, of a lymph that is to renew youth in age, and extend the span of life from three-score and ten to many times that number of years. This professed discovery is treated by the great journals of the land with respect, as being a thing that their editors conceived to be possible. They do well to give such encouragement. Every honest searcher after a knowledge of the hidden laws of being is worthy of commendation and support, however mistaken he may be in his conclusions, or however misleading the clew which he follows. As in ancient times all roads led to Rome, so, in science, all research leads in the direction of ultimate truth. The victory over death will never be gained through the introduction into the circulation of the blood of any lymph or other fluid or solid; but investigation and research bring an increase of knowledge, and every advance in knowledge brings us one step nearer the truth.

We concede to lymph and to drugs a character, an individuality, and the authority which individuality implies. Individuality, whether of the lowest or the highest form, implies character; implies it in the rock as certainly as in the man. The character of any certain drug is the same always, but its relation to, and power over, other individualities vary, as the mental characteristics of individuals vary; hence, the improbability of a science of medicine. Prof. Metchinkoff, or another, may discover a lymph or a drug that will have the effect of helping to sustain life in human bodies beyond the present average of years; but nothing except an understanding of the law, and a coming into harmony with it, by which means it is possible to command it, will ever enable man to continue existence in the body at will. These men are not wiser in their day and generation than was Ponce de Leon in his. They seek for the elixir of youth at the same fountain-head. The only difference between the de Leon of 1512 and these searchers of 1900 for lymph, is that these seek to produce what he sought to find—a combination of material substances possessing the power to remove the effects of old age. They search amiss, yet do they approach the truth, who seek through physical means to preserve the physical body. For in the last analysis the physical is one with the mental; and through searching they will arrive at the great truth that, though one in essence, yet is the physical but the visible expression of the mental, which latter is the overseer and rules; and to it, and not to the physical, must the appeal be made for the renewal of youth and the conquest over old age and death. That this is true we have demonstrated again and again by actual test. That it is true can be logically demonstrated to anyone capable of deducing a logical conclusion from a presentation of self-evident facts.

For example, the rock crumbles beneath the action of the elements and becomes soil; slowly, but certainly, the soil becomes soluble, and is drawn into the life of the vegetable whose roots have found lodgement and a home in its depth; the vegetable is consumed by man and goes to form the tissues of his body, including the brain, which evolves thought, as a flower gives off perfume; is consumed in thought much as the body is wasted by physical exertion. By a perfectly natural process the rock has evolved into the finest and most powerful element possible to conceive of, proving beyond possibility of mistaking that the physical is in essence one with the mental. And as of the rock, so of every other material object perceived by the senses, including drugs of whatever character or class. They all possess character, but it is of the crudest, and becomes nil when brought into collision with the finer forces on the mental plane. The highest controls by virtue of being highest. If this were not so, then there could be no progress, no growth. If the lowest had power to command the highest, then, indeed, would the race be without hope, and utter annihilation and a dreamless sleep be of all things most desirable.

But it is not so. The higher forever dominates the lower and the preservation, indefinitely and at will, of the coarser elements of the body through the action of the finer, the mental, is possible of accomplishment.

From the Standpoint of Personal Experience

I had written a good many pages in this book—not those which appear at the beginning as it is at present arranged, but others further on—when a friend asked permission to read them. As he was a man whose literary ability I greatly respected, I gave him the manuscript. When he returned it he said, “You must not make this a heavy book. You know that it is to be the book of life, and, therefore, it must be a live book.”

“But how?” I asked.

“You must write it from the standpoint of your own experience,” he said. “Then you would put yourself in it, as well as your ideas.”

I hesitated. I am always somewhat daunted by the charge of egotism; and one cannot introduce one’s self into his writings without being open to this accusation.

Then I reflected a little while, and I said, “Surely there is nothing that holds the reader like the personality of the author. His ideas may be fine, but they are all the finer if he vitalizes them by putting himself into them.”

I am not a person to treat lightly such a suggestion as my friend made. No one places more value upon the word “alive” than I do. If I read a book, it must be a live book, or I lose interest in it and cannot finish it.

This aliveness is not only the great charm of books, but of everything else. Artificial flowers can be made quite as beautiful as the real ones, but who cares for them? They are not alive; they do not call out your affection.

The one charm above all other charms, when I see a new face, may be expressed by the word “aliveness.” Beauty and even superior intelligence dwindle into insignificance in comparison with the look of vital power to which I am referring. After all, this look of vital power is beauty; and it is intelligence, too; so my comparison falls dead.

I do not think I exhibited more vitality than other children when I was a child; if I did, it was not in the ordinary way, for I never climbed a tree in my life, nor did any other Tomboy act that I can recall. Indeed, if it shall ever be written of me, “She is the woman who conquered death in the body and thereby redeemed the race,” my biographer will have nothing remarkable to record of my youth. I was a responsible child, and was much trusted by my mother. But the best part of me was that I had no appetite for what is called the truth. I had the most marvelous imagination, and could not be impressed for any length of time with the actual condition of my surroundings; but lived in air castles, of which I surely was as great an architect as ever existed. I can recall how, when my mother was scolding and threatening me with severe punishment, and sometimes administering it, I would be adding to the last chapter of some wonderful romance that was passing through my mind, so utterly absorbed in my thoughts as not to be aware of what she was saying or doing.

I think that I was born without any conception of death, though the thought was engrafted upon my thought as I grew up. But this was because I was not old enough; neither was my experience ripe enough, to reason upon it. I did reason on it when I became older, and I cast the belief of its power entirely out of my mind.

“What power is there in death,” I said, “when death is not a power at all, but the absence of all power? Life is power, and death is nothing but a contradiction of life.”

For years and years I puzzled my brain over this thought. I read the Bible, thinking I should find in it the sure way. I did not find it, for it is not there; but I found many things that illuminate my way now, though they did not do it then. T had to ascend to a higher plane of thought than I had previously attained, in order to make a safe application of the things I found in it.

The Old Testament interested me most, and it still does; for truly it points to the kind of immortality that I have always been searching for—immortality in the flesh. In the meantime the years were doing their worst for me. I was growing old, in spite of the fact that I cherished my dream of ultimate conquest over the enemy that had, so far, submerged the entire race.

During all these years which were passing so rapidly my ideas were dreamlike, and had not yet taken the form of an absolute determination to conquer death. I could see quite clearly, I thought, that the people were going on to the time when they would conquer death, but I placed this time away off in the future—not knowing that the hour for the execution of a hope comes with the birth of the hope.

So I kept reading the Bible and praying to the God of the Scriptures until my whole life became one unbroken aspiration for truth. I had been a church member, but got nothing from this experience except disappointment; the heaven of the future was not the thing I was searching for; just to think of my soul and its after-death salvation made me impatient. “Others,” I said, “may comfort themselves on a promise, but I will not invest my hope in that which requires me to yield up what I have, and desire to keep, for that which, even if attained, I may not find desirable; for how could any reasoning creature really desire the heaven depicted by the orthodox clergy of fifty years ago?

And yet I was in the dark about the final outcome of my ideas. I knew nothing of how they were to be executed, though I clung to them with the greatest tenacity, and tried many an experiment in working them out.

At one time I was strong in the belief that the favorite disciple of Jesus was still living on the earth; some words that Jesus spoke at his last meeting with John the Divine induced me to believe this, and I built up a theory about it that would read like a romance if I should write it out.

My husband laughed at me for my beliefs, though I only told him a very few of them. I had no idea that he himself had imbibed them, until he came to me one day with beaming eyes, and brought a paper containing a strange theory concerning the power of the race to overcome death. It was founded on the Bible account of creation; but, beyond showing me that there were others besides myself who were striving for the conquest of death, it did me no good. And yet it did me good in one way; the circumstance itself revealed the fact that my husband was with me in the thought, though he had never admitted it. This strengthened me, and we got in the habit of discussing the matter together.

I think I have never seen anyone who dreaded death so much as he did, unless it was the little child we lost when she was only nine years old, and whose terror concerning it she must have inherited from her father. For my part, I did not have it at all. I have never met anyone so entirely free from this fear as I have always been; but, in spite of this absence of fear, there is no one living more determined than I am to overcome death. With me it is just as if the life principle itself kept pouring its vitality into me, and thus asserting itself through my body, whether I cared or not. And, in a sense, this was the case, only I did care; I did recognize it, not only bodily, but in a dim way I recognized it intellectually; and my salvation lay in this fact. At least, it will lay in this fact when I am saved; and it would be difficult to convince me that I am not being saved at the present time. But for feeling my own power in the matter of conquering death, I would not now be writing this book. I am as sure that this power is vested in my brain and body as I can ever be of anything in the world.

The Effort of Jesus to Overcome Death

Up to this time—I was fifty years old, or thereabouts—my search for eternal life was confined to persons and things outside of myself. I was constantly looking for someone who knew more on the subject than I did, in order that I might hitch myself to his ideas and get a free ticket, as it were, into the Promised Land. I had tried religion without success, and had be sought the help of God until I grew to be ashamed of myself, feeling that God must be too tired of me to tolerate my petitions any longer. These words are not written irreverently; they are absolutely true. We judge others, even those in the highest places, by ourselves, and I knew how it would be with me. Certain people in my experience, who had been dependent on me, and to whose borrowing and begging I had at first responded freely, but toward whom, as the thing continued, I became first annoyed and then disgusted, furnished me with a reason for believing as I did. So it came about that I felt a little bashful in approaching the “Throne of Grace,” and I finally quit it.

But before I quit I had “searched the Scriptures” until I became convinced that they could do nothing for me, except in a general way. They showed me—so I believed—that they were the compendium of the best thought furnished by the world’s greatest thinkers of an early age, on the very subject I was spending my life investigating; namely, the conquest of death, not in an unknown future life, but here on our own planet. I followed this idea through the various books of the Old Testament, and saw how, by slow degrees, the feeling of postponement stole in upon the writers, until at last they concluded that they could not save themselves, but that sometime in the future, and as the result of a certain line of descent, a man would be born with power to conquer death for the whole race. When this idea became fixed in their minds, their hopes went away from themselves and centered in a time yet to come. This state of thought—this postponement of effort—was so ruinous that the lives of the people, from lasting many hundreds of years, dwindled to less than a hundred. The reason of this will be explained farther on, when I show the importance of having the thoughts and hopes that the body and brain generate express themselves in and through the body, instead of gadding away from their proper seat of action and leaving the body to starve. It is an unknown fact at this time that thought feeds the body, but this is one of the greatest of the new truths just beginning to dawn on the race.

Recently, as it seemed to me, as I continued to read the Bible, the first idea held by the old thinkers, the idea that death in the body could be conquered, dwindled out completely; and all their hopes now pointed to the future coming of the person on whom their salvation depended. Then Jesus came, and though his coming was not in the line of descent prophesied, this line being on Joseph’s side and Jesus being the child of Mary, he was nevertheless accepted by enough of the people to become a great character of history, and to project his influence two thousand years into the future.

It is my belief that Jesus taught, as nearly as he dared, the conquest of death in the body. He realized that the faith of the old prophets and seers had departed, and he knew the savagery of the people too well to try to change their opinions by any sudden declaration of ‘his belief. And yet there are times when his belief crops out in his sayings. For instance, when he was preaching in the Temple and the Jews said to him, “Our fathers taught different from this,” Jesus answered, simply, “Your fathers are dead.” It was equivalent to saying, if your fathers had taught what I teach, they would have been alive today.

The account of the life of Jesus is too brief to give any fixed opinion of him or his views. I have my own opinion, which I shall give. All down the ages there have been men who thought themselves favored of God, and who believed that they could build up a kingdom of which they would be the head. Someone has written a book called “The Sixteen Crucified Saviors.” The history of anyone of these would stand for all of them. They were all the sons of virgins, begotten of God; and, if I am not mistaken, every one of them was murdered for his opinion’s sake. An account of one is an account of all, which is a fact to shake the faith of every person who prefers truth to fiction.

Jesus claimed to be the person predicted in the Old Testament, of whom his biographers made such clumsy statements, as that he did thus and so that it might be fulfilled as predicted in the Scriptures, as if he sought the Scriptures to find out what he was to claim and how he was to act. Nevertheless, though it seems a contradiction, he had a certain amount of conviction regarding his claim, and the conviction grew constantly stronger as his power to speak the healing word that cured the people’s diseases increased. I have no doubt he became a marvel to himself, and gradually established his claims in his own mind. His disciples believed in him in proportion as his belief in himself increased, until the full force of the entire number of them became an almost irresistible power among the people.

When Jesus began to see unmistakably, as he thought, that he could overcome death, and when threatened and evidently in great danger, he refused to make an effort to escape, though he might easily have done so. When his disciples, who knew that the officers were after him, urged him to go away and thus avoid death, he said something like this to them: “Oh! ye of little faith; knowest thou not that my Father can send more than twelve legions of angels and take me from the cross?”

If these words mean anything, they mean that Jesus expected that which would justify his faith in his claims. They point unmistakably to the fact that he was working a grand coup de main that would establish him at once and forever, in his own and the world’s belief, that he was the Son of God and had a right to stand at the head of all men, the Savior and King—the crowned Prince of Peace.

We find still farther confirmation of this in the last words he ever spoke. He had waited in agony for hours, and the help he expected had not come; life was ebbing rapidly, and the end had almost been reached, when he cried out, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?”

It seems a strange thing that people do not see the truth in the Bible statement; but the people are not doing their own thinking to any great extent. They are going to begin to do it very soon, and when they do, we shall see and know and do things that are now considered impossible.

How I Tried to Bolster Up My Hope by Searching For Others Who Would Believe in It

In the last chapter I referred to the fact that in my search for an escape from death, I kept constantly looking for some person or persons who had gone farther on this line of thought than I had done, and who, therefore, knew more about it. I actually unearthed several fossils, each of whom had some idea to which he was married, and which never expanded beyond its then shape and size. One woman whom I met by appointment, after several quite sensible letters had passed between us, actually told me that she was the Virgin Mary, resurrected and appointed to save the race. Several experiences of this kind threw me back on myself for personal investigation. No one ever called me a fool, even though I made no concealment of my hopes. I talked my ideas to my neighbors, and made many converts among them, and was acknowledged as a leader in thought as far as I was known. People who themselves had quietly cherished the hope I had begun to exploit abroad came long distances to see me and hear what I had to say, and left me entirely convinced of the possibility of the thing, though I frankly admitted that I did not know how it was to be done. I always declared that I was growing up to a knowledge of it, and that nothing in life could stand in the way of my discovering it.

And nothing has done so; and I have discovered it.

Year after year slid by, and found me always a more interested searcher than before. Year after year I was compelled with greater force to abandon all hope of help from other people; I was being turned home toward myself, and at last began to get a growing conviction of the fact that there was no help for me but in myself.

What a revelation this would have been had it come to me suddenly. But it could never have come in this way. It was a matter of brain development, and slow development, at that. How was it possible for a woman whose whole life had been enslaved by service to others, and who was crushed, as such women generally are, to have confidence in her own ideas, and to believe in herself as the discoverer of a truth that would bring salvation; a truth that would light the world with the blessedness of undying hope? It was not in me to think this, nor even to accept the thought when others spoke of it who believed in me. It is true that—led away from all sense of personality when fired by the full scope of the idea— I would talk of it with such vitality as to bring conviction to nearly all who heard me. I talked with great fervor when aroused, but when alone, and the thought came to me that I—poor little I—was really and truly the leader in so tremendous a thing as that which was to conquer death in the bodies of the people, I would shrink from it and reject it; reject the glory of it, even while seeing that it was true, and that every atom of my body and brain was full of such confirmation as I could not wholly disbelieve.

But, though I could not disbelieve it, since it was born in me like the lily in the bulb, and was growing out of me the same as the lily grows out of the bulb, I yet could and did ignore the sense of personality that would have forced the conviction of ownership upon me. I knew that an understanding of how to conquer death was in my grasp, and was unfolding more and more to my perception, but, while I cherished this great fact, I yet kept my thought from dwelling upon its greatness; or rather, perhaps, it was so big that my unaccustomed thought, not yet free from the world’s old beliefs in the power of death, could not grasp it.

I think I should have felt more comfortable, under the circumstances, if some other person had been developing the idea, and had been accepting it second hand. I must say of myself that I had no desire to become famous; there were certain things I wanted to do, certain problems I wanted to solve; but it was not for popular applause that I was working. Indeed, I shrunk from notice, and, unless swept to the front by the force of my thought, I was always in the background. As a child, I had shunned attention; I was usually so busy carrying out my own ideas, or thinking my own thoughts, that I wished to be left alone. I am this way even now; I am never lonesome, and I court solitude; but if my solitude is broken in upon by pleasant people, I enjoy their company as much as anyone. I am fond of people. All expressions of life are engaging; but man, who stands at the head and represents the best of everything below him—what shall I say of him? I am not satisfied to say simply that I love him; I see in him such possibilities of unfoldment that I look upon him as the miracle of all time; and he excites my wonder and stimulates my admiration to the highest point of grandeur.

With this feeling about others (I may say all others, since even the most degraded tramp contains the seed of immortal growth) it is no wonder that I turned my thoughts inward upon myself, and began to admit to myself, in spite of my natural timidity, that I, too, was capable of everything that my mind could suggest to me as possible of attaining.

I am sure that no one will look upon this as egotism or vanity, since I did not set myself up above others or value my powers above the powers of others. But I did begin to value my own powers in proportion as I discovered the powers of others; for I could not help seeing that the race is a unit, and that the same law of vital force runs through us all, making us all brothers. And gradually I began to claim my own. I was growing into a proper sense of my own valuation. I was beginning to see such strength in myself that I no longer desired to lean on another; I was approaching a position of individualism: and I say now, and shall prove it further on, that strict individualism is the salvation of every member of the race, and that there is no salvation outside of it. It is individualism that conquers death.

It is the insanity of egotism that causes men to claim that they are the specially endowed messengers of God to a dying world. There are several of these persons who are flourishing in a small way at this time, and making a good living out of their dupes; but their influence is growing more and more limited as the process of individualization in the people goes on. I can readily understand the situation; there having been a time when I myself was so weak in self-confidence that I searched for a leader; but with an understanding of the law, the preposterous claims of these modern Christs became at once apparent. There are others who are yet in the condition that I once was; they are filled with the desire for something different from the old-time ideas about salvation, but have been taught from infancy to regard themselves as “creeping worms of the dust,” unworthy of even decent treatment from the hands of the God who is supposed to have created them; they are weak; they must lean; and they lean on any inflated, deluded and deluding creature with sufficient egotism to publish his claims to the world. And so our modern messiahs make their appearance and flourish for a time before their course ends in such characters as Weary Walker and Dusty Rhoades.

My mind being filled with thoughts relating to the subject of conquering death, I soon—without an effort—tested public opinion of a highly cultured order on the subject. I had left California by this time and was living in Chicago and doing editorial work on a paper there. Of course, I found many acquaintances of a very superior degree of mental ability, and we discussed all the leading ideas of the day. My opinions on every subject except that of the conquest of death were kindly accepted by my friends, but they rejected the idea that eternal life could be achieved in this world, and especially at this time. Some of them were willing to accept the theory if its fulfillment could be put off a few hundred or thousand years, but none of them could be induced to consider the possibility of it in the present generation. These were educated people; they were college-bred men, and their minds were stuffed full of what the world calls learning; and “learning” is the fit name for it—it is far from being wisdom.

It was here that I saw the difference between the natural mind and the mind that had been thrown out of its natural direction by filling it with what is called “learning.” In my previous association with the people of the little place where I lived, I found many original thinkers and reasoners; minds that were not overcrowded with the rubbish of dead centuries, but fresh and vital and able to do original thinking. These were the minds I impressed with my ideas; and when I contrasted the two different casts of mind as L have described them, I valued book learning less than ever. I had never valued it very highly. I wanted to delve down in the ground; I wanted to get to the root of things and discover the cause of growth. I knew that I must find the law of growth or I would never conquer death.

I have found it, and I shall make the whole thing .so clear in these pages that a child can understand it.

In regard to what I said about the indifference of my book-learned friends to my ideas concerning the conquest of death, I must refer to an experience that seems strange. It only required a slight acquaintance with a man or woman to find out just what reach of mind he or she possessed. In most people I soon came to a mental dead wall beyond which I could not go, and beyond which there would have been no use of going, because there was nothing there. Those persons carried within themselves the stamp of death; they had not advanced far enough in ideal lines of thought to release the dead weight of the old.

But there were other minds into which I could look down and down the perfectly clear depths, and find no obstacle to the upward moving current of life, which has its rise in the beginning of the person’s individuality. These persons never rejected a thought because it was new; they were always ready to consider it, and accept it if their reason confirmed it.

From the intellectual capacity of some, when contrasted with this quality of luminosity of others, I perceived that a portion of the race had progressed far enough to throw off the incubus of disease and death, as soon as more knowledge should be evolved on the subject, and that another portion of it had not.

The Growth of Public Opinion in the Direction of the Conquest of Death

It was nearly twenty years ago that I severed my connection with the paper that I was then on and with the friends I made while there, and I have often wondered if these friends have relaxed their opposition to what they called my pet hobby. I doubt not that many of them have. The idea is no longer regarded as absurd; it has become one of intense interest to millions of people. The interest in everything written on the subject is so great that it threatens to become a mania. Every city has its Century Clubs, and its Live-Forever Clubs, and they have spread to the country, and the villages are discussing them. The books that have been written on this subject, and almost forgotten, have been revived, and new editions of them are on the shelves of the bookstores.

There is the beginning of a groundswell of inquiry on the subject; the whole thinking public is slowly awakening; and as it does it draws its hopes from the distant heaven of delusive promise to the prospect of present salvation. Who does not know that “a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush?” and who is going to walk in the dark when once he has glimpsed the rising sun?

Introspection is a neglected art. If man would look within himself in his search for truth, he would gain more useful knowledge than all the colleges and all his travels through foreign countries could give him.

Nay, more; the man who goes outside of himself in his effort to gain wisdom bankrupts himself; and the knowledge he acquires may delude, instead of leading him in the direction of highest truth. Nothing can possibly lead any man to a higher growth but the understanding of himself.

What is the most important thing man can possess? I answer, it is himself. And when I say himself, I mean his body, and not his soul. Men have been soul-saving for thousands of years, and all that time the body has been dying of neglect.

Is the body of no importance, that we can afford to ignore it in this way? Is it true that the soul can exist without the body? Who really knows anything about the soul? And who does not know something about the body? We, at least, know from observation and practical tests that the body exists, and that it is a very convenient thing to have; we know that it is a machine or a combination of machines through which we transact all the business connected with life, and without which we would have no life on the terrestrial plane where we execute all the desires that make life worth living.

That we know almost nothing of ourselves, our resources and undeveloped powers, is because for thousands of years we have devoted our time and talent to exploring the soul—or some imaginary thing we call the soul—to the utter neglect of the body, which there is no doubt about our possessing. Owing to this blunder we know almost nothing about our bodies, and absolutely nothing of our souls, in spite of the fact that we have claimed to know so much about them for so long a time.

The soul—admitting its existence, which I am more than willing to do—is a secondary matter on our present plane of life; we are in a world where bodies, and not souls, do the work which is necessary to be done, in order that our lives be protracted in the fulfillment of those desires which belong to the body, and which are essential to its existence here.

We run this wonderful engine, the body, in a way that would shame a ship’s captain in the command of his boat. The captain would want some knowledge of his vessel in order that he might control her properly and keep her from drifting at the mercy of wind and tide; but man—who owns the greatest piece of mechanism in the world, a piece of mechanism that combines within itself every law of mechanics known and unknown—makes no effort to understand it, and has no conception of the hundredth part of its meaning, nor of the thousandth part of its worth to himself.

What it is that lies back of this mechanism, no one knows. What the “I” that is always speaking for itself may be, is a secret. Whether this “I,” which says, “My body,” is really the body’s very self, or some unseen thing hidden in the body or behind the body, no one can tell. The assertion “I” stands for the man, and the “I” not only says, “My body!,” but it says, “My soul,” also. Is the “I” one with the soul or one with the body? Or is it the intelligent union of both?

For my part, I believe that the “I” is all the soul a man has, and that it is the sum total of the body’s entire life; its memory, in fact; its record of all the body’s transactions, and that it is one with the body, the body being the external expression of it. The “I” records all the experiences through which a man passes; and if it takes note of these experiences and reasons on them, it becomes wiser every day. That the “I” says, “My body,” is only a habit of speech, and does not prove that the body is one thing and the “I” another.

It is because I perceive the truth of the above statement that I have grown into a conviction of the immense importance of the body. The body is the man, and the man is adapted to the place he occupies now; his body correlates the needs of his life here, and this fact leaves the soul out of this treatise. If the soul is needed in another world, we will find it there.

What is the greatest desire of the human being? Let us be honest with ourselves. It is not for the salvation of his soul. We desire the salvation of our souls if it proves impossible to save our bodies; but first of all we want our bodies saved. The most delightful heaven the imagination of genius has devised does not allure us so much as the remnant of this bodily life with all its trials and sufferings.

“All that a man hath will he give for his life.” It has always been so, and with the growing refinement of the race it becomes more so. In the early history of the race men yielded their lives far more readily than they do at this time. Would a man of the present age die for opinion’s sake, as the heroes of old once did? No, he would deny everything in order to save his life, wisely thinking that life was far more valuable than opinion, as, indeed, it is.

Life is above all things; life right here, handicapped by our environments, and blurred in every conceivable way by our ignorance, is still more valuable than all else.

In spite of the body’s disabilities, and the pain that racks it, and the penury that starves it, we yet value it so much more than the prospective heaven of the future, that we will not end it voluntarily, though we might do so at the cost of a meal, and with less pain than an ordinary spell of indigestion. Does this mean nothing? Do not all things mean something? I assert that the simple facts I am stating will prove to be the most important truths of which the mind can get any conception, when once understood.

The inherent force and determination which always point in one direction, which begin in the elementary life cells themselves and increase with every step upward in race growth, have a meaning that no power of imagination can ever extend to its legitimate limits, for, indeed, it has no limits.

This force and this determination are expressed in the love of life in the body, and the avoidance of the body’s death. They are manifested in every object in all the world. They manifest in the lowest forms no less than in the highest, as all persons must have observed many times. Turn over the half decayed piece of wood, and see with what hurrying fear the little creatures under it rush to safe places out of our sight. And the vegetables and trees also; note with what tenacity of life they mend their broken limbs, and go on growing in spite of the most adverse conditions. Even the crystals and rocks strive to assume shapes and enter into conditions of greater permanency.

It is the love of life—not of soul life, but of body life—and the hope of prolonging it that makes cowards of us all; in fact, it is the love of life that prompts every action we ever will or can make. No principle within us is so strong as this. “All that a man hath will he give for his life.”

Looking through nature everywhere it is the same; the one great desire, first of all, is for life; after that come the minor desires. Often when it is necessary to kill something, my sympathy is so drawn into the effort of the creature to save its own life, that I become weak and faint and seem to partially die with it. At least, there is an approximation in my feelings toward this extreme point, and it shows how high my valuation of life is.

Down through the ages all men have accepted—apparently without thought—the belief that death was an unavoidable thing; they have accepted this belief in spite of their desire to live. I say all men; yet, as I have pointed out, there have been exceptions, the writers of the Old Testament having unquestionably had faith in the power of the body to conquer death sometime in the future, if not in their time.